Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/169

 FINANCIAL HISTORY OF OKEGON. 161 south; second, what was known as the "Oregon City Claim," 73 excepting Abernethy Island though all lots sold or granted from this claim by the original claimant, Dr. John McLough- lin, previous to March 4, 1849, should be confirmed to such purchasers or donees. This second portion of the university endowment, however, was secured through machinations that stamped it as ill-gotten and necessarily resulted in tainting more or less the university project. The characteristic frontier conditions of life in Oregon at this time made its people slow to appreciate the purposes a university might serve. We may, therefore, expect a mani- festation of levity in the handling of its funds and such disregard of far-reaching interests connected with it as would be certain to blight its development. Hardly had the grant of two townships been made and not a dollar of proceeds had yet found its way into the fund, before interest in the loca- tion of the institution was used as stock in trade in forming a compact to control the selection of the places for all the dif- ferent territorial institutions. In the omnibus location bill of February 1, 1851, the university was located at Marysville (now Corval.lis.) Four years later, in consummating what looks like another deal in the interest of a town-site boom, the university is moved to Jacksonville, while Corvallis gets the 73 The so-called "Oregon City Claim" was the original claim of Dr. John McLoughlin, upon which Oregon City was being built. The basis of his claim extended back upwards of twenty years. As it was contiguous to the falls of the Willamette and was believed to be the natural site of the commercial and manufacturing center of this western settlement, there was some color of reason for a disposition of it in accordance with the "town site" idea. Dr. Mc- Loughlin' s claim to it, however, had such long standing and was being handled with such liberal public spirit that his invidious deprivation of it had little support in public opinion. This portion of the university endowment brought only the paltry sum of $1,680 into the fund. The cost incurred through peti- tions, legislation, reports, and memorials in the vain effort to fully undo the wrong, must have amounted to tens of thousands. And, moreover, it burdened the university idea with the odium that would unconsciously cling to it from being thus intimately associated in thought with a malevolent undertaking. The literature of this episode in Oregon history is voluminous. The Spectator, a bi-weekly paper of the time, the Congressional Globe, and the State Archives abound with reference to it. It receives a thorough discussion in Bancroft's "Oregon," Vol. II, and in Holman's "Dr. McLoughlin," pp. 101-162.