Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/51

44 This was followed by a notice for Mr. Lovejoy.

Lee was a man of more ability and strength than he ever used in the conduct of the Spectator. Descended from Richard Lee, founder of the Lees of Virginia, he was educated and prepared for the ministry. He turned aside from that calling because he became doubtful of the inspiration of the Bible. His first winter in Oregon, 1843-44, he spent at the Whitman mission at Wai-il-at-pu, and after the Whitman massacre he helped raise and captained the first company of volunteers to punish the murderers. He ultimately was chosen colonel of the regiment, succeeding Cornelius Gilliam, who was accidentally killed; but with his accustomed modesty he returned the commission because he thought Lieut. Colonel James Walters better entitled to it. He acted as peace commissioner to deal with the Indians, and after the war he was made superintendent of Indian affairs by Governor Abernethy. He made a sizeable stake in the California mines, returned to Oregon, and went into business. He left for New York in the fall of 1850 to purchase a stock of goods and died of Panama fever while on the return trip.

Lee's successor as editor of the Spectator, after a few issues prepared by John Fleming, the printer, was George L. Curry, a well qualified young newspaper man who later was to be governor of Oregon. Curry, born July 2, 1820, was a native of Philadelphia who had spent several years with his parents in Carcacas, Venezuela. As a boy of 18, he was president of the Mechanic Apprentices' Library Association in Boston. He himself was a jeweler's apprentice at the time.

In St. Louis, where the young Curry had gone when 23 years old, he became an editor and co-publisher of the St. Louis Reveille with Joseph M. Field. He came to Oregon in 1846 by way of the Cow Creek Canyon route just in time to get the job of editing the Spectator. He remained in that position for less than a year and a half.

Curry's salutatory was modest and orthodox. Explaining that, being a stranger with the dust of "the rough journey of emigration" barely shaken off, he approached the task "not altogether without misgivings as to our ability to satisfy expectation" and yet with "pride that we find ourself intrusted with the management of the only public journal in Oregon."

"It will be our aim," the new editor explained, "to give this journal a firm and consistent American tone, and make it eminently useful in the promotion of 'temperance, morality, science, and intelligence' .... Our columns will be closed to none, all being equally welcome to use them for the dissemination of opinion upon all subjects excepting sectism and exclusive party politics, the Editor, of course, exercising his right of supervision."

In his last issue (January 28, 1848) Curry announced that he