Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/371

Rh election tickets printed in Oregon. In a letter recently discovered, dated "Oregon City, Willamette Falls, O.T., 27th June, 1845," written to "Samuel Wilson, Esq., Reading, Cincinnati, Ohio, Politeness of Dr. White," it being carried by Dr. Elijah White from Oregon City to the nearest post office, which was in Missouri, J. W. Nesmith, in speaking of the supreme judge of Oregon, says: "I received the nomination of the Champoeg convention and ran for the office at the election which took place on the first Tuesday of the present month, at which I received the unanimous vote of the whole territory, happening to be on all the tickets, two of which I send you enclosed, which were printed for Champoeg County. They are the first tickets printed in Oregon. You should preserve them as curiosities." Now, the question is, where were these tickets printed? Not at Oregon City, because the Spectator plant had not yet arrived; probably at the mission press at Lapwai, on the Clearwater, about four hundred miles distant by the most direct route of that day.

The second and third papers in the Territory of Oregon, the Free Press and the Oregon American and Evangelical Unionist, having already been referred to, I will pass to the fourth. This was the Western Star, first issued at Milwaukie by Lot Whitcomb, November 21, 1850, with John Orvis Waterman and William Davis Carter, printers, the first of the two being the editor. These young men were thorough printers, and learned their trade in Montpelier, Vermont, from whence they came to California in 1849, and to Oregon early in 1850. Lot Whitcomb was a native of Vermont, and the founder of Milwaukie.

This paper was twenty-four by thirty-four inches in size, with twenty-four columns, with a good assortment of display type for advertising and job work, and was democratic in politics. In May, 1851, Portland having begun