Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/395



"When my father, Job McNemee, moved to Portland there were only three houses here," said Andrew Jackson McNemee, when I interviewed him recently at the home of his niece, Mrs. C. A. Morden, in East Portland. "My father built the fourth house in Portland, a good sized log cabin. I was born two years later, 76 years ago last spring."

"I was born in a cabin made of shakes, located on the S. W. corner of Yamhill and Front streets, March 5, 1848. My people spent the winter of 1845 on Dick Richard's place at Linnton. Boiled wheat and salmon was their staple diet that winter. Next spring father bought a couple of lots of A. L. Lovejoy in his newly laid out town- site, Portland. Father put up a log cabin and brought the family from Linnton to Portland. He traded two thin oxen for a fat young steer, which he killed. With this meat he started the first butcher shop in Portland. People going from Vancouver to Oregon City usually tied up their canoes at the clearing on the river bank near our house. Father sold meat to these travelers, as well as to settlers in the vicinity of Portland. Father also started the first hotel in Portland. He called it the Ohio Hoilse after his native state. Father made the first pumps used in Portland. He bored a hole through the center of a log and fixed up a handle and plunger. Later he took the contract to make the pipes for Portland's first water system. Later my father worked for Leonard & Green, when they bought the City Water department.

"When gold was discovered in California in 1848 every able bodied man in Portland went to the gold diggings. My father was among the first to go. My oldest brother,,