have been most judiciously made and the great lumber industries of the Pacific afford a splendid market for his property when he desires to place his holdings upon sale. He belongs to that class of young men whom the west are continually attracting by reason of the splendid opportunities here offered, his keen discernment enabling him to realize the value of such opportunities.
FRANCIS I. McKENNA.
Francis I. McKenna, the intelligent direction of whose labors and investments have placed him in the ranks of Portland's prominent and wealthy citizens, has been both the architect and builder of his fortunes. Earnest, self-denying labor was his lot in early manhood, but with ambition and ability to work his way upward, he has steadily progressed along lines of general usefulness as well as individual success. He was born in Perry county, Ohio, February 25, 1859, a son of William and Charity (Burgoon) McKenna, who were farming people of that district. The fact that he is a member of the Sons of the American Revolution indicates his descent from one of the old colonial families, the records of the organization indicating that it is through the maternal line that he came into connection with this society. The genealogy record on his father's side is traced to Clan Mackenna in the twelfth century, and the clan records are now in St. Mary's Hall at Belfast. Ireland. On the mother's side the ancestry is traced back to Alsace, in the fourteenth century. She was a second cousin of Archbishop Hughes, famed for having diplomatically prevented foreign interference in the Civil war.
Between the ages of six and twelve years Francis I. McKenna attended the district schools of Perry county, Ohio, from three to six months each year. Thereafter he had no school training except about five months devoted to a normal course. His parents died when he was yet a child, and he could make no plans for the future but grasped every opportunity from day to day. With ambition to obtain an education, the necessity for food and clothing demanded his attention. However, he borrowed text-books and reference books and questioned the priest, the preacher and the teacher at every meeting, using every available opportunity to promote his knowledge and thereby increase his usefulness and his chances for advancement. He labored in the mine, on the farm, on railroad construction and with the section gang. By the hardest kind of common labor and nightly study he was enabled at the age of eighteen years to put aside the garb of a common workman and take up the profession of teaching in a country school. For four years he taught in the public schools of Ohio and for two years was a teacher in Creighton College at Omaha, Nebraska. Abandoning that profession in 1883, he afterward followed various pursuits, being for a time an employe of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, a commercial traveling salesman and for a short period a retail drug merchant. The year 1889 witnessed his arrival in Portland and here he turned his attention to the real-estate business, in which the extent and importance of his operations have been such as to place him now with the wealthy men of the city. His keen discernment pointed out to him judical investments and the rise in property values, owing to the rapid growth of the city, brought him substantial returns, his sales furnishing him with ready capital, while his property holdings constitute for him a splendid collateral.
Mr. McKenna's study of the situation in Portland, as bearing upon his real-estate affairs, also led him to recognize the needs and opportunities of the city, and throughout the years of his residence here he has labored untiringly, earnestly and effectively for the improvement, betterment and adornment of Portland. He promoted the establishment of the first boulevard system of Portland, the establishment of the Portland University, now the Columbia Col-
