By Clarence B. Bagley.
The trapper, the trader, the missionary, and the printer were the pioneers of "Old Oregon," as the original territory lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, and extending northward from California to the British possessions may be properly called. A mere handful of patriotic Americans founded a provisional government for this vast wilderness in 1843, and the American Government enclosed it safely in the national fold in 1846 by treaty with Great Britain, and organized it into a territory August 14, 1848.
Those who are the leading spirits in the several historical societies of the Northwest, and the writers of its history, realize the true value to be placed upon the labors of the pioneer printers and newspaper men of "Old Oregon." This expression is tautological. There were no newspaper men who were not printers in the pioneer days.
It has been my good fortune, as child, boy, and man, to know nearly all the old newspaper men of Oregon and Washington of that period by sight, and to be on terms of friendship with most of them, as well as most intimate with the majority. Among them were:
Ashael Bush, W. L. Adams, Thomas H. Pearne, T. J. Dryer, Harvey W. Scott, H. L. Pittock, Beriah Brown, James O'Meara, W. Lair Hill, Wm. G. T'Vault, Samuel A. Clarke, Mrs. Duniway, D. W. Craig, John Atkinson, E. M. Waite, L. Samuels, John Burnett, J. M. Baltimore, William Newell, P. B. Johnson, R. R. Rees, E. T. Gunn, Charles Besserer, Eugene Semple, A. M. Poe, John Miller Murphy, Randall H. Hewitt, L. G. Abbott, Thornton F. McElroy, James N. Gale, J. R. Watson, David Higgins, Charles and Thomas W. Prosch, John F. Damon, D. C. Ireland, Francis H. Cook, S. L. Maxwell, H. C. Patrick, R. F. Radebaugh, and many of their contemporaries, as well as a host of their successors.
Nearly all these were practical printers, and most of them skillful at the case, capable of taking entire charge of the mechanical department of the early day printing offices.
This training made them accurate in their literary work. While some of them might not have been on intimate terms with the rules of grammar, they made up for any such deficiency by untiring and conscientious efforts to give their readers good newspapers, in the face of the gravest difficulties. In the matter of politics full allowance had ever to be made for the personal bias of the writer, but in the matter of news, especially that of a local character, the most absolute fidelity to the truth was ever maintained. No efforts were made for a "good story" at the expense of truth. The head of the paper always had a personal knowledge of the facts and usually prepared the account of them. If he found he had made a mistake he usually corrected it in the next issue, if it was of sufficient importance. For this reason the writer of the present day who delves among the old newspaper files of pioneer days, and even down to within twenty or twenty-five years ago, can rely upon the fairness and truthfulness of their local columns. They were all writing history but few of them realized it.
Life was too strenuous with the pioneers of the "forties" and "fifties" for them to spend much time in keeping diaries or other records of passing events. If they had done so, the unsettled conditions under which they lived, the lack of substantial buildings, the migration to new countries, and the rush to new mines, would have resulted in the loss or destruction of most of such manuscripts.
Of the early Oregon papers, I doubt if more than two or three perfect files exist. Of the early papers of Washington, not more than three or four complete files remain of any of them. Of the first Seattle papers, there is but one file. It I began collecting more than forty years ago. How much care, then, should be exercised in gathering these old papers from the garrets and the closets where they have lain fifty years or more, perhaps—as well as to observe the most painstaking care for their preservation.