Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 64/The Columbian: Washington Territory's First Newspaper

by William A. Katz

The Columbian: Washington Territory's First Newspaper

W. A. KATZ

Stretching the truth, Eugene Barrier took french leave of a volunteer company of Washington Territorial Indian fighters in I855 to show up in New York two years later as French consul from Puget Sound. Horace Greeley welcomed the "distinguished" guest in the columns of his New York Tribune while back in Olympia James Wiley of the Pioneer and Democrat dryly observed "Greeley should have known Puget Sound was never deemed of sufficient importance to have any kind of consul."^[1] Wiley characteristically did not censure Barrier, for possibly he remembered some years previously he and the irascible Thomas J. Dryer of the Portland Oregonian had pulled off a "Barrier" of sorts themselves.

On the masthead of Washington Territory's first newspaper, The Columbian, appeared the names James W. Wiley and Thornton F. McElroy, and in the second issue of September 18, I852 the editors emphatically stated:

For the purpose of counteracting various rumors abroad, with regard to 'controlling influence' exercised over The Columbian we would by leave to remark once, and for all that The Columbian editorially and otherwise is, and will be solely under the charge of the publishers ... We intend to control the columns ourselves.^[2]

Possibly in the drawer of the desk on which this editorial was penned rested a conflicting statement, legally signed and dated August 2, 1852:

Know all men ... that I, Thomas J. Dryer. . . do hereby constitute and appoint Thornton McElroy . . . in my name to take possession of and take under his charge at Olympia . . . sundry boxes, packages, etc. containing a printing press and material for a printing establishment belonging to me.^[3]

The "printing establishment" consisted of a Ramage Press No. 913 out of the offices of the San Francisco Alta Californian in 1850, employed to print the first issue of the Weekly Oregonian, December 4, 1850, and two years later was shipped aboard the schooner Mary Taylor for Olympia. The "sundry boxes" contained a half dozen fonts of body letters and two fonts of advertising type. McElroy, to whom this equipment was entrusted by Dryer, had been working for the Portland editor as a printer since late 1851.^[4] Wiley, whose early history is a mystery, may or may not have been in the Oregonian offices.^[5]

The extent of outside "controlling influence" so vehemently denied by Wiley, so blissfully ignored by Dryer whose only public statements concerning the paper he owned consisted of five or six line articles in the Oregonian to the effect that The Columbian "is neutral in politics and religion,"^[6] is found in a letter from McElroy to his young wife, Sally:

I came here (Olympia) for the purpose of helping to start a newspaper. The office belongs to Mr. Dryer ... and he says he places the utmost confidence in me, and insisted on my coming here to take charge of the mechanical and financial departments of the paper. I consented on conditions that I stay no longer than until I get my affairs settled up, and until he finds someone to take my place.^[7]

Although Dryer's control of The Columbian appears to have been one of the best kept secrets in early frontier journalism there were at least twenty men, in addition to Wiley and McElroy, who knew the true owner to be Dryer. On July 8, 1852, they had given, or pledged to give Alonzo M. Poe, early northern Oregon settler and friend of Dryer, close to $500 for "establishing a newspaper at some prominent point on Puget Sound, [the paper] to be called the Columbian . . . to be neutral in politics and religion, and devoted to the interests of northern Oregon."^[8] Simpson P. Moses, the over-zealous collector of customs on Puget Sound, and Lafayette Balch, founder of Steilacoom, each gave $100. George A. Barnes, Olympia merchant gave $75, and Mike Simmons, who was to receive only eighteen votes in his bid for territorial delegate to Congress from Washington Territory in 1854, gave $50, as did Edmund Sylvester, founder of Olympia. Smaller sums, ranging from $7.00 to $25 were pledged by the fifteen others, most of whom are associated with the early settlement of Olympia. The majority, too, had another thing in common—they were all Whigs, or had leanings toward the party.

Considering Dryer's active support of the Whigs, and the political complexion of The Columbian's financial backers, the insistence on neutrality for the paper at first appears strange. The answer apparently is twofold. First, Dryer's attitude during 1852 and a good part of 1853 seems to have been that the best course for the party was nonpartisanship. The people of Oregon, north or south of the Columbia River, should not be distracted by partisan politics. Second, by mid-I 853 when Dryer began pressing home the battle against the Democrats, he determined to sell The Columbian. A Democratic administration in Washington, D.C. prepared to send good Democrats out to govern newly-created Washing ton Territory and employee difficulties on the newspaper convinced him that at least in the case of the Olympia paper the best course to follow was neutrality. It almost wrecked The Columbian, for without politics enlivening its pages it came close to dying from sheer boredom.

In a sense then Wiley had been right, there was no "con trolling influence," or at least it remained negative. "The only battles we have to fight are for northern Oregon-a new territory,"^[9] The Columbian declared time and time again from its first issue. No argument here-Dryer and the financial backers of the paper had founded the paper on this premise, though Dryer may have had profit more in mind than patriotism. This battle really had been won before it started, for Oregon's representative in Congress, Joseph Lane, worked on a bill for territorial status for northern Oregon just weeks after The Columbian began publication. He introduced the bill in Congress on December 6, 1852, and considering it took from five to eight weeks to get mails from the coast he must have received his first copies of The Columbian, with its editorial demands for a territory, a few weeks or days before he introduced his bill. But if the newspaper had virtually been talking to itself and its approximately 350 subscribers, it took full credit for the new territory on April 23, 1853.^[10]

The major struggle over, The Columbian went out of its way to prove it planned "to act with decorum towards our contemporaries." Down in Portland Dryer pulled out all of the editorial stops in his war against the Democrats, while in Olympia his other paper remained wonderfully neutral through all its owner's political gyrations. To be sure, The Columbian did complain about the poor mail service and had more than passing comments about need for a wagon road across the Cascades to Walla Walla, but if Dryer blasted away at Lane, The Columbian simply ignored him entirely.

A professed Democrat, Wiley restrained himself up to the middle of March, 1853, when he left the editor's chair for a partnership in the law firm of G. N. McConaha. Remarkably adept at saying what the occasion demanded, Wiley observed in the last editorial he wrote in the Olympia newspaper that he had "not sought to trail the columns of The Columbian in the slime of party warfare" and repeated again the paper's unquestioned neutrality. Some months later he returned, this time as owner, and ignoring earlier statements proclaimed "the end of whig influence and interest" in the

paper.^[11] A diligent search of the columns of The Columbian indicates Whigs were as scarce there as news.

With Wiley's departure Dryer sent McElroy over a new printer, who possibly tried his hand at editorials. J. J. Beebe lasted from March 11, 1853, until July 13 of that year. He made no more impression on the paper than he did on history, for nothing seems to be known of the man. McElroy, still anxious to leave Olympia, implored Dryer to find another man not only to replace Beebe, but himself. The Portland editor evidently had more important matters on his mind, and in August he climbed Mt. St. Helens. While his employer scaled the mountain, McElroy attempted to keep The Columbian going:

I wrote to Mr. Dryer three weeks ago that I must be relieved at the close of the volume [i.e. September, 1853] and that I would not commence another year for no commensuration whatever. Before my letter reached him he had started on a tour to the top of Mount St. Helens. At my latest advice from Portland he had not yet re turned. Under the circumstances I will have to keep this paper going two or three weeks longer. I am completely wore out by constant attention to business . . . [and] for the last three or four months I have had to be editor, publisher, compositor, devil and all hands be sides handling' the financial affairs to attend to which is about three men's work.^[12]

Years later Henry Pittock, who would purchase the Oregonian from Dryer in 1860, noted Dryer was "entirely indifferent to income and outgo"^[13] and an extremely poor hand at business. Obviously had it not been for McElroy, The Columbian would have gone under—not only financially but physically. It appears Wiley located the first office for The Columbian on the flats, and with the first winter storm, it was partially flooded by the tides. After that the shack could be reached only by canoe at high tide. In November McElroy finally persuaded Mike Simmons to rent the paper a room on the second floor of his high and dry building which housed also the post office and customs.

An indication of McElroy's salary is given in connection with an even more historic occasion. In June, 1853 he went down to Portland to help organize what was probably the first typographers' union in the Pacific Northwest. On June 20 he met with E. M. Waite, E. G. Gowne, W. B. Affleck, H. S. Stipp and R. D. Austin to establish the Oregon and Washington Typographical Society. Members swore to work for not less than $1,500 a year or $5.00 a day, and any mem ber who took less could "be published to the world as a RAT."^[14] For comparison, in 1853 the judges in Washington Territory received $2,000 a year and the governor a total of $3,000, while skilled laborers got from $4.00 to $6.00 a day. In a letter to his wife, McElroy observed: "provisions are very scarce and very high; in fact there is scarcely anything to eat in the country."^[15]

Two months after his Portland journey, and a few weeks after Dryer returned from Mt. St. Helens, McElroy finally had help. On September 15, 1853, one Matt K. Smith's name appeared on the masthead of The Columbian in place of McElroy. The change in command had not been Dryer's intention, for Smith was to help McElroy not replace him, and Dryer's reaction to the switch is preserved in one of his few extant letters:

I was not a little surprised to see the course you have seen to take in relation to taking your name out as publisher of Columbian, I regret you have done this . . . I informed Mr. Smith plainly and emphatically that you have always had and should have, the entire control of all matters relating to the publishing of the Columbian. I desire him to assist you and told him to council with you in all he wrote for the paper.

However, I suppose you have reasons for doing as you have done. But not withstanding I wish you to retain the charge of that office and its business. Whenever you can stay no longer I shall stop the paper ... I am sorry on the whole I did not stop it when the year was out. I have offered the concern to the democrats for $2,500—I will see the people of Washington Territory DAMNED before I will publish a paper out of my pocket for their benefit.^[16]

The letter did nothing to change McElroy's mind, but he did agree to "remain in the office of The Columbian for the next three or four months for the purpose of collecting all outstanding debts."^[17] Mike Simmons, almost as illiterate as he was liked, evidently offered to pay Dryer for half the paper, but only if Dryer could find someone else to put up the other half. This fell through, and by November Dryer began negotiations with Wiley. Precisely what occurred is not known, but the announcement on December 3, I853, that a close friend of Dryer, Alfred Metcalf Berry, would join Wiley as co-owner of the paper indicates more promises than money changed hands. Berry's untimely death some seven months later prompted a letter to McElroy, who worked for Wiley, from J. C. Ainsworth to the effect that Berry had owed Dryer $1,000 for The Columbian. Dryer, Ainsworth wrote, "thinks that W[iley] and D[oyle] will try to swindle him out [of the $1,000]. I would merely suggest that as Wiley and Doyle are both Masons that you make them do what is right between Masons."^[18]

All of this, of course, went on behind the scenes, but no one could miss the fact that The Columbian had changed hands. "The Columbian has become the Washington Pioneer," Wiley announced in the columns of that paper on December 3, 1853, "a straightout radical Democratic Journal ... The paper has passed from death unto life, and its spirit purified from sin and whiggery."^[19] Somewhat more relaxed, Dryer noted the change, again without any mention of him self, in the December 10 issue of the Oregonian: "No doubt the [Washington Pioneer] will be a spirited sheet, and we trust an honorable political opponent."^[20] Two months later on February 4, I854, Wiley added a new partner-"Bible Back" Doyle-a new press, and a new name for his paper, The Pioneer and Democrat.

Wiley proved to be no more an "honorable political opponent" than Barrier the French consul, and for the next four years vocally led the territorial Democrats into vituperative battle against the Whigs, Dryer, and a good many of the men who had put up the initial money for the paper he now controlled. Possibly by mutual consent, more likely from an intuitive desire on Dryer's part not to admit he had made a mistake in giving birth to a Democratic monster and on Wiley's part a desire to forget he started as a Whig employer, the "Barrier" both men pulled off in Northwest journalism was forgotten. Silent McElroy, who saved the paper for both men, finally had the last word'. . . simply by preserving the letters and documents he never expected to see published.

1. Pioneer and Democrat (Olympia), August 14, 1857.
2. The Columbian (Olympia), September 18, 1852.
3. Power of attorney from Thomas J. Dryer to Thornton F. McElroy August 2, 1852, in McElroy papers, University of Washington Library, Seattle (hereafter cited as M.P.) Dryer (1808-78) and his times are ably discussed in "Thomas J. Dryer, Opposition Editor" (M.S. thesis, University of Oregon, 1952) by Richard Cramer.
4. McElroy (1825-85) came overland from Pittsfield, Illinois in 1849, worked in the Oregon Spectator office in the fall of 1849, went to the California mines in 1849-50, returned to the Spectator in 1851 and thence to the Oregonian. He was printing foreman on the Columbian, later the Pioneer and Democrat until 1861, Washington territorial public printer, 1863-67, 1871-72, and a financier until his death.
5. Wiley (1820?-60) came overland from Ohio in 1849 to Caifornia, to Olympia in 1852 where he was editor and active politician until 1858.
6. Oregonian (Portland), September 18, 1852. Dryer mentioned The Columbian, but never his interest in the newspaper, in the Oregonian again on October 2, 1852, January 8, 1853, and September 10, 1853.
7. McElroy to Sarah McElroy (Sally), August 10, 1852, M.P.
8. Holograph broadside, July 8, 1852, M.P.
9. The Columbian, October 16, 1852.
10. The Columbian, April 10, 1853. Lane's bill was based on the memorial sent Congress from the Cowlitz Convention of August 29, 1851. The Columbian agitated for a similar convention at Monticello on November 25, 1852, but results of this meeting reached Lane too late to be of any help.
11. The Columbian, March 12, 1853; December 3, 1853-on this date the paper's name was changed to the Washington Pioneer.
12. McElroy to Sarah McElroy, September 4, 1853, M.P.
13. Oregonian, December 4, 1900, quoted in Cramer, "Thomas J. Dryer," 95.
14. The Columbian, June 25, 1853.
15. McElroy to Sarah McElroy, January 11, 1853, M.P.
16. Dryer to McElroy, September 26, 1853, M.P.
17. McElroy to Sarah McElroy, September 4, 1853, M.P.
18. J. C. Ainsworth to McElroy, October 13, 1854, M.P.
19. Washington Pioneer, December 3, 1853.
20. Oregonian, December 10, 1853.