Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/152

Rh One of the big editors of Salem in the 60's, Charles B. Bellinger, confined his journalism almost entirely to that decade and is best remembered as a lawyer, law-compiler, and jurist. Born in Magnon, Ill., Nov. 21, 1839, he came to the Northwest in 1847. His early education, in a school on the Santiam River, was directed by Orange Jacobs, later Jacksonville editor and still later himself a distinguished lawyer and judge in Washington, territory and state. He studied law with B. F. Bonham at Salem and was admitted to the bar in 1863, shortly after helping launch the Arena. Leaving Salem after his newspaper experiences there, he was for a time engaged in merchandising in Monroe, Benton county, and in 1869 was editor of the Albany Democrat. The next year he moved to Portland and practiced law. The same year he founded and for two years edited the Portland News, which later was succeeded by the Portland Telegram. He is probably better known for his annotated code of the laws of Oregon than for any other achievement. He was honored by election to the presidency of the state bar association, was for ten years professor in the University of Oregon law school, and at the time of his death (May 12, 1909) had been for nine years a member of the board of regents of the university.

Bellinger's partner in the Arena, Anthony (Tony) Noltner, was a German, born June 11, 1839. Already in America in 1849 he joined his father in the gold rush to California. He arrived in Portland October 11, 1857, and spent just three days short of half a century in Oregon, in newspaper work virtually all the time. Within a week of his arrival in Portland he joined the staff of J. H. Slater's Occidental Messenger in Corvallis, learning the printer's trade there. He was prominent in Eugene before going to Salem, being a partner of Joaquin Miller in the Democratic Review there, which was suppressed for outspoken support of the South in 1862.

Beriah Brown, noted old-time newspaper-maker in three commonwealths—California, in Oregon, and Washington,—started in Salem in February, 1869, the Weekly Democratic Press, published Saturdays for $3 a year in advance. It was a seven-column, four-page paper carrying, under its title the motto "In essentials unity—in non-essentials liberty—in all things charity." The democracy of this declaration might be argued. The paper was highly political. In 28 columns of the paper's space in volume 1, No. 11, there was included only one column of anything resembling local news, only 3½ columns of clipped "telegraph," 11 columns of general clipped miscellany, the rest fairly evenly divided between editorial and advertising. Every editorial except one was political (as, indeed, was not unusual in the papers throughout this period). The one non-political editorial was a review of Joaquin et al, by Cincinnatus H. Miller, printed in Portland by Carter & Himes and published by S. J. McCormick. There is little comment on the poetry, more on the grammatical ir-