Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/104

Rh its entire first page. One column of editorial and three columns of news from the Indian wars filled up the rest of the space. Notwih standing its prosperous appearance, the publication soon died, not having found a real field in the little-developed business world of early Oregon. It wasn't worth the dime a copy. But it was a first.

Though he dropped the Portland Commercial, McCormick kept the Advertiser end of the publication, turning his semi-weekly into a monthly advertising sheet for his own Franklin Book Store in Portland. He was complimented on this publication by the Oregon Argus of Oregon City, July 12, 1856 (81).

A competitor in the field, the Journal of Commerce, was launched by A. M. Berry, well-known Portland printer, later one of the publishers of the Olympia Pioneer and Democrat, one of the best-known of the early papers of Washington territory. The first issue of this Wednesday-and-Saturday semi-weekly, on April 2, was nine days behind the McCormick paper. As against the dime-a-copy price of the Commercial, Berry's paper advertised its price as "only half a dime a copy." It was a little smaller, three columns as compared with McCormick's four. It was a joke on Berry, a printer, that his paper carried the wrong year, 1851, in the masthead, for several issues. The mistake was discovered in time to have several mastheads correct before the paper folded up in about three months.

Oregon's first magazine, the Oregon Monthly Magazine, was started by S. J. McCormick at his pioneer Franklin publishing house in Portland, in 1852, largely as a vehicle for a lot of his own poetry. The magazine, in fact, was largely McCormick, who had five of his own poems, including a rhymed address to the reader. The Oregon Statesman, says Alfred Powers (82), "although it had been given an advertisement of the magazine, kept its integrity by complimenting the neat stitching and the handsome cover and by saying nothing about the poetry."

The first paper published south of Salem and the ninth in Oregon was the Umpqua Gazette, published at Scottsburg. The first number came off the press April 28, 1854, with Daniel Jackson Lyons editor and W. J. Beggs printer. Mr. Lyons, who was an Irishman, born in Cork, March 28, 1813, was educated in his native land for the Catholic ministry. His career was changed when the sight of one of his eyes was destroyed as a result of a blow from a stone thrown by a playmate. He then became a brush- and broom-maker, following that vocation after coming to America. After several years in Louisville and Lexington, Ky., he came out to Oregon in 1853.

Meanwhile he had married, in 1849, Miss Virginia Fayette Putnam, sister of Charles F. Putnam, a printer, who, coming to Oregon in 1846, was employed on the mechanical end of the Oregon American and Evangelical Unionist, Rev. John S. Griffn's paper