Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/146

Rh and imagination had to be drawn on to fill up the allotted three columns."

A sidelight on politics and poker in 1876 was told by Colonel Redington. "General Nesmith," he wrote, "had the U. S. senatorship in his vest pocket in 1876, and the Democratic caucus at the state house had decided to thus honor him, but one man insisted on sending a committee after Nes to bring him up and outline his policy, etc. The committee found Nes in a poker game at the Chemeketa hotel, and asked him to come on up. He said that he could not just then, but would come up when he finished the game. The committee went back and reported just what he said. Then the caucus got mad, and said that any man that put poker above a senatorship didn't deserve the high office, and then they went ahead and nominated Governor Grover, whose place was then filled by Secretary of State Cradwick."

The story is interesting, though possibly somewhat heightened by Redington's class-A imagination.

Tracing the Statesman's personnel through, we find (27) that in 1875 Waters Bros. (Capt. A. H. and W. H. H.) bought the paper and W. H. H. Waters became editor.

Then in June, 1877, W. H. Odell bought the paper and took the occasion to procure some news type. In about seven years' ownership Mr. Odell had successively as partners L. G. Jackson, George E. Good, C. W. Watts, George P. Dorris, and A. Gessner.

R. P. Boise Jr. and Whitney L. Boise edited and managed the paper from July, 1881, to December, 1882, when A. Gessner took over the business and editorial direction.

W. H. Byars, well known as surveyor general and state printer, and a former Roseburg publisher, who later was to buy the new Capital Journal within a few months of its founding, bought a half interest in the Statesman and installed H. H. Hendricks as editor, in 1883.

In the next year a young man appeared on the scene who was to retain his connection with the Statesman, most of the time as editor and manager, for more than half a century. This was R. J. Hendricks, who, with George H. Saubert, like himself from Roseburg, bought Odell's interest in the paper. Hendricks became editor and manager, and Saubert headed the mechanical department. In December, 1884, Byars sold out to D. W. Craig, who was always either buying or selling an interest in the Statesman. In September of the next year Craig sold his interest to Hendricks and Saubert. The Statesman Publishing Company was incorporated. Hendricks continued as editor and manager for 44 years.

The Statesman was a school for a good many rising young newspaper men, prominent among them Edgar B. Piper, who succeeded Harvey W. Scott in editorial charge of the Oregonian. He was a reporter on the Statesman as early as 1887 and was elected to mem-