under no legal obligation to make over anything to the Oregon conference, in trust for the institute, refused to listen to the protests of the trustees so neatly tricked out of their cherished educational enterprise. In this condition the institute languished till 1854, when a settlement was effected by the restoration of the reserved sixty acres to the trustees of the Willamette University, and two thirds of the unsold remains of the south-west quarter of the Salem town-site which Wilson was bound to hold for the use of that institution. Whether the restoration was an act of honor or of necessity I will not here discuss; the act of congress under which the territory was organized recognized as binding all bonds and obligations entered into under the provisional government.[1] In later years some important lawsuits grew out of the pretensions of Wilson's heirs, to an interest in lots sold by him while acting agent for the trustees of the town-site.[2]
Portland in 1848 had but two frame buildings, one the residence of F. W. Pettygrove, who had removed from Oregon City to this hamlet on the river's edge, and the other belonging to Thomas Carter. Several log-houses had been erected, but the place had no trade except a little from the Tualatin plains lying to the south, beyond the heavily timbered highlands in that direction.
The first owner of the Portland land-claim was William Overton, a Tennesseean, who came to Oregon about 1843, and presently took possession of the place, where he made shingles for a time, but being of a restless disposition went to the Sandwich Islands, and returning dissatisfied and out of health, resolved to go to Texas. Meeting with A. L. Lovejoy at Vancouver, and returning with him to Portland in a canoe, he offered to resign the claim to him, but subsequently
