CHAPTER XIII

1844-1912

FOUNDING OF PORTLAND TOWNSITE PROPRIETORS

FIRST TEACHERS, PREACHERS,

DOCTORS AND LAWYERS-FIRST STEAMBOATS AND THEIR BUILDERS.

After the native red man, according to all reliable evidence, the first white man to come upon the Portland townsite and say, "This is my land, here will I build my hut, here will I make my home," was William Overton, a young man from the state of Tennessee, who landed there from an Indian canoe in 1843, and claimed the land for his own. He had not cleared a rod square of land; he had not even a cedar bark shed to protect him from the "Oregon mist," when one day on the return trip from Vancouver to Oregon City, he invited his fellow passenger, A. L. Lovejoy, to step ashore with him and see his land claim, which he did. The two men landed at the bank of the river as near as could be located afterwards, about where the foot of Washington street strikes the river, and scrambled up the bank as best they could, to find themselves in an unbroken forest-literally "the continuous woods, where rolls the Oregon." The only evidence of pre-occupation by any human being, was a camping place used by the Indians along the bank of the river ranging from where Alder street strikes the water, up to Salmon street. This was a convenient spot for the Indian canoes to tie up on their trips between Vancouver and Oregon City, and the brush had been cut away and burned up, leaving an open space of an acre or so. On this occasion, Lovejoy and Overton made some examinations of the land back from the river, finding the soil good and the tract suitable for settlement and cultivation if the dense growth of timber was removed. Overton was penniless and unable to pay even the trifling fees exacted by the Provisional Government for filing claims for land, or getting it surveyed, and then and there proposed to Lovejoy if he would advance the money to pay these expenses, he should have a half interest in the land claim—a mile square of land. Mr. Lovejoy had not exercised his right to take land, and the proposition appealed to him. Overton had not thought of a townsite use for the land and did not present that view of the subject. But the quick eye of Lovejoy took notice of the fact, that there was deep water in front of the land, and that ships had tied up at that shore, and so he accepted Overton's proposition at once, and became a half owner in the Overton land claim; and the Portland townsite proposition was born right then and there in the brain of Amos Lawrence Lovejoy; and making him in reality and fact the

"FOUNDER OF THE CITY OF PORTLAND"

Following up this bargain and joint tenancy in this piece of wild land, Lovejoy and Overton made preparations for surveying the tract, some clearing and

the erection of a log cabin. But before these improvements could be even commenced, Overton's restless disposition led him to sell out his half interest in the land to Francis W. Pettygrove for the sum of fifty dollars to purchase an outfit to go back to "The States" or somewhere else, nobody ever knew where. Of Overton nothing is known of the slightest consequence to the location of the town. One account says that he made shingles on the place. If he did, it was probably only for the cabin that was necessary to hold the claim, but he never built any sort of a house protection, and sold out to Pettygrove before the cabin was built. Overton was a mere bird of passage; no one ever knew where he came from or where he went to.

By some writers, Overton is given the honor of being the "first owner of the Portland Land Claim," and "after completing his settlement" he sold out to Lovejoy and Pettygrove. But he never was the owner of the claim, and he never made or completed any settlement. He had done nothing to entitle him to the land; he merely said to a passer-by, "This is my claim." He filed no claim with the Provisional Government, he posted no notice, he built no cabin, and he did not even do what the pioneers of the Ohio valley did, in a hostile Indian country in taking lands—he blazed no line or boundary trees. The Ohio valley pioneers took what was called in their day "tomahawk" claims to land. That is, they picked out a tract of land that suited their fancy, two or three hundred acres, and then taking a light axe or Indian tomahawk, they established and marked a boundary line around the piece of land by blazing a line of forest trees all around that land. That was the custom of the country. There was no law for it. Those settlers were hundreds of miles beyond the jurisdiction of any state, or the surveillance of any government officer. But when the public surveys were extended west from Pennsylvania and Virginia, these "tomahawk claims" were found to cover large settlements. Their blazed trees were notice to everybody and were respected by all incoming settlers; and the United States government surveyors were instructed to adjust all these irregular boundary lines and give the actual settlers on the lands, or their bona fide assignees, accurate descriptions of these claims, which were in due course confirmed by government patents. The first settlers in Oregon, both British and American, were doing precisely the same thing to secure their home and farms; and it was one of the objects of forming the Provisional Government to provide for the recording of all these claims to the end that strife and litigation might be prevented. The Provisional Government had already before Overton set up a verbal claim to the land provided for this registry of claims. Overton had not complied with that law, but gave Lovejoy half of his inchoate right, whatever it might be, to go ahead and comply with the law, and which Lovejoy did. Lovejoy is then in truth and fact the founder of Portland, Oregon, for it was he who secured the title to the land for a town site, and originated the town site proposition.

Amos L. Lovejoy, born in Groton, Mass., March 14, 1808, a graduate of Amherst college, related to the Lawrence family of the old Bay state, studied law, read Hall Kelley's descriptions of Oregon, and started west. Halting in Missouri, he commenced the practice of law in that state. But falling in with Dr. Elijah White, who had been appointed some kind of an Indian agent for Oregon, Lovejoy crossed the plains and came to Oregon in 1842, with the party of Dr. White, and in which party he acted as

one of the

three scientific men to record all their experiences and discoveries on their journey through the wilderness. On reaching Oregon, Lovejoy fell in with the missionary, Dr. Marcus Whitman. And no sooner had Lovejoy reached the Walla Walla valley than Whitman besought him to return to the states with him (Whitman) as a companion. Not one man in ten thousand, for love or money, would have undertaken that trip in the approaching winter, after just finishing a like trip from Missouri to Oregon. But he yielded to Whitman's entreaties, starting to the states in the month of November, and reaching Missouri in February, by the southern route through Santa Fe, Mexico, and suffering every imaginable trial, privation, danger and distress while living on dog meat, hedgehogs, or anything else of animal life that would sustain their own lives. In May following his return to Missouri, Mr. Lovejoy joined the emigrant train of 1843, and again returned to Oregon, arriving at Fort Vancouver in October. He had thus made three trips across the western two-thirds of the continent, over six thousand miles in travel, on horseback altogether, suffering all the trials and dangers of the plains, being once taken prisoner by the Sioux Indians, and breaking all records in Overland Oregon trail travel, in the space of seventeen months. And such was the courageous and determined character that founded Portland, Oregon.

In organizing and maintaining the Provisional Government, Mr. Lovejoy took a leading, useful and honorable part. He occupied first and last nearly every office in the government, and was elected supreme judge by the people, and was exercising the duties of that office when the United States finally extended its authority over the territory in 1849.

Francis W. Pettygrove who joined Mr. Lovejoy in developing the Portland townsite, was born in Calais, Maine, in 1812; received a common school education in his native town, and engaged in business on his own account at an early age. At the age of thirty years he accepted an offer to bring to Oregon, for an eastern mercantile house, a stock of general merchandise, suitable for this new country. Shipping the merchandise, and accompanying the venture with his family on the bark Victoria, he reached the Columbia river by the way of the Sandwich Islands, transferring his merchandise at Honolulu from the Victoria to the bark Fama. This vessel discharged cargo at Vancouver, and Pettygrove had to employ a little schooner owned by the Hudson's Bay Company to carry the goods from Vancouver to Oregon City. After selling out this stock of merchandise, Pettygrove engaged in the fur trade, erected a warehouse 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 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