Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 3.djvu/536

530 came with her four young daughters to Portland, where her children became pupils in the public schools. Mrs. Coburn became associate editor on the New Northwest, a journal that espoused the cause the equal suffrage, and was owned by her sister, Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway. She continued in this position for five years, when she became editor-in-chief of the Portland Daily Bee, a newspaper owned by D. H. Stearns. She occupied this position two years, leaving it in 1879 to become editor of the Portland Evening Telegram. After seven years in that connection she was transferred to the editorial staff of the Oregonian, where she still remains. Her life has been one of extraordinary industry and unconquerable energy. Its trials, hardships and sorrows have been many, but she has maintained throughout a cheerful, .determined spirit, and now at the age of three score and ten years writes daily with the vigor characteristic of her family.

Mrs. Coburn has lived in Portland continuosly since 1874. Besides her editorial work, from the proceeds of which she has maintained herself and brought up and educated four children and two grandchildren, she has been active from time to time in temperance, charitable and educational work. She was, in the time -when the Order of Good Templars was active in Oregon, grand secretary of the grand lodge of that order and conducted the large correspondence incident to that office. She served some years as lodge deputy in organizing and reorganizing lodges and held at various times the higher offices in the subordinate lodge, to which she belonged. She was one of the founders of the Portland Woman's Union, an organization that maintains a boarding home for working girls and women in Portland, and served for a time as its president. She was for 'many years a member of the board of managers of the Baby Home and for a time occupied a similar position toward the Florence Crittenton Home. She is a member of the Oregon Pioneer Society and has been for years, worked with the woman's auxiliary of that organization, and was active with the late Mrs. Card and others of the floral section of the State Horticultural Society in instituting the first chrysanthemum and rose shows in Portland. She is much interested in the public schools of the city, never fails to cast her vote at the annual school elections, and is president of the board of trustees of the Allen Preparatory School. Mrs. Coburn is one of a fast vanishing band who has seen Portland grow from the village and neighborhood stage to a prosperous and populous city, and it is not too much to say that she has enjoyed- every step of the progress she has witnessed, aiding it all along the line by her pen as well as by personal efforts.

Judge La Fayette Mosher, participating in the Indian wars of the northwest, sitting as justice of the supreme court, aiding in framing the laws of the commonwealth as a member of the state legislature, cooperating in the movements for social and moral progress, left the impress of his individuality indelibly upon the history of Oregon. Recognized as one of the foremost men of the northwest, presidential appointment bestowed public honors upon him—honors which he bore with dignity and becoming modesty. Broad-minded, he was deeply interested in the welfare of every section of the country, but his interest centered in the state of his adoption and he predicted for Oregon a glorious future. He took up his abode within its borders in 1853, being at that time a young man of twenty-eight years.

His birth occurred September 1, 1824, at Latonia Springs, Kenton county, Kentucky. His father. Dr. Stephen Mosher, of that place, was not only a distinguished physician but also a noted horticulturist and the originator of some of the best known and finest varieties of pears. He married Hannah Webster, of