four miles from this city, Mr. George Keller had occasion to go a short distance up the stream where he wished to cross in a skiff. Shortly after the men who had been employed with him, saw the skiff floating down the river and no one in it. As the water was high and rapid, fears were at once expressed that Mr. K. had fallen overboard, and was probably drowned. Others supposed that, in attempting to launch the skiff, it escaped his hold, and, as he did not make his appearance, that he had gone farther up the river to effect a crossing. Night came on, and the next day came and went, but no news of Mr. K. Without doubt he was drowned. He emigrated to the Territory the past season from Peoria county, in Illinois, where his father, Rev. Mr. Isaac Keller, and family reside. The young man's deportment was unexceptionable. He had formed a number of acquaintances since his arrival, and he possessed the good will and friendship of all who knew him. We were told yesterday that his body had not yet been found.
Like all the other papers, large and small, at that time, the Statesman and its Oregon contemporaries used small heads. When Oregon was admitted to the Union, in February, 1859, the best the Statesman could do for the announcement when it finally reached Salem March 22, five weeks after President Buchanan had signed the bill, was to give it the simple, small, single-line head:
Oregon Admitted Into Union
The item was only 50 words long, as follows:
By overland mail to California, and by 'Commodore' to Oregon, we have the St. Louis dates to Feb. 14, and New York and Washington to the 12th. The Oregon admission bill passed the House, as it came from the Senate, on the 12th, by a vote of 113 yeas and 103 nays.
The Statesman ran its first multiple-division (decks, or banks, the printers call such divisions) on an item telling of the firing on Fort Sumter, in April, 1861. Following is the way the heading read:
