Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/375



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The trapper, the trader, the missionary, and the printer were the pioneers of "Old Oregon," as the original territory lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, and extending northward from California to the British possessions may be properly called. A mere handful of patriotic Americans founded a provisional government for this vast wilderness in 1843, and the American Government enclosed it safely in the national fold in 1846 by treaty with Great Britain, and organized it into a territory August 14, 1848.

Those who are the leading spirits in the several historical societies of the Northwest, and the writers of its history, realize the true value to be placed upon the labors of the pioneer printers and newspaper men of "Old Oregon." This expression is tautological. There were no newspaper men who were not printers in the pioneer days.

It has been my good fortune, as child, boy, and man, to know nearly all the old newspaper men of Oregon and Washington of that period by sight, and to be on terms of friendship with most of them, as well as most intimate with the majority. Among them were:

Ashael Bush, W. L. Adams, Thomas H. Pearne, T. J. Dryer, Harvey W. Scott, H. L. Pittock, Beriah Brown, James O'Meara, W. Lair Hill, Wm. G. T'Vault, Samuel A. Clarke, Mrs. Duniway, D. W. Craig, John Atkinson, E. M. Waite, L. Samuels, John Burnett, J. M. Baltimore, William Newell, P. B. Johnson, R. R. Rees, E. T. Gunn, Charles Besserer, Eugene Semple, A. M. Poe, John Miller Murphy, Randall H. Hewitt, L. G. Abbott, Thornton F.