Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 18/Obituaries
OBITUARIES
By Geo. H. Himes
DAVID WATSON CRAIG
In the death of Mr. Craig at the home of his son, Mr. F. S. Craig, Salem, on December 17, 1916, at the ripe age of eighty-six years, four months and twenty-two days, there passed away a man who was an important factor in the early educational and political life of Oregon.
He was born near Maysville, Mason county, Kentucky, July 25, 1830. His father, a physician, was of Scotch ancestry, but a native of Virginia, and a classical scholar. His mother was Euphemia Early, a second cousin of Gen. Jubal Anderson Early, prominent on the Confederate side during the Civil War.
Mr. Craig's parents removed to Palmyra, Mo., in 1839 and to Hannibal in 1841. On May 25th of that year he went into the Hannibal Journal office as an apprentice and remained four and a half years. One of the type setters was Orion Clemens, an older brother of Samuel L. Clemens, who afterwards became a national character in American literature under the pen name of "Mark Twain." He also learned to set type in the same office, beginning in 1848.
Early in 1846 Mr. Craig went to Illinois and worked in Quincy, Peoria and Springfield. In the latter place he remained four years an an employee of the Illinois State Journal, Simeon Francis, editor, serving as compositor, reporter, editorial writer and telegraph operator. Before leaving Hannibal Mr. Craig began reading law, and all spare time in Springfield was thus employed, part of the time in the law office of Lincoln & Herndon. When he thought himself sufficiently prepared he applied for admission to the bar, and passed an excellent examination by B. S. Edwards, John T. Stewart and Abraham Lincoln. His license was granted on September 15, 1850, and was signed by S. H. Treat, Chief Justice, and Lyman Trumbull, Associate Justice.
He practiced law as opportunity offered and wrote editorials for the Journal until the latter part of 1852, when he secured a clerkship in the pension department in Washington, D. C. With the change of the national administration from Whig to Democratic by the inauguration of Franklin Pierce as President on March 4, 1853, Mr. Craig, being a Whig, was removed. Then he started to Oregon via the Isthmus, but upon arriving at Panama found employment on the Panama Daily Star, as a type setter and an editorial writer. Mr. Craig's services were very useful to this paper, because part of it was printed in the Spanish language, with which he was familiar. He could speak and write the Spanish language and translate it into English with equal facility. Not only so, but his knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, Latin and French enabled him to translate the same into English when necessary.
Mr. Craig acquired these languages without a teacher, aside from his father, before he was sixteen years old. His knowledge of mathematics was acquired in the same way. When about nineteen years old the authorities of a certain academy near Springfield, Ill., examined him in all the studies required in the curriculum of that institution and he passed an excellent examination and was offered a position upon the submission of his diploma—b, document he never had—and therefore was unable to comply with the requirements of the academic authorities.
Mr. Craig arrived in Portland on Nov. 25, 1853, on the steamship Columbia, five days from San Francisco. Among his fellow passengers were Gov. John W. Davis, of Indiana, bearing his commission as governor of Oregon Territory, signed by President Franklin Pierce, and Henry W. Corbett. Upon this trip a friendship sprang up between Mr. Corbett and Mr. Craig, which lasted the remainder of their lives.
Early in December following Mr. Craig went to Salem and
142 Geo. H. Hikes
was employed by Mr. Bush of the Oregon Statesman until he discovered that Mr. Craig was a Whig politically ; and hence his political principles cost him his job a second time. Then he taught a school on Howell prairie, a few miles northwest of Salem, much of the time during the next year. It was while so engaged that he met Mr. William L. Adams, of Yamhill county, a pioneer of 1848, who invited him to become the fore- man of a paper he proposed to establish at Oregon City, the plant of the defunct Oregon Spectator having been secured for that purpose. This was the first Republican newspaper in Oregon, and its first issue was on April 21, 1855. On April 16, 1859, ^^- Craig became sole owner of this paper, and did much of the editorial work, although Mr. Adams was retained as the nominal editor. On October 24, 1863, the Argus was consolidated with the Oregon Statesman of Salem, and the publication continued under the latter name by the Oregon Printing and Publishing Company, the stockholders of which were J. W. P. Huntington, Benjamin Simpson, Rufus Mallory, Chester N. Terry, George H. Williams and D. W. Craig, with Clark P. Crandall as editor. Two years later Mr. Craig ac- quired a majority of the stock and early in 1866 sold the paper to Benjamin Simpson, and his sons, Sylvester C. and Samuel L. Simpson, became the editors. Simpson sold the plant to W. A. McPherson and William Morgan, owners of The Unionist, late in 1866, and on December 31st of that year the name of the Statesman was dropped. A year and a half later Mr. Huntington obtained control of The Unionist and pub- lished it up to the date of his death in 1869, after which the plant was bought by Samuel A. Clarke and the name of the paper changed to The Oregon Statesman and Unionist on Sept 16, 1869, and the words "and Unionist" were dropped on April i, 1870.
Mr. Craig's next newspaper venture was the publication of the Salem Daily Record, the first daily in the capital city, beginning June 10, 1867, ^^^ ending July 15, 1868.
On July 22, 1872, Mr. Craig became associated with the late Samuel A. Clarke in the publication of the Willamette Farmer, which had been established by A. L. Stinson about four years before. He maintained that relation until some time in 1880, when he withdrew from the Farmer and took charge of the mechanical department of the Oregon Statesman. The paper was then owned by W. H. Odell and W. H. Byars, and afterwards became the property of Robert J. Hendricks, the present owner.
In April, 1893, Mr. Craig retired to a small farm a little less than two miles south of the state capitol, after more than fifty years of continuous connection with the press in various capacities, such as foreman, owner, reporter, telegraph operator and editorial writer—always competent and dependable wherever his services were required.
On September 16, 1861, Mr. Craig was married to Miss Wealthy L, Waterous, of Grand Blanc, Michigan, who preceded him to the g^ve in October, 1914. He is survived by one son, Mr. F. S. Craig, who for many years has been the editor of the Pacific Homestead, Salem, and a grandson and a granddaughter.
JOHN MILLER MURPHY
John Miller Murphy descended from Irish ancestry on his father's side and German on the side of his mother, and was born near Fort Wayne, Indiana, Nov. 3, 1839. His mother died when he was seven years old and then he went to live with a sister, Mrs. George A. Barnes, in Cincinnati. This family crossed the plains to Oregon in 1850, starting from Fort Wayne, settling in Portland. As a lad he was present at the Oregonian office when the first issue of that paper was printed on December 4, 1850. His brother-in-law, Mr. Barnes, came to Oregon the first time in 1848 and engaged in business a short time. The next year he returned to Indiana by the way of California and the Isthmus of Panama, and not only returned with his own family in 1850, as indicated, but was instrumental in causing his father and mother, two sisters, two brothers, a brother-in-law and family to return with him. Mr. Barnes resumed his business, that of merchandising, soon after his second arrival, and Mr. Murphy, although a boy, became an efficient salesman. Mr. Barnes was a member of the first city council of Portland, having been elected April 7, 1851.
In the spring of 1852 the entire Barnes connection removed to Olympia by sea, and Mr. Barnes opened a store, Mr. Murphy still being employed as a clerk. In 1854 he became a pupil of Bernard Cornelius, A. M., a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, and a member of the College of Preceptors, London, England, with more than twenty years of experience as a teacher before beginning his "select" school May 8, 1854. It was during the year and a half while he was a pupil of this man that Mr. Mur^^y laid the foundation for his future excellent use of virile English.
In 1857 Mr. Murphy returned to Portland and became an apprentice in the office of the Oregon Weekly Times. He worked in the same capacity in the office of the Democratic Standard, also in Portland, and in the Oregon Argus office, Oregon City, altogether a little over three years. Then he formed a partnership with L. E. V. Coon, a newspaper man from California, and issued the Vancouver (W. T.) Chronicle, the first paper in that city. Three months later, finding association with Mr. Coon—better known as "Alphabetical Coon" —decidedly uncongenial, he chose Olympia as the seat of his life work, and on Nov. 17, 1860, he issued the first number of the Washington Standard, and at the time his connection with it was severed on August 1, 1912, he had edited every edition of the paper and was its sole owner for fifty-two years—an unusual record for any part of the United States and the only one of the kind west of the Rocky mountains.
Temperamentally, Mr. Murphy was a Democrat; but at the time he established the Standard—only eleven days after the momentous presidential campaign of 1860 had ended, and before the result of the election was known in this part of the country (there was no telegraph line to the Pacific Northwest then)—he declared himself to be in favor of preserving the Union regardless of the result of the election. That attitude led to his acting with the Republican party during the war between the States and on up to 1867. That year he supported Gov. Marshall F. Moore, an able general in the Union army, the Democratic nominee for delegate to Congress from Washington Territory. After that he was an independent Democrat the remainder of his life—always as ready to denounce wrongdoing in his own party as in the opposition.
Mr. Murphy was a member of the city council of Olympia for years, and was responsible for the organization of the Olympia Volunteer Fire Department. He was county school superintendent for one term, territorial auditor for two terms and state auditor for one term. In 1890 he built the Olympia Theatre—the first structure erected in that city especially for that purpose.
His passing marks the end of the career of a man who bore a prominent part in the history of Washington Territory and State, and whose record as an editor led to the most unique tribute ever given to any one in the profession on the Pacific Coast. This was evidenced by the gathering of editors and pioneers from all parts of the Pacific Northwest in Olympia at a banquet in his honor on the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of his paper and the presentation of a beautiful silver loving cup suitably inscribed.
He died on December 20, 1916, as the result of an attack of blood poisoning two and a half years before.
Mr. Murphy was married to Miss Eliza Jane McGuire in Portland on April 18, 1861, and to them ten children were born, three of whom survive their father. Their mother died in 1895. He was married a second time to Mrs. Susan Sprague.
WILLIAM ABERNETHY
The last person connected with the early Protestant missions of Oregon up to 1840, William Abernethy, died at his home in Forest Grove, Oregon, December 31, 1916. He was born in New York City in 1831, and came with his parents and one sister around Cape Horn to Oregon, leaving New York October 9, 1839, and arriving at Fort Vancouver June 1, 1840. His father, George Abernethy, was born in New York October 8, 1807, and was married to Anne Pope January 15, 1830. This family, with a number of others, numbering in all fortyfive persons, formed the "great re-enforcement" to the Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church established by Rev. Jason Lee late in the year 1834. Before coming to Oregon George Abernethy had acquired experience in merchandising, and as steward of the missionary party opened a store at Oregon City. This brought him before the public quite prominently, and hence when it was deemed necessary by the people to have a "more stable form of government" than that of the original Provisional Government initiated on May 2, 1843, under which a committee of three were empowered to perform executive duties, the office of governor was created and he was elected to fill that position on June 3, 1845. Governor Abernethy was re-elected on June 3, 1847, and served until March 3, 1849, when General Joseph Lane assumed the duties of his office, having been appointed governor of the newly constituted Territory of Oregon by President Polk. Governor Abernethy died in Portland May 2, 1877.
William Abernethy was in business with his father, first as a clerk and later as a partner. He was married at The Dalles to Miss Sarah Fidelia Gray, the second daughter of William H. and Mrs. Mary Augusta Dix Gray, on June 24, 1863. To this union thirteen children were born, ten of whom, with their mother, are living.
In 1861 Mr. Abernethy secured a farm on the west side of the Willamette river opposite Milwaukie. In 1891 he sold out and removed to Dora, Coos county, thirty-five miles west of Roseburg. After getting the farm well along under cultivation, he removed to Forest Grove in 1904, in order to give his children better educational advantages.