Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/669

Rh lawyer of Oregon City, and afterward the first governor of California, took a prominent part.

In No. 3, July 5, 1848, referring to President Polk's message, the editor says: "It manifests more interest about Mexico than about Oregon."

After No. 7 was issued, the paper was suspended for several months. This suspension was caused, so the editor states, by someone opposed to his views on the causes leading to the Whitman massacre, hiring the printer to break his contract and go off to the mines. Early in 1849, another printer, Frank Johnson, an apprentice of the Spectator and afterward of the Free Press, and now (1902) a professor in the University of Chicago, was secured, and on May 23, No. 8 appeared. This was the last number issued. Fully thirty years ago Mr. Grififin placed the press in the custody of the Oregon Pioneer Association, and now it is in the possession of the Oregon Historical Society.

Rev. John Smith Grififin was born in Castleton, Vermont, in 1807; he was educated in various schools in New England and Ohio, finishing his theological course in Oberlin, where he was ordained a minister of the Congregational church. The church at Litchfield, Connecticut, secured an equipment and sent him to Oregon in 1839 as an independent missionary to the Indians. In 1840 he endeavored to start a mission among the Snakes, and failing, he and his wife went to the Tualitin plains in 1841, and began the first white settlement in what is now Washington County. On May 2, 1843, he was at Champoeg, and voted in favor of the first civil government in Oregon. He was pastor of the first church in Washington county for a time. He died in February, 1899.

Charles F. Putnam, printer, was born in Lexington, Kentucky, July 7, 1824. He learned the printing trade in New York city, and in 1846 came to Oregon, settling in Polk County. In 1847 he was married to Miss Rozelle, the eldest daughter of Jesse Applegate, who came to Oregon from Missouri in 1843. When he contracted with 'Mr. Griffin to print his paper, he taught his wife to set type and thus she became the first woman typesetter on the Pacific coast. Mr. Putnam left the Willamette valley for Umpqua valley in the fall of 1849, and settled near Mt. Yoncalla. He is still living (1902) though quite feeble, near the town of Drain.

Early in 1844 it became evident to the leading spirits of the infant settlement at Oregon City that its interests would be greatly promoted by a press, and accordingly, after much discussion as to methods of management, the Oregon Printing Association was organized, the officers of which were as follows: W. G. T'Vault, president; J. W. Nesmith, vice president; John P. Brooks, secretary; George Abernethy, treasurer; Robert Newell, John E. Long, and John H. Couch, directors. The press used was a Washington hand press, bed twenty-five by thirty-eight inches. The plant was procured in New York through the instrumentality of Governor George Abernethy, although he was reimbursed by the printing association in due time.

The constitution of the association was as follows: "In order to promote science, temperance, morality and general intelligence, to establish a printing press; to publich a monthly, semi-monthly or weekly paper in Oregon, the undersigned do hereby associate ourselves together in a body to be governed by such rules and regulations as shall, from time to time, be adopted by a majority of the stockholders of this compact in a regularly called and properly notified meeting."

The "articles of compact" numbered eleven; all but the eighth article referred to the method of doing business, and were similar in their provisions to the bylaws of our incorporations of today. The eighth article touched vitally the editor's duties, and is as follows: