Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 6/Horace S. Lyman

HORACE S. LYMAN.

Horace Sumner Lyman was born on a farm near Dallas, Polk County, Oregon, on December 18, 1855. His father was Horace Lyman of an old Massachusetts family. His mother, Mary Denison Lyman, belonged to an equally old Vermont family of French Huguenot descent. Young Horace suffered from a malady in early childhood that left him so crippled that the use of crutches was necessary throughout his life. The family removed to Forest Grove in 1857, his father taking the chair of mathematics in what is now Pacific University. Mr. Lyman graduated from the classical course of this institution in the class of '78. Three years, '80 to '83, were given to theological study—one at Oakland, California, and two in Oberlin College. From the theological department of this institution he graduated in 1883. He returned West and was pastor for one year of the Congregational Church at White Salmon, Washington, having a missionary charge also at Hood River. He then began the improvement of a farm on Clatsop Plains, but was also active as teacher, preacher, and writer. In '87 he edited the Prohibition Star and lived in Portland. During this year and the next he was also preparing a history of that city. In 1889 he returned to his farm in Clatsop County and soon was appointed to fill out an unexpired term of the county superintendent of schools. At the expiration of this term he was elected to the office which he held, with the exception of four years, until his death.

During these years he was engaged unceasingly in writing on a large range of subjects—social, historical, philosophical, political, and of course educational. The reminiscences of many of the earlier pioneers were secured by him for the beginning volumes of the Quarterly. He easily won the fullest confidence of these pioneers and the data he drew from them are surcharged with spirit of those who advanced the frontier. All this was in line of preparation for writing the history of the Oregon he loved. This work was issued in four volumes in 1903.

In the latter part of 1903 he was appointed to take charge of the Oregon Educational Exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. He returned from St. Louis in the summer of 1904 and planned and had well under way the Oregon School Exhibits for the Lewis and Clark Fair, when his health, usually good, failed. After a short illness he died on December 22, 1904. He left a considerable mass of unpublished writings. When these are arranged and published we shall have a complete basis for an estimate of his genius and industry. As it is we know that his was a nature transcendently gentle, brave, and noble. What he wrought exhibited richness and depth of thought and was pervaded with the spirit of the highest humanity. It lives and grows in the hearts of all who knew him.