Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/414

298 civil war, made friends with influential people, attracted attention by his ability and genial manners, made some money in speculations, went back to Germany on a visit, and made the financial friends at Frankfort who afterward employed him to look after their interests in investments in America and put him on the highway to his great success. He was a man of most engaging and genial man- ners, with nothing of the hard selfishness or avaricious grasp of the typical rich man. No man was more considerate or generous in praise and assistance to those who worked with or under him, or whose work he had made use of. In the days of his prosperity his purse v/as open wide to all works of charity and benevolence, chief of which, in Oregon, was $50,000 to the state university for an irreducible fund, at least $400 of the interest from which to be used annually in the purchase of books for the university library. He gave a like sum to house the orphan children of Portland. No act of littleness, meanness, oppression, injustice or dishonor ever stained the escutcheon of his noble ca- reer; and he sleeps well on the banks of the Hudson.

This chapter might properly end here were it not that others have done good work in building branch lines to complete the grand scheme planned by Vil- lard; and which it seems the facts of history require to be recorded in this connection. The principal of these was the narrow gauge system projected by the author of this book in 1878 to more completely develop the Willamette val- ley. In that year he built the first forty miles of three-foot gauge railroad in the state from Dayton to Sheridan in the Yamhill valley with a branch to Dallas in Polk county. In this work the farmers of the South Yamhill valley raised and paid in on stock and other forms of substantial aid the sum of forty- five thousand dollars. And while the work of construction was going on, the town of Independence, in Polk county, launched a scheme to remove the county seat from Dallas to Independence. And as Dallas was off the general lines of travel and destitute of ready access to the outside world, it looked as if the Independence people would succeed. To checkmate the move, the Dallas people sought out the assistance of Mr. Gaston, who was building the narrow gauge railroad, and offered to raise, and did raise seventeen thousand dollars to have the little railroad extended to their town. The road was accordingly extended to Dallas, and that is the way the town of Dallas secured its first railroad and saved the county seat of Polk county.

List of lands and sales of lands under the U. S. grants to aid railroad con- struction in Oregon :

Total Total Total purchase sales. acres. price. Sales in quantities not exceeding 160 acres .... 4,930 295,727.52 $1,234,538.51 Sales in quantities exceeding 160 acres but less than 640 acres 280 91,434.67 402,725.29 Sales in quantities exceeding 640 acres but less than 2,000 acres 56 60,366.29 410,759.12 Sales in quantities exceeding 2,000 acres .... 40 372,399.46 2,922,250.67 ^^^-^.^ ■■■■,■ - - ■ .. .— — — .— .. „ ■ — . »i .. ...... ■ I Total 5,306 819,927.94 $4,970,273.59

In the above computations are included 830 pending contracts aggregating 174,109.08 acres, as to which the exact purchase price is not known, but is com- puted on the basis of $10 per acre. It is probable that this amount is a little