Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/226

 two years old when he arrived at Oregon City in April, 1842, where his first employment was cutting wood at seventy-five cents a cord. He organized in 1 843 the Falls Debating Society at Oregon City. He soon started a hotel—in a building fourteen by seventeen feet. "When it was opened there was not a bed or chair in it, but he made a table; and men slept in blankets and paid him $5 a week for board." This was the beginning of a celebrated early hotel—The Main Street House of Oregon City—later established in a two-story building on the southwest corner of Third and Main Streets. He advertised it in rhyme. "Owing to pressing necessities and our cheap rates of fare, we are compelled to say:

This was signed by himself and "The Widow." The latter was Mrs. Dorcas Richardson, who became his second wife and the mother of five of his children. He already had three—one authority says five—by his first wife who was a second cousin of President Taylor. Of these only a girl survived and, to increase his presidential connections, she married the grandson of President William Henry Harrison.

He also ran a store at Oregon City, and out of this and his other enterprises, such as a ferry-boat and a livery stable, had made enough by 1850 to send his partner east with $63,000 to buy merchandise. This was lost, but he was good at recuperation and by 1882 was able to divide $75,000 among "his children and step-children, share and share alike."

His hustling from woodchopper to an important status in Oregon City was accompanied by much unselfishness along the way. In the winter of 1843-44 he paid out of his own pockets for a free primary school in the town. In the election of 1845, in which Joe Meek was made sheriff, he was chosen assessor, "traveling in that capacity all the way from