Page:The Columbian - Washington Territory's First Newspaper.djvu/2

 The "printing establishment" consisted of a Ramage Press No. 913 out of the offices of the San Francisco Alta Californian in 1850, employed to print the first issue of the Weekly Oregonian, December 4, 1850, and two years later was shipped aboard the schooner Mary Taylor for Olympia. The "sundry boxes" contained a half dozen fonts of body letters and two fonts of advertising type. McElroy, to whom this equipment was entrusted by Dryer, had been working for the Portland editor as a printer since late 1851. Wiley, whose early history is a mystery, may or may not have been in the Oregonian offices.

The extent of outside "controlling influence" so vehemently denied by Wiley, so blissfully ignored by Dryer whose only public statements concerning the paper he owned consisted of five or six line articles in the Oregonian to the effect that The Columbian "is neutral in politics and religion," is found in a letter from McElroy to his young wife, Sally:

"I came here (Olympia) for the purpose of helping to start a newspaper. The office belongs to Mr. Dryer ... and he says he places the utmost confidence in me, and insisted on my coming here to take charge of the mechanical and financial departments of the paper. I consented on conditions that I stay no longer than until I get my affairs settled up, and until he finds someone to take my place."

Although Dryer's control of The Columbian appears to have been one of the best kept secrets in early frontier journalism there were at least twenty men, in addition to Wiley and McElroy, who knew the true owner to be Dryer. On July 8, 1852, they had given, or pledged to give Alonzo M. Poe, early northern Oregon settler and friend of Dryer,