Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/532

 down stroke, and another man in the pit under the log who pulled the saw down and got the benefit of all the sawdust. Waymire was the only busy man in the new town, and prospered from the start. He knew well how to turn an honest penny in the face of severe financial troubles. With the money made in Portland, he went to Dallas, in Polk countj', in later years and started a store, thinking it safer to rely on the farmers for prosperity than take chances on such a strenuous city life. There he sold goods "on tick" (credit) as was the custom of the country, and not being a good bookkeeper, he wrote down on the inside board walls of his store with a piece of chalk the names of his customers, and under each name the goods they had bought on credit, with sums due. And while absent on a brief trip to Portland, his good wife, thinking to tidy up the store, got some lime and whitewashed the inside of the whole establishment. On his return and seeing what had been done, he threw up his hands in despair and declared he was a ruined man. The good woman consoled him with the suggestion that he could remember all the accounts and simply write them all over again on the wall. And so the next day being Sunday, and a good day, and everybody absent at church, he undertook the task. His wife dropped in after divine service and inquired how he was getting along. He replied, "Well, I've got the accounts all down on the wall agin; I don't know that I've got them agin just the same men, but I believe I've got them agin lot of fellows better able to pay." There were preachers and teachers and all sorts of men in Oregon then, as now.

Another man that dropped in on young Portland the next year after Waymire, was William H. Bennett (Bill Bennett) who, having quit the mountains and the fur trade, started in to make his fortune in making shingles out of the cedar timber on the townsite, which was a gift to him. Bennett got a start and prospered until he was ruined by his convivial habits. He pushed various small enterprises, finally starting a livery stable at the corner where the Mulkey block is now located. The business started by Bennett was owned successively by John S. White, Lew Goddard, Elijah Corbett, P. J. Mann (founder of the Old Folks' Home), Godard & Frazier and now by Frazier and McLean, at the corner of Fifth and Taylor streets. In 1846 came Job McNamee from Ohio, having come into the valley with the immigration of 1845. McNamee was a good citizen and brought a good family, wife and daughter, possibly among the first ladies of the place, and whose presence smothered down some of the rough places in the village. Miss McNamee became the wife of E. J. Northriip, one of the best citizens Portland ever had, and the founder of the great wholesale and retail hardware store now owned by the "Honeyman Hardware Company."' Not long after the advent of the McNamees, came Dr. Ralph Wilcox from New York, a pioneer of 1845. Dr. Wilcox was the first physician and the first school teacher of the city, and a most useful and public-spirited citizen, taking a leading part in organizing society and serving the public as clerk of the state legislature and as clerk of the United States district and circuit courts. His widow, Mrs. Julia Wilcox, now over ninety-two years of age, is still active and an interested spectator of the growth of a city of two hundred and fifty thousand people, which she came to in her early womanhood as a few log cabins in an unbroken forest.

And about the same time as Dr. Wilcox came, also came the O'Bryant