the pioneer days of the early fifties to the present. The Oregonian was established as a weekly December 4, 1850, with the aim of promoting Portland's interests in competition with its ambitious and not always friendly rivals.[1]
In the first issue the Star had told its readers at Milwaukie and elsewhere that the new paper was to be started in Portland. Here is the Star's greeting, which was friendly despite the rivalry between the two towns:
A New Whig Paper at Portland
We are informed that a press, type, and paper, intended for the Oregonian, is on board the bark Keoka, which is now in the river near Portland. We shall look for the Oregonian in a few weeks. We understand it is conducted by T. J. Dryer, Esq., formerly the city editor of the California Courier. Mr. Dryer has the reputation of being an able man, and no doubt will furnish the reading community with a good, readable paper.
Portland was but newly born, and its promoters, including W. W. Chapman, Stephen Coffin, David H. Lownsdale, F. W. Pettygrove, and A. Lawrence Lovejoy, Portland business and professional men, were eager for a publication. The older town of Milwaukie, up the river, already had the Western Star (already referred to), Oregon City had the Spectator (the Free Press had come and gone), and it was not unknown in Portland that Asahel Bush and Henry Russell were up in Oregon City grinding their teeth as they awaited the delayed arrival of the plant which was to issue the Oregon Statesman.
Chapman and Coffin, who may be regarded as the actual founders of the Oregonian, went to San Francisco in the summer of 1850 to obtain a plant for the new paper. There, about July 4, they met Thomas J. Dryer, who was looking for a location. The northerners persuaded him to come to Portland, where he became editor and publisher of the Weekly Oregonian. The Oregonian's first number came off its old Ramage press December 4, 1850. Harvey W. Scott[2] says that Dryer had a plant with him in California, "a hand printing press and a small lot of printing material."
The new editor was a man of ability. Dryer proved, says Himes,[3] "to be an excellent speaker and an aggressive and fearless writer well suited for pioneer journalism." He did manage to hold his own rather well, though Leslie M. Scott[4] ranks Bush of the Statesman, later to be considered, as far above his contemporary editors of pioneer days.
Dryer had come from New York state, and he was in his 43d year when he came from California to begin publication of Portland's
- ↑ It is the opinion of George H. Himes that the hiatus in the publication of the Oregon Statesman as the Statesman, in the period when it was dominated by the Unionist owner and carried the name Statesman and Unionist, clouds the Statesman's claim to unbroken continuity from territorial days. It is the general habit, however, to concede continuity to the Statesman, through its connection with the Unionist.
- ↑ In the Oregonian's semi-centennial issue, December 4, 1900.
- ↑ loc. cit. (Oregonian).
- ↑ Citation from Ladd & Bush Quarterly.
