Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/389

Rh Thomas Burke, and Dr. Thomas T. Miner, bought the Post-Intelligencer from T. W. Prosch. Grant continued editor-in-chief, Bagley was business manager, S. L. Crawford city editor and reporter, and E. S. Meany had charge of the carrier service.

Near the close of the same year L. S. J. Hunt purchased the controlling interest in the paper and assumed management at once. He had come to Seattle with large financial backing, determined to go into the newspaper field, and the majority of the stockholders, fearing he might establish another paper and make it a powerful rival, sold him their interests. He proceeded to spend money most lavishly upon it and soon built it up into a great paper.

In May, 1871, a small printing outfit that had been in use at Sitka, Alaska, was brought to Seattle, and for a few months the Seattle Times and Alaska Herald was printed from it.

Later this material became the nucleus of the office of the Puget Sound Dispatch, which was established by Beriah Brown and Charles H. Larrabee. The latter was then a prominent attorney in Seattle. He was among the killed at the time of an appalling tragedy at Tehachipe Pass, on the line of the Southern Pacific, between Los Angeles and San Francisco. He soon retired from the paper, leaving Beriah Brown in sole control, which he retained with an occasional intermission until about 1878, when it was merged with the Intelligencer.

Mr. Brown was one of the old school newspapermen, who were writers of editorials worthy of the greatest papers of the United States. He was a friend of Horace Greeley, the elder Bennett and others of the noted editors of a half century ago. He rarely wrote anything for his own paper. His custom was to go to the case and put his articles in type as he composed them. Few can re-