Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/194

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172
Frank B. Gill

months' trial as housekeeper, one so much to his liking, that he asked her to become his wife; they were married on January 24, 1864.

John Stevenson became head sawyer at Eagle Creek and his sister says should have been put in charge of the Oregon Portage when Joseph Bailey died, but was not, a man named King, who brought his wife along to run the boarding house, being sent up from Portland as Bailey's successor. In the year following Bailey's death, 1870, Stevenson quit the company and went to the Yakima country where he engaged in stock raising. Mrs. Bailey removed to Portland after her husband's death and had the residence at No. 112 East Tenth street built in the summer of 1870 which she has ever since occupied. She has a remarkable collection of photographs taken along the Columbia and Willamette rivers in 1867 which has been drawn upon for illustrations accompanying this article. Her brother, John W. Stevenson, was delegated to accompany the photographer, C. E. Watkins of San Francisco, when the pictures were being made, and he has at his ranch at Cape Horn two or three of the wheels of the cars used on the original Oregon Portage Railroad.

Grateful acknowledgments are made of the cordially given access to the invaluable records of the Portland Public Library, the Oregon Historical Society and the Portland Oregonian, and of the unstinted cooperative efforts of many persons, among whom I mention, George H. Himes, curator of the Oregon Historical Society; L. C. Willems, Director of the Information Bureau of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce; the California State Librarian, Mr. Milton J. Ferguson; Charles L. Hewes of Oakland, Calif.; Geo. H. Barron, Curator of the Memorial Museum of Golden Gate Park, San Francisco; W. E. Crews, State Corporation Commissioner of Oregon; H. B. Ainsworth of San Francisco; William McMurray, General Passenger Agent, A. C. Jackson, Advertising Agent, and L. C. Kelker, Acting Superintendent of Shops of the Union Pacific System, at Portland; Mrs. Lulu D. Crandall and Judge Fred W. Wilson of The Dalles.

There seem to be no records extant, of those kept by Joseph S. Ruckel and Harrison Olmstead, the builders of Oregon's first railroad, or of their early contemporaries in the field of transportation.

I have not hesitated to call the Oregon Portage line