Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/270

200 at Oregon City, and was the first American to go into the grain trade, buying up the wheat from the French prairie farmers.

But to return to the townsite, we find that after buying out Overton, Lovejoy and Pettygrove employed a man to build a log house on their claim and clear a patch of land. The house was built; a picture of which may be found on another page, near the foot of the present Washington street. The next year, 1845, the land claim was surveyed out, and a portion of it laid off into lots, blocks and streets. That portion of the land between Front street and the river was not platted into lots and blocks, it being supposed at the time that it would be needed for public landings, docks, and wharves, like the custom in many of the towns and cities on rivers in the eastern states. But if such was the idea and intention of the land claimants, they failed to make such intentions known or effective at the time, and their failure to do so gave rise to much trouble, contention and litigation thereafter.

But it must strike every reader that it was a most singular proceeding, counting very largely on the lax ideas held by those pioneers on the subject of land titles, that these two men could take up a tract of land in the wilderness without a shadow of title from either the United States or Great Britain—the governments claiming title to the land—and proceed to sell and make deeds to the purchasers for gold dust, beaver money or beaver skins, as came in handy, and everything going "merry as a marriage bell." No abstract of title can be found that covers or explains these anomalies in the dealings of the pioneers town lot sellers; but it is proper to add that in assuming control of the country, congress approved of the land titles initiated by the provisional government.

However, the real estate dealers in Portland in 1845, were giving a better deal to their customers in some things than their successors are in 1910. Nowadays the first thing in the history of a city is a grand map and a grander name. In 1845 Portland was started, and lots sold before it had any name. This proving somewhat awkward and embarrassing, the matter came up for discussion and decision at a family dinner party of the Lovejoys and Pettygroves at Oregon City. Mr. Pettygrove, hailing from Maine, wished to name the town for his favorite old home town of Portland, while General Lovejoy, coming from Massachusetts, desired to honor Boston with the name. And not being able to settle the matter with any good reason, it was proposed to decide the difference by tossing a copper; and so, on the production of an old-fashioned copper cent, an engraving of which is given on another page, the cent was tossed up three times and came down "tails up" twice for Portland, and once "heads up" for dear old Boston. And that is the way Portland got its appropriate name.

The town started slowly, and its rate of growth for the first three years was scarcely noticeable. Oregon City was the head center of all the Americans; the seat of government, the saw and the grist mill; and Vancouver did not invite and encourage settlers at that point. Men came and looked, and then passed on up the valley, or out into Tualitin plains and took land for farms. The people coming into the country were mostly farmers, had always been farmers, as had their forefathers, and had but little confidence in townsite opportunities. And besides all this, the lots offered for sale were so heavily covered with timber that it would cost more to clear a lot than the owner could sell it for after it was cleared; and so the town stood still or nearly so.

One of the first to start anything that looked like business at a cross roads or a townsite, was James Terwilliger, who erected a blacksmith shop and rang an anvil chorus for customers from the vasty woods all around. Terwilliger was born in New York in 1809; went west, following up the Indians, and came out to Oregon with the emigration of 1845. His shop at Portland was evidently only a side issue with him, running it only five years; for he at the same time took up a land claim a mile south of Lovejoy and Pettygrove, improved it, and there passed the remainder of his life, passing away in the year 1892 at