Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/391

382 to the files of the Mist prior to 1891 is a matter of guesswork. The oldest available copy of the Mist (142) is dated August 14, 1891.

Major Adams of the Columbian, David Davis recalls (143) was a Civil war veteran still suffering pain from old war wounds. His temper had not escaped unscathed as a result of a bullet in his brain from which he suffered frequent paroxysms. His fiery disposition, in fact, had much to do with bringing him competition. When James Muckle, of Muckle Bros., loggers, put in a line of piling in front of Adams' residence property on the bluff at Frogmore, for the pur pose of holding in a boom the logs that came down Milton creek, the Major launched a series of philippics in the Columbian that stir red up the lumberman to encourage establishment of another paper. This paper was the Oregon Mist, whose early history is as foggy as its name.

The founder of the Mist, as already indicated, was a man named Glendye, "whose true Christian name is to deponent un known," being one of the several buried details of Columbia county's early journalism. The Mist is not listed in Ayer's directory for 1881, and later numbers of the directory give the paper's founding date sometimes as 1882, sometimes the next year. The Columbian was credited by Ayer's 1881 volume with a circulation of 425. It is the belief of Mr. Davis, already quoted, who is now editor of the Timberman in Portland, that the Mist was established in the latter part of 1881.

Glendye, whose ideas on what the good newspaperman might properly and conveniently drink coincided closely with those of many thirsty old-timers, was able to last only about six months. There then began a parade in and out of St. Helens of some of Oregon's best-known newspaper figures of the 80's. Glendye's immediate successor was E. H. Flagg, one of the conspicuous figures in early Oregon journalism.

Charles Meserve, who later published the Oregon City Enterprise, was publisher in 1890. J. H. Stine, touring editor-publisher, edited the paper for the month of August, 1891. The paper was then purchased from Meserve by John R. Beegle, son-in-law of Mr. Flagg. When Beegle wanted to go to the Chicago world's fair in the summer of 1893, he engaged young David Davis, who had learned his printing in Astoria alongside such hardy souls as Oscar W. Dunbar and who had worked on the Mist under Meserve, to publish the paper during his absence. On his return Beegle sold Davis a half-interest in the paper. In 1897, when Beegle went to Alaska, he sold his interest to Davis, who conducted the paper until 1902, when he sold it to Dr. Keeler H. Gabbert, journalistic veteran then near the end of the trail. E. H. Flagg bought the paper back from Estella Gabbert, after her husband had died in Anacortes,