Portland, Oregon: Its History and Builders/Volume 3/Charles H. Dye
CHARLES H. DYE.
Charles Henry Dye's first ancestor in America was a Dane who came with the Dutch founders of New Amsterdam, and Dey street. New York city, is named for the family cow pasture on the island of Manhattan. A grandson, Andrew Dey, or Dye as it came to be spelled, went to Maryland and there married Sarah Minor, own cousin to the wife of George Washington, and Colonel Dye's place was Washington's headquarters, mentioned in Irving's Life of Washington. At the close of the war, in lieu of money, the Revolutionary veterans were paid in Ohio lands, and Andrew Dye moved to Miami county, Ohio, where he lived until 1835. Four years later, in 1839, Henry Dye, father of the subject of our sketch, emigrated from the Ohio home to the newly opened Black Hawk Purchase in Iowa, where, on a farm near Fort Madison, in August, 1856, Charles Henry Dye was bom, next to the youngest of a large family of brothers and sisters.
In 1878 Charles H. Dye graduated from Denmark Academy, Iowa, and entered Oberlin College, Ohio, where he won oratorical honors and graduated with distinction in 1882, and a week later was married to his college classmate, Eva L. Emery. After six years in school work, as principal of a high school and an academy, Mr. Dye entered the law department of the State University of Iowa at Iowa City, graduating in 1889 and winning the prize for the best legal thesis of that year. Settling in Oregon City in 1890, Mr. Dye immediately identified himself with the best interests of the community and has held the offices of deputy district attorney, city attorney and representative in the state legislature, where among other bills he introduced an act known as the union high school law, now in successful operation throughout the state of Oregon.
Mr. Dye was president of the Oregon City Board of Trade for some years, until it was merged into the present Commercial Club of Oregon City, of which he is an active member. In both organizations Mr. Dye has always been identified with the movement for good roads and all other public improvements. Mr. and Mrs. Dye were the originators of the Willamette Valley Chautauqua Association that grew out of a Chautauqua circle at their home in 1894 and has now developed into the largest and most popular educational assembly in Oregon, of which association Mr. Dye has been an executive officer from the beginning. Politically Mr. Dye has been a consistent advocate of clean politics, a republican and a believer in the idea that laws should be made and administered for the protection of the weak rather than to aid the strong, that at present laws are enacted too largely to protect property rather than to aid all men to have an equal opportunity, that the rich and strong will take care of themselves, the poor and the weak need the protection of organized society; he believes, too, that the saloon is a public menace and should be suppressed by law. In the advocacy of this and other public causes, he has spoken in almost every precinct of Clackamas county, and for twenty years has been before the public as a lawyer who settles difficulties rather than encourages litigation. In connection with his practice he has built up a reputation for business ability and unimpeachable integrity. He is a member of the Congregational church, where for many years he was a superintendent of the Sunday school and is now teacher of its Bible class for men.
Mr. and Mrs. Dye have four children: Emery C, born in 1884, was graduated from Oberlin College in 1905; Trafton M., born in 1886, was graduated from Oberlin College in 1906, from the law department of Columbia University, New York city in 19 10, and is now a practicing attorney in Portland, Oregon; Everett W., born in 1896; and Charlotte Evangeline, born in 1897.