Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/356

347 The Times was never particularly strong. An examination of the third number of the paper, issued Saturday, May 2, 1868, shows little editorial and less news; the editor's shears kept the printers in copy.

Page 3 carried a column and a half of side-headed local news. As usual in the papers of the day, great emphasis was laid on how the news was obtained. For instance:

"Body Found.—We learn from O. R. Wilkinson, of this city, that the body of a man was found . ..

Horses Stolen.—We are informed by a gentleman just down from Shasta. .."

On page 4, among the three columns of clipped miscellany and news, is a half-column story from the San Francisco Bulletin indicating the prevalence of the same style on the metropolitan paper.

The Times was succeeded, in September 1870, by a second Democratic paper launched to compete with the Sentinel. This paper, published by John W. Kelley and Charles V. Harding, was discontinued after a short time.

M. P. Bull, later founder of the Pendleton East Oregonian, took over the Sentinel for a time, but after La Grande lost the county seat to Union he turned the paper back to McComas, August 22, and associated 1874. McComas moved it to Union in 1876 with him Jasper H. Stevens in place of John E. Jeffrey as printer and co-publisher. For several years La Grande worried along without a newspaper.

This McComas, incidentally, was a personage. He had come to Oregon from Iowa in 1862 and started mining in Baker county. He was appointed a deputy assessor in the district comprising Union county, then a part of Baker, and in this capacity made the first assessment ever made in the Grand Ronde valley, thus getting his first glimpse of that beautiful country. In 1866, having moved to La Grande, he was chosen clerk of the new Union county. His connection with the starting of the Sentinel has been told. Up to 1881 he continued editor of the Sentinel in its new home at Union. All the time he was a leader in Oregon Democratic politics.

In 1865 he organized a writing school in Baker county, giving the district a name that has persisted to this day. So many of the residents had to sign X as a substitute mark for their names that McComas at once got the idea of teaching them to write and of naming the district. He called it Sawbuck, from the resemblance of the "signatures" to that useful bit of woodshed furniture.

It was while he was editor of the Sentinel that he accompanied the peace commissioners into the Wallowa valley in 1877 to try to settle with Chief Joseph just before the beginning of the Nez Perce war. He and another scout went boldly into Chief Joseph's camp, though the tribe was, of course, far from friendly. From this meeting