Page:Pen Pictures of Representative Men of Oregon.djvu/19

Rh and thirty-third of the Scottish Rite in the State of Oregon. He was instrumental in organizing the first Commandery of Knights Templar established on the North Pacific coast, and served for four years as its Eminent Commander, being presented on his retirement from that office with perhaps the handsomest Masonic jewel ever brought to Oregon. Mr. Earhart is also connected with the I. O. O. F. and the A. O. U. W. He was married July 2, 1863, to Miss N. A. Burden, daughter of Judge Burden, of Polk county, their family consisting of four daughters, who are general favorites in society circles. Mr. Earhart is a gentleman of ordinary height, rather heavy set, weighing about 170 pounds, with a full face, partially covered with beard, and brown hair. His features are pleasant and his manners are such as gain friends rapidly. He is an unusually engaging conversationalist, his descriptive powers being vivid and his mimicry complete. He tells and can keenly appreciate a good story, and ten minutes' general conversation with him will make you his friend. No man in Oregon is to-day more popular or has more friends than has Hon. R. P. Earhart. He is but just in the prime of life, and we have no hesitancy in predicting for him higher official honors than he has yet attained.

Some one has written "There is a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may," and the subject of this sketch is a living exemplification of it. When, away back in the "fifties," he landed a poor boy in the city of New York, among strangers in a strange land, and looked about him for honest employment in any capacity, how little he dreamed that, as years passed by, he would hold the purse-string for the then almost unknown Territory of Oregon, when but a few years later she should lay aside her swaddling clothes and emerge into the maidenhood of a young but prosperous commonwealth. Such has been his career, however, and no man in the State stands higher in the estimation of the people than does Hon. Edward Hirsch, our present State Treasurer. He was born at Wurtemberg, Germany, May 3, 1836, and came to America in 1855. Landing in New York City, he at once sought employment. Proving unsuccessful, however, he went over into the the neighboring State of Pennsylvania and secured a clerkship in a store in a little town in Mercer county, at the princely salary of $75 per annum. He remained there for several months and then went down into Georgia, where he remained nearly two years, the greater part of it being spent at Macon. He became thoroughly acquainted with Southern life in all its varied forms, and to this day bears pleasant recollections of his sojourn in the Sunny South. Becoming imbued, however, with the Western fever, he again went north, and in company with his brother, Hon. Sol. Hirsch, State Senator from Multnomah county, embarked on the steamer "Star of the West," booked for the Pacific slope, via Isthmus of Panama. They reached Portland about the middle of April, and a few months later opened a retail store at Dallas, in Polk county. They remained there about three years and then moved to Silverton, where they carried on a general merchandising business three years longer. They then dissolved partnership,