# History of Oregon Literature/Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12
The First Five Literary Books
   During 30 years of collecting Oregon books I have not found a copy of Ruth Rover or a first edition of Prairie Flower, but I have picked up three copies of Captain Gray's Company.
   FREDERICK W. SKIFF.
The novel and short story stage of Oregon literature was reached much sooner than the same stage in American Literature as it developed on the Atlantic coast. Productivity got started more quickly in Oregon in reference to the progress of American Literature than American Literature had in reference to the progress of English Literature. Fortunately, writers on the Atlantic coast had finally reached the point where they chose local themes before settlement began in the Oregon Territory. The literary immigrants brought this point of view across the plains with them; they did not wait a long period of years before giving up treatment of home scenes for new scenes; accordingly, a native literature sprang up without the long delay that characterized the parent literature.
The first story writer, the first novelist, the first satirist, developed in Oregon with a rapidity in marked contrast to the tardiness of the development of a Charles Brockden Brown, a James Fenimore Cooper, a Washington Irving and an Edgar Allen Poe among men of letters of our Republic on the east coast.
The earliest Oregon novel was published in 1849. The next novel was published ten years later, in 1859, in Oregon itself. In the meantime a local satire had been published in 1852 and a moralistic work of fiction by an early Oregon school ma'am in 1854. And during the fifties, one of the famous Applegate brothers ​down in the Umpqua Valley was writing frontier short stories.
Thus we had five authors of literary works of a genuine nature, in the second decade of actual Oregon settlement. It was a handsome showing in quantity and it was at least good enough in quality so that one of the books became a sort of best seller in the country at large, attaining a sale of 100,000 copies.
These first Oregon literary productions were self-reliant; they were motivated by the far western scene; they were indigenous. It has been said, in fact, that they were over-indigenous. According to some critics, they were a little too realistic, stuck a little too closely to the details of immigration and Oregon living, and correspondingly showed a lack of imagination for works of fiction.
It has been possible to find copies of three of the books so that selections from them are given in this chapter to enable the reader to get some idea of what they were like. It has been impossible to locate the other two.
One of these contains the stories of Charles Applegate. His granddaughter of Portland, Captain O. C. Applegate of Klamath Falls, and the descendants of that distinguished pioneer family still residing in Douglas County, did not themselves have the book and could not tell where a single copy had been preserved. Yoncalla, where the stories were written, and all of Douglas County have been covered like a blanket with inquiries, but neither manuscript nor clippings nor the little volume itself, if the sketches appeared in that form, could be turned up. And it is not in the ​library left by Hubert Howe Bancroft in California. That historian of tremendous energy but of elastic conscience came up through the Oregon country with his wife and his secretary and took away great quantities of pioneer manuscript and printed material, with an ingratiating promise of return, which never happened. Still, that was back in the seventies when pioneer memories were thicker than ears to hear. With the woods full of aged men reminiscing about old times and boring the new generation interested in the future, the attention of this polished visitor from San Francisco was flattering. Thus some of the things the covetous hands got hold of may not otherwise have been preserved. Anyway, he missed the Charles Applegate stories, or later let them get out of his own tenacious possession.
The other book is Passages in the Life of Ruth Rover, published in Portland in 1854 and harshly panned in a review in the Oregonian. There used to be a copy in the Oregon Historical Society Library but it was lost several years ago. It also is not in the Bancroft Library and there is no other trace of an existing copy.
From what is known about the Charles Applegate sketches and about the natural story talent of the author, they would no doubt make interesting reading. From what "Squibs", the savage Oregonian reviewer, said about Ruth Rover, it would satisfy a curiosity rather than an intrinsic literary interest.
Peter Skene Ogden's Traits of American Indian Life and Character, published in London in 1853, which makes six books for this early productive decade, has been described in a previous chapter.
1
Prairie Flower by Sidney Walter Moss of Oregon City
The First Work of Fiction Written in Oregon
The following brief description of the first Oregon novel is contained in Bancroft's History of Oregon, written by Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor:
   In point of time, the first work of fiction written in Oregon was The Prairie Flower, by S. W. Moss of Oregon City. It was sent east to be published, and appeared with some slight alterations as one of a series of western stories by Emerson Bennett of Cincinnati. One of the foremost characters was modelled after George W. Ebberts of Tualatin Plains, or the Black Squire, as he was called among mountain men. Two of the women in the story were meant to resemble the wife and mother-in-law of Medorem Crawford.
There are two copies of the later 1881 edition of the book in the libraries of Portland and a considerable amount of information about it, so that a rather full account of this first Oregon fiction story can be given.
There are historical references to its having been read by the author in manuscript at meetings of a literary society in Oregon City in 1843.
Sidney Walter Moss, who came out with the Hastings party in 1842, said he wrote the story and gave it to Overton Johnson, who went back in 1844, but that Bennett got hold of it and published it as his own.
Emerson Bennett had it published by Stratton & Barnard in 1849 at Cincinnati. Its full title was The Prairie Flower; or, Adventures in the Far West.
Charles L. Camp says that that the S. and A. Allen is pencilled on the title page of the Bancroft Library copy, in place of the printed name of Bennett. There was a Samuel Allen in Oregon in 1847, and thus the plot thickens, with three contenders for the authorship of the same book.
Of the real author, Sidney Walter Moss, we know that he was born in Kentucky in 1810 and was therefore thirty​two years old when he arrived at Oregon City in April, 1842, where his first employment was cutting wood at seventy-five cents a cord. He organized in 1 843 the Falls Debating Society at Oregon City. He soon started a hotel—in a building fourteen by seventeen feet. "When it was opened there was not a bed or chair in it, but he made a table; and men slept in blankets and paid him $5 a week for board." This was the beginning of a celebrated early hotel—The Main Street House of Oregon City—later established in a two-story building on the southwest corner of Third and Main Streets. He advertised it in rhyme. "Owing to pressing necessities and our cheap rates of fare, we are compelled to say:
This was signed by himself and "The Widow." The latter was Mrs. Dorcas Richardson, who became his second wife and the mother of five of his children. He already had three—one authority says five—by his first wife who was a second cousin of President Taylor. Of these only a girl survived and, to increase his presidential connections, she married the grandson of President William Henry Harrison.
He also ran a store at Oregon City, and out of this and his other enterprises, such as a ferry-boat and a livery stable, had made enough by 1850 to send his partner east with $63,000 to buy merchandise. This was lost, but he was good at recuperation and by 1882 was able to divide $75,000 among "his children and step-children, share and share alike."
His hustling from woodchopper to an important status in Oregon City was accompanied by much unselfishness along the way. In the winter of 1843-44 he paid out of his own pockets for a free primary school in the town. In the election of 1845, in which Joe Meek was made sheriff, he was chosen assessor, "traveling in that capacity all the way from ​Vancouver to Eugene, and from The Dalles to Astoria." Many an immigrant without money found hospitality at The Main Street House.
He was a man of remarkable energy and even in his old age could hardly keep quiet. It may be regarded as some confirmation of his authorship of Prairie Flower that, while he attempted no more fiction, his literary habits were not wholly palsied by his money-making activities, since he wrote sketches for the newspapers on pioneer life in Oregon, and on a June day in 1878 dictated 59 pages of long-hand to Bancroft's secretary.
He was also a man of definite opinions. For instance, he was very categorical in his opinion of W. H. Gray, author of the well-known Oregon history—"Billy Gray did not suit me." Moss was still pretty certain of his own points of view when he was 88, according to an Oregonian reporter who went out to Oregon City to see him and who wrote this characterization of him: "The religious convictions of Mr. Moss were always far from orthodox. He was open, brusque of manner, vigorous rather than over-refined, and anything savoring of the hypocritical received his sternest displeasures." He saw the whole nineteenth century sweep of Oregon settlement, from 1842 to 1901, dying in the latter year in Oregon City at the age of ninety-one and a half.
Such were the main details in the life of Oregon's first novelist, who was robbed of his literary reputation and who was to see his brain-child sell into 91,000 copies under an other man's name. One friend took $63,000 back east and lost it and another took his book back east and gave it away.
One historian, Charles L. Camp, still thinks Moss did not write the book and advances the possibilities of a still different author, the Samuel Allen previously referred to. His statements are now given, preliminary to the various affirmative claims for Moss, including Moss' own:
   In an early western story, The Prairie Flower, one of the characters, a trapper, guide and yarn spinner called "Black George," bears a considerable resemblance to Harris. (The Gilliam and Ford emi​grants of 1844 were guided to Oregon by the old mountain man, Moses Harris, often called "Black Harris", or Major Harris.) Bancroft (History of Oregon, vol. i, p. 615) indicates his belief that this character is Harris, but farther on in the same work (vol. 2, p. 690 the statement is made, probably by Mrs. Victor, that the individual represented was George W. Ebberts, the "Black Squire" of the mountains. Sydney W. Moss in his recollections (Pioneer Times, Bancroft Library, Pacific Ms. No. 52) lays claim to the original version of the story, which he says was a true account of his own journey across the plains in '842. Moss sent the manuscript east with Overton Johnson, who turned it over to Emerson Bennett. Bennett changed the names of the principal characters, and published the story at Cincinnati in 1849. (Cf. Wagner, Plains and Rockies, pp. 85-86).
   It seems that the author of The Prairie Flower, whoever he was, had been well initiated into the society of the mountains. Some of the choicest specimens of the trappers dialect in existence flow from the lips of "Black George". A reading of Moss' Pioneer Times would scarcely convince one that Moss could have produced literature of this kind. Suspicions that he did not write the story are strengthened by the title page of a copy of The Prairie Flower, in the Bancroft Library, in which the words "S. and A. Allen" are pencilled in place of the printed name of Emerson Bennett. Perhaps it should be added that there was a Samuel Allen in Oregon in 1847.
Mr. Camp is pretty much alone in his present doubt of Moss' authorship. Both Hubert Howe Bancroft and Frances Fuller Victor believed that he wrote The Prairie Flower. Some slight additional evidence on Mr. Camp's side is an interview by an Oregonian reporter in March, 1898, in which Moss enumerates all the first things he started in Oregon but in which he does not mention Prairie Flower. The novel is also not mentioned in the biographical sketch of Moss in Rev. H. K. Hines' History of Oregon, 1893, nor in Elwood Evans' History of the Pacific Northwest: Oregon and Washington, Vol. 2, 1889. Both these who's who accounts were probably prepared from data furnished first-hand by Moss. Failure in all three cases to mention the most important thing he had done in his life—the writing of a popular novel—does not, however, have any conclusive meaning.
The Oregonian reporter would ordinarily have had some ​questions made out beforehand by himself or the city editor, especially where there was need to guide the garrulities of an old man; and Prairie Flower was probably known neither to the reporter nor city editor, who would have been more interested, anyway, in the first hotel and the first ferry-boat across the Willamette. The author was 88, and the novel, so far and so vaguely back in his long retrospect, might easily have gone unmentioned without prompting. Similarly, he was a very old man, 79 and 83, when the other two ac counts were published, and the young men gathering biographies for subscription books would hardly have been the ones to know about and ask about a novel. And, in addition to all, he never loudly proclaimed his authorship to the public.
It is not the purpose of these pages, however, to be argumentative or to dwell speculatively on how it was or was not. The evidence on one side has been given and the documents on the other side will presently be added. The reader can then decide, in a sort of Lady or the Tiger way, whether Sidney Walter Moss wrote Prairie Flower. Before giving the testimony of Moss' daughter and Moss himself, some comment will be introduced in fuller description of the book and the characters, themselves in literary controversy as to whom they represented in the early life of Oregon. Following is the book's statement about itself:
   The characters—being all real, some represent a class, some an individual only. Prairie Flower is drawn from real life. That the proceedings of herself and tribe may appear mysterious, and, to some, at first thought (her locality and everything considered), out of place, the author does not doubt; but he believes that no one who is conversant with Indian history, and especially with that relating to the North-western tribes and the Moravian Missions during the early settlement of Ohio, will find in this character or her tribe anything overstrained or unnatural.... She is a marked character, distinct and peculiar....
The book is written in the first person. The plot is of two college pals, the hero, Frank Leighton, a doctor, and Charles Huntley, a lawyer, who leave their home in Boston after graduation and go west for adventure. There is an introduc​tory dialogue between the "author" and the "Wanderer" who left the manuscript of the story with the former.
Some explanation of its large sale and of the way it caught on with the public of its day, may be found in the following enthusiastic opinion accredited to a "distinguished Reviewer":
   Prairie Flower is indeed a remarkable book, and contains all the elements for present popularity and enduring fame. It is brim-full of life, love, passion, sentiment, humor, pathos; and its glowing descriptions, romantic incidents, daring adventures, fearful perils, thrilling exploits, dreadful accidents, and hair-breadth escapes—all run through and interweave with a deep, ingenious and intricate plot. The scene is on and over the Broad Prairies and Rocky Mountains of the mighty West, before the conquering tread of civilization had entered upon their vast solitudes, when roving tribes of Indians, and a few half-civilized hunters and trappers, traversed the lonely region, literally carrying their lives in their hands.
   Everybody read it—everybody talked about it—and, for a time, not to have seen Prairie Flower, was to acknowledge yourself guilty of unpardonable ignorance . . .
In further account of it and of how it came to be so completely plagiarized, the author's daughter, Nora,—Lenore, wife of T. W. Clark—wrote to George H. Himes in 1861:
   Oregon City
   Aug. 2, 1861.
   My dear Mr. Himes, In the article you have written in regard to the authorship of The Prairie Flower will you kindly include this statement. In a conversation with my father he says, the Wm. Johnson of whom Mr. Huston speaks is not the Wm. Johnson to whom he gave the manuscript. W . Johnson, my father found, came to Oregon in 1844, was a surveyor and surveyed the Hillsboro district. He left for the east in 1846, my father interesting him with the manuscript also giving him an outfit. If the records of the old survey can be found it will doubtless show Wm. Johnson's signature, therefore, corroborating my father's statement. My oldest brother, in Boise City—A. L. Richardson—may remember something about this matter. If you will write him he probably will tell you much more than he would me. Thanking you for the interest you have shown in this matter I remain
   Very truly yours
   NORA MOSS CLARK.
... From earliest childhood I have heard the facts in connection with the writing of this pioneer book.... My father—in 1842—began The Prairie Flower, incorporating into it many descriptions of actual scenes along the way (to Oregon). The real heroine of the story, as I have always heard, was a beautiful girl of that migration. Her real name I never knew or have forgotten. My mother described her as being very graceful and pretty. A well-known spot on the bluff above the Willamette Falls, called in the book 'The Lover's Retreat", was often pointed out to me as the place where the heroine and her family camped on their arrival at Oregon City. The tale was completed here in Oregon, and parts of it were read at the old Lyceum in the winters of 1842 and 1843. When the Spectator was started and the Argus, later, my father was an occasional contributor, and some of these early effusions are still in his scrapbook.
My father built the first hotel in Oregon, the Main Street House in Oregon City, and among the many guests came eventually William Johnson, an old friend of my father's first wife.... On account of the old association, my father always had a high regard for Mr. Johnson, and when, finally, Mr. Johnson decided to return to the states, he entrusted to Johnson the manuscript of The Prairie Flower, to do with it what he would or could. Mr. Johnson handed the manuscript to Emerson Bennett, who in his preface does not claim to have written it, but gives a fanciful sketch of the mysterious stranger who placed the document in his hands, unexpectedly.
The book became a great success, but my father never received a cent of pay or credit. Oregon was far away then, out of the world, so to speak, and hard to reach or hear from. As a little child I heard all this discussed in the family, but nothing was ever done about it. In the meantime the book went through several editions, amounting in all, so it is claimed, to 100,000 copies, and out of it, Bennett won fame and fortune. No one arising to contest his claim, it always went under his name, and he added to it a weak and inconsequential sequel (Leni Leoti.) I have often heard pioneers say it was the reading of that story that first influenced their fancy for Oregon. Boys, sitting on the old ox-wagon tongues, read it in Missouri, away back in the fifties, before starting out "across the plains". My father is now in his ninety-second year and his memory, of course, is failing, but I speak of matters known in our family for years.
The final document in the case is what Sidney Walter ​Moss said in Pioneer Times, a manuscript of 59 long-hand pages in the Bancroft Library. Moss dictated this to Ban croft's secretary, in Bancroft's presence, at Oregon City on Tuesday, June 18, 1878. He was then 68, not 79 or 83 or 88, and he was talking in the hearing of a man with a rich background of Oregon history, who could challenge his statements and thus shrewdly test their accuracy as he went along. The whole interview contains four references to Prairie Flower, with an introductory and uncomplimentary mention of W. H. Gray, author of History of Oregon, published in 1870. The first references appear on pages 16-19 of the manuscript:
   ...Billy Gray did not suit me. His history of Oregon is one of the most untruthful articles I have ever read. I have known familiarly the circumstances he records there. He is prejudiced and untruthful too. There is scarcely a truth in it. He undertakes to give the history of a little debating society I formed here myself, The Falls Debating Society. Nesmith was one of the members; it was in 1843.
   Some years afterwards there was a book published called the Prairie Flower. He says in his history that William Johnston was the author of the Prairie Flower, a member of our society. A sequel to the Prairie Flower has been published called Lena Leoti. I have never revealed the fact to anyone who was the author of the Prairie Flower, but Johnston was not the author; and Gray of course never knew that I wrote it. Speaking of the Hudson Bay Company, he is equally reckless. I am not an Englishman and do not love even the soil on which they are born, God Almighty knows, but I say give them their due.
   The Prairie Flower as it was published is not like the original. It has been changed from what it was originally. Originally it was intended to describe the experiences of our trip here. Many of the incidents transpired in Oregon. "Mrs. Morton" is the deceased mother-in-law of Mrs. Crawford. One of the characters is Crawford's wife. I do not know if he knows of it. Overton Johnston had as much to do with it as most men. He had it published when he went east.
These paragraphs explain his daughter's use of the names Wm. Johnson, W. Johnson, and William Johnson in her letters to George H. Himes and the Oregonian. She was confused and meant Overton Johnston, but the introduction ​of William Johnston (Gray said "Johnson") not merely as the one who carried the manuscript east but in an actual lit erary capacity, thickens the plot still further and gives us four possible authors of the first Oregon novel. Following is Gray's statement referred to by Moss: "Rocky Mountain men with native wives: . . . and William Johnson, author of the novel 'Leni Leoti; or, the Prairie Flower'. The sub ject was first written and read before the Lyceum, at Ore gon City, in 1843." The remaining two references to the book occur on page 53 of the Moss manuscript:
   The Prairie Flower was written in 1842 and published in 1843. Most of the book was written in 1842 on my journey to Oregon. J. Emerson Bennett claimed it a while but withdrew his claim finally. I have no doubt he wrote the altered parts.
   Bennett wrote the sequel to the Prairie Flower in full (Leni Leoti). The book did not circulate in this part of the country at all until long years after it was published. It was published at Crawfordsville, Indiana. This man Overton Johnston who took it back had it published—a more worthy young man never emigrated from Indiana or any other state. I do not claim the authorship at all.
Because of its frontier setting, it is a curious addition to the history of plagiarism. The spurious author, Emerson Bennett, "withdrew his claims finally"—but after he had received all the rewards and when it was too late to make restitution.
The loss to the author was indeed great, in royalties as well as in celebrity as a writer. By 1881, 91,000 copies had been sold.
To complete the description of this first Oregon novel, there is selected from its contents the following romantic episode:
The Hero Proposes
From The Prairie Flower
It was a lovely day in the spring of 1 843. On the banks of the romantic Willamette, under the shade of a large tree, I was seated. By my side—with her sweet face averted and crimson with blushes, her right hand clasped in mine, her left unconsciously toying with a beautiful flower, which failed ​to rival her own fair self—sat Lilian Huntley. It was one of those peculiar moments which are distinctly remembered through life. I had just offered her my hand and fortune, and was waiting, with all the trembling impatience of a lover, to hear the result.
"Say, Lilian, sweet Lilian, will you be mine?"
Her lily hand trembled, I felt its velvet-like pressure, but her tongue had lost the power of utterance. It was enough; and the next moment she was strained to my heart, with a joy too deep for words.
"And when shall it be? when shall my happiness be con summated, dear Lilian?" I at length ventured to ask.
For a time she did not reply; and then raising her angelic face, and fastening her soft, beaming eyes, moist with tears of joy, upon mine, she said, in a low, sweet, tremulous tone:
"On the day when we are all made glad by the presence of my brother."
"Alas!" groaned I, mentally; "that day may never come!
2
A Famous Local Satire of 1852 by W. L. Adams of Yamhill County
The First Literary Book Published in Oregon
Prairie Flower was the first work of fiction by an Oregonian, but A Melodrame Entitled "Treason, Strategems and Spoils", In Five Acts, By Breakspear, was the first book of a literary character published in Oregon. "Breakspear" was William L. Adams, who three years later became owner and editor of the Oregon City Argus. From his log cabin in Yamhill County he had been contributing various pieces to the Oregonian over the signature of "Junius", which had "attracted much attention on account of their ability and pungent sarcasm." These were followed by his dramatic satire. It first ran serially in the Oregonian in the issues of February 14 and 21 and March 6 and 13, 1852, and was then published separately as a pamphlet by "Thos. J. Dryer, The ​Oregonian Office, 1852." It was the most eagerly read and most talked of publication of its time. Its triumphant reception has been described by Elwood Evans:
   It was written in rhyme and blank verse, and contained cuts of the leading Democrats who followed Pratt's leadership. This work caused great excitement throughout the territory. Crowds flocked to every postoffice to get a copy and read it, till half the people of Oregon had committed most of it to memory. When Governor Gaines and the Whig officials learned that Adams was the author of "Junius" and "Breakspear" they conditionally bought the Spectator press and offered it to him as a present if he would start a Whig paper, offering to give him all the patronage at his disposal. The offer was declined for fear of injuring the Whig paper in Portland.
Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor referred to it as follows:
   …a satire written in dramatic verse, and styled a Melodrama, illustrated with rude wood-cuts, and showing considerable ability both for composition and burlesque. This publication, both on account of its political effect and because it was the first book written and published in Oregon of an original nature, deserves to be remembered.
Two copies are preserved in the library of the Oregon Historical Society. It is a pamphlet of 32 pages, in addition to the paper covers, printed in double columns. The illustrations mentioned by Mrs. Victor have been further described by George H. Himes as "a number of rude cartoons—the first attempt of the kind in the territory—which added spice to the text." There were five of these, two on the back cover without titles, and three scattered through the book with captions as follows:
William L. Adams, who at the age of 31 had leaped into fame with his satire, was a Campbellite. He had received his education at Bethany College, Virginia, where he lived in the house of the president, the great Alexander Campbell himself. Because of over-study and weakened eyesight, he ​had to leave a month before graduation. He was later given an M. A. degree by Christian College, Monmouth. Brilliant work, like his melodrama, is usually not accidental or without preparation, and the following glimpse of his student days makes it less surprising that he should electrify pioneer Oregon with literature from his Yamhill cabin:
   After his lessons were all mastered, he made it a rule to snatch up his pen at twelve o'clock at night and write some facetious article for a paper published at Bethany, for which he generally received a dollar. The money he received in this way served to bridge his way over many a financial chasm. His fame as a satirist rose high when it leaked out that he was the author of the articles which depicted well-known characters.
He came to Oregon in 1848 with his wife and two children. His wagon cover was decorated with an American eagle and the Latin words “Hic Transit.” In the early part of the trip his precious books got water-soaked from crossing the fords and he had to stop several days to dry them out. He was hospitably received at Oregon City, where he arrived without money. He borrowed two dollars to pay the ferry charges across the Willamette—probably the ferry of the author of Prairie Flower. When he arrived at Yamhill he had ten cents left, and he lost this through a leaky pocket during the winter. “They boiled peas for breakfast, dinner and supper, and browned them for coffee.”
He had been a school teacher before coming to Oregon and his services in that capacity were quickly in demand at the Yamhill settlement.
   He and the neighbors soon rolled up a log hut for a school-house, with a fireplace that took in a common fence rail... His boy scholars generally dressed in buckskin, and wore moccasins. His girl pupils dressed in shirting colored with tea-grounds; and most of them went to school barefoot. Of his boy scholars, one afterwards became the editor of a medical journal, one became the superintendent of public instruction for Oregon, one went to Congress and was appointed by Lincoln as chief justice of Idaho, while another was elected governor of Oregon and was subsequently appointed governor of Utah.
He has been called “The Father of the Republican Party in Oregon.” Although he would not accept the offer of a ​newspaper plant in 1852, through unwillingness to compete with the Oregonian, he paid $1200 for the languishing Oregon Spectator in 1855 and changed it to the Oregon Argus. It is said that Abraham Lincoln read the Argus and admired the writings of its editor. At any rate, along with Dryer of the Oregonian, he was suitably rewarded in 1861, being made collector of customs at Astoria. While there he helped edit the Marine Gazette. Poor health caused him to resign in 1867, After traveling for two years, he returned to his Yamhill farm.
Then in 1873, at the age of 52, this remarkable man went to Philadelphia and studied medicine for about a year, picking up during that time not only an M.D. degree but an L.L.D. degree and a gold medal for “eminent attainments in medical science.” For three years he enjoyed a big practice in Portland. In 1877 he moved to Hood River, and rounded out his days as Dr. Adams.
The writing urge in him, however, would not permanently be smothered by other activities. In 1888—36 years after his brilliant “Breakspear”—he published another book, this time on a learned subject and having a sober title, but informal and witty and candid in treatment, with a rich and clever garniture of cases and illustrations. It is now very scarce, all the more so because apparently it has not been much known or appreciated by experts in old volumes. Those astute gentlemen, who nevertheless often lose their characteristic awareness where their catalogues do not point the way, may have been deceived by the title page into believing that this was just another medical tract, notwithstanding the Portland and George H. Himes imprint. Although Elwood Evans called it “the most remarkable book of the age”, it is not listed in Smith’s Pacific Northwest Americana. Copies are now owned, however, by the Portland Library and the libraries of the Oregon Historical Society and the University of Oregon Medical School. The author called it History of Medicine and Surgery from the Earliest Times. It exposed “all frauds, medical, theological and political, by which king​craft and priestcraft have fattened on ignorance in the world's history." As he said in his preface, it did what no book had ever done before—"gave a complete history of Medical Science as it staggered along its tortuous and be clouded path, since it shouldered the first leper in the time of Moses, down to the time it packed off its last victim to some cemetery." It had a paper cover in bluish gray, contained 178 pages in 8-point type, and was priced at $1.50. Its Oregon references were numerous. The frontispiece was a picture of himself —serious in expression, short whiskers running from ear to ear under his chin, almost equal, in fact, in conventional M.D. appearance to the portraits in the big family doctor books.
He looked like a doctor but he would not concede enough to the impressiveness of that profession to talk like one. He talked like he wrote, pointedly and with originality, his rare gift of exposition giving freshness and clarity even to his medical explanations. We are told that he had an astonishing memory. Names, faces, dates, things that he had heard and things that he had read came to him across a gap of half a century almost as undimmed as happenings of yesterday. He was kind and helpful towards the poor and the sick, and, al though possessing tremendous energy himself, he was toler ant towards the lazy and the amiably worthless. Judge Pratt, one of the earlier victims of his literary pungency, said that his word was as good as any other man's oath. He was twice married and was the father of eight children. Such on the personal side was this good neighbor, good citizen and good Campbellite, who with a pen in his hand was a pioneer Voltaire, characterized by George H. Himes as follows:
   As a master of cutting invective he was rarely equalled and never surpassed. His proficiency in this direction, together with similar qualifications on the part of two of his territorial contemporaries, gave rise to what was locally known as the "Oregon Style". He was fearless and audacious to the fullest degree, had the pugnacity of a bull dog, never happier than when lampooning his opponents, and his efforts were untiring.
His "Breakspear", published in 1852, is still probably the ​best example of satire in Oregon literature. Certainly nothing written since in the state has created the stir that it did. To give as much of an idea as possible of its flavor, its dedication will be quoted, its characters will be speculatively identified, and a short dialogue will be taken from one of its scenes.
Dedication of the Melodrame
As it hath been the usual custom of authors of all time to dedicate their productions to some one of the distinguished patrons of science or literature, your humble servant, "following in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessors," would humbly beg to present the following play to the
I have been the more induced to make this dedication, as the governor of our infant territory has unkindly deprived this learned body of the territorial library.
I would also here respectfully suggest to all authors, the propriety of contributing each a copy of their works towards forming a new library, to be lodged in the archives of Salem, and the keys to be hung at the belt of the honorable O. C. Pratt, the modern "Petros", on which rests the fabric of progressive democracy, and against which the "gates of hell" can only prevail.
The only apology your humble author sees fit to offer for the many defects which are to be found in his production,
Characters of the Melodrame
Reference has been made to the two copies possessed by the library of the Oregon Historical Society. In both of these the dramatis personae have been identified in the persons of prominent Oregonians of the period, by a different guesser for each copy. The following chart shows the cast of characters and the Oregonians they were supposed to represent, as figured out for the first copy by Sam Clarke and for the second copy by Eugene Semple. According to George H. Himes, the guesses of Sam Clarke for the first copy are the “nearest correct.”
| Characters | First Copy | Second Copy |
| JUDGE | O. C. PRATT | SAME |
| CHICOPEE | A. BUSH | SAME |
| Rex (Log-Roller) | COL. KING | SAME |
| ARNOLD (Federal Officer) | J.QUINN THORNTON | J. ANDERSON |
|- |BLACK; BLACKINSTOS = — .veeee Dick (Spies) - = - opevirp ee Grus (Town Proprietor) - DR. WILSON SAME Unc ie Nep (Councilman) - FRED WAYMIRE DEADY Peter (A Portland Patton) - WATERMAN SAME HOTSPUR - - - NESMITH LOVEJOY GUMBO - 2 = = + VAULT WAYMIRE PARK - - - - + + SAM PARKER SAME
A SCENE FROM THE MELODRAME
Runner. (Handing the judge a paper)
Here, read this Oregonian, and you'll see, Whether our foes, are yet prepared to flee, Or stand up bravely for the people’s cause, And battle for their rights and sacred laws.
JupcE (after reading the paper, spitting upon st, stamping st violently under feet, and frothing at the mouth,) opens thus—
Blood! thunder! fury! big devils and imps! Volcanoes and cataracts! earthquakes and Hurrycanes! whirlpools and breakers! blue laws And coon skins! h—1l] and damnation! Dryer! Dryer!! Dryer and Gaines! “Skookum” and Nelson! !
RuNNER.
Gumbo! for God’s sake hand him a chew of tobacco— then stand from under. ​om under.
JUDGE proceeds, (with violent gesture of the arms, and Bel shazzar movement of the knees,) “I am a host!” a legion, an army, Armed and equipped, marshalled, and Panting for fight. I could easy control The world if I chose, from north to south pole. The mud sills of h-ll . I could even tare up, And old devils and young, I too could scare up. I, I will stand on Mt. Hood, and gather Black tempest clouds, surcharged with dread thunder, Then hurl with such fury, the weapons of Jove, Their guns I’ll dismount, their fortress move, Dismiss all their souls to regions below, Or send them off crippled, and howling with woe. GUMBo. That idea, judge, is appropr’ate and good, Do stand as far off at least as Mt. Hood. 3 Ruth Rover, 1854, by MRs. MARGARET J. BAILEY of FRENCH PRAIRIE For the first highly productive decade in Oregon litera ture—from 1849 to 1859, the ten years preceding statehood —six books might have been claimed instead of five, by counting one that has been described in a previous chapter. This was Traits of American Indian Life and Character, by Peter Skene Ogden of Oregon City—published by Smith, Elder & Company in London in 1853. It is mentioned again here to complete the chronology. Next after Ogden's sketches, in the earliest census of Ore gon literary volumes, was Grains, or Passages in the Life of Ruth Rover, with Occasional Pictures of Oregon, Natural and Moral, by Mrs. Margaret Jewett Bailey. It was printed in 1854 by Carter & Austin, a Portland firm. What the book was like it is impossible to say first-hand, since no copies can be located. With the disappearance several years ago of the one owned by the Oregon Historical Society, it has pass ​out of recorded existence. Mr. Frederick W. Skiff never numbered it among the rare finds of his early collecting days in the Aurora community, and apparently Bancroft, whose combings covered a much earlier period, did not secure it or know about it.
We must get our knowledge of it from what sounds at this distant date decidedly like a prejudiced review contributed to the Oregonian of August 5, 1 854, by an anonymous person signing himself "Squills". His notice of the book was long and uncomplimentary.
Margaret Jewett Bailey was the wife of Dr. W. J. Bailey. Her maiden name was Margaret J. Smith and she came out with the early missionaries as a teacher. According to one historical reference, "Mrs. Bailey was the first white woman who made a home in the beautiful plain of the French Prairie." Charles Wilkes told about visiting their home there in June, 1841:
   We . . . entered the fine prairies, part of the farm of Dr. Bailey. This was one of the most comfortable I had yet seen, and was certainly in the neatest order. Dr. Bailey had married one of the girls who came out with the missionaries (1837) and the mistress of the establishment was as pleasing as it was well conducted. Dr. Bailey desiring to accompany us to the falls, I gladly concluded to await their dinner, and before it was served had an opportunity of looking about the premises. The locality resembles the prairies I have spoken of, but there was something in the arrangements of the farm that seemed advanced beyond the other settlements of the country. The garden was, in particular, exceedingly well kept, and had in it the best vegetables of our own country. This was entirely the work of Mrs. Bailey, whose activity could not rest content until it was accomplished. She had followed the mission as a teacher, until she found there was no field for labor. She had been in hope that the great missionary field to the north, of which I have before spoken, would be occupied; but this being neglected, she had left them.
Guests at the Bailey home were generally impressed with the happy married life of this couple. Nevertheless, there are some letters in the Oregon Historical Society from her to Judge Deady revealing her wishes for a divorce.
Farnham, even earlier than Wilkes—in November, 1839 ​—passed a night at the Baileys, "in the delightful society of my worthy host and his amiable wife...."
   The latter had come from the States, a member of the Methodist Episcopal mission, and had consented to share the bliss and ills of life with the adventurous Gael ; and a happy little family they were. The next day Mrs. Bailey kindly undertook to make me a blanket coat by the time I should return, and the mission doctor and myself started for the mission.
Her husband, Dr. William J. Bailey, was of good parent age but had been wild in his youth. After an Indian attack on the Rogue River, he made his way to the Willamette Mission more dead than alive. He completed his medical studies under Dr. Elijah White, married her, and became a prominent citizen of the Champoeg district. Whether she was not so happy with him as she seemed to outsiders, or whether it was the general loneliness of French Prairie with its squaw wives that caused her to take up literature as a means of escape, or whether she just liked to write, we find her contributing to the Oregon Spectator almost as soon as it furnished an outlet for local compositions. The poem "May Morning in Oregon", signed m. j. b. and quoted in the chapter "The First Periodical Literature", was by her.
Although she was thus not without experience, Ruth Rover was a good deal of a jump from the short things she had done. Its 96 double-column pages in the small type of the period would be equivalent to a two-hundred-page book of today. Her labor had cruel rewards —completely lost now, even as a literary curiosity, and receiving at the time the uncomplimentary and unchivalrous review of "Squills" in the Oregonian:
   This work does great credit to the printers, Messrs. Carter & Austin, the typography being very clear and the cover being neat and immaculate in tint. We seldom read books of feminine production, believing their (the females') province to be darning stockings, pap and gruel, children, cook-stoves, and the sundry little affairs that make life comparatively comfortable and makes them, what Providence designed them, "Help-meets."
   But affliction will come upon us, even here in Oregon, where we are castigated with so many already. It is bad enough to have unjust ​laws—poor lawyers and worse judges—taxes, and no money, with the combined evils they saddle on us, without this last visitation of Providence—an “Authoress”. In the words of Homer (or his translator) we say, “and may this first invasion be the last.”
   Of the style we say nothing—that is as usual apologized for in the preface, and moreover the writer is a “school marm.” We have read the book entire—one cover and ninety-six pages, double columns. In the second chapter Ruth has three lovers—now, this is unfair, and contrary to rule: modern romances usually devote 2 vols. octavo to one lover. “Young America” is fast; however, we quote from the chapter mentioned of the last of the three:
   “I can think of him only as a grave with a poison flag growing above it and contaminating the air with its poisonous breath”.
   We hope she had not the Standard in her “mind's eye” when she wrote of the “Poison Flag”.
   There is considerable piety throughout the book, which is well enough in its way; also any quantity of epistles, several scraps from journals about camp meetings, the vanity of the wicked world, &c., &c., &c. They are generally of the Brother Knapp and Burchard order and like those gentlemen she appears to have been on exceedingly familiar terms with the Lord.
   Our space being limited, we can give no more quotations from the book, so must leave the reader to peruse it for himself. To call it trash, would be impolite, for the writer is an “authoress”. Pages 86 and 87 contain some pretty morceaux from Ruth’s diary. We think, however, that private biographies are an affliction barely tolerable—when a Napoleon, a Byron, or any other lion makes his exit, it is well enough to know “How that animal eats, how he snores, and how he drinks”. But who the dickens cares about the existence of a fly, or in whose pan of molasses the insect disappeared?
“Squills” was savage and ungallant, but he had one excellent quality not always possessed by reviewers—he could give a pretty clear idea of what a book was like. On this account good has come out of evil, even to Mrs. Bailey. In the unhappy sequel of events, his unfavorable description is practically all that has preserved it to recollection as a book over which a sensitive pioneer woman struggled in disappointed hope.
4
Captain Gray’s Company, 1859, by Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway of Yamhill County.
Writing in 1905 in the introduction of another book, From ​the West to the West, Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway spoke reminiscently of her first literary effort.
   Fifty years ago, as an illiterate, inexperienced settler, a busy overworked child-mother and housewife, an impulse to write was born within me, inherited from my Scottish ancestry, which no lack of an education or opportunity could allay. So I wrote a little book which I called “Captain Gray's Company, or Crossing the Plains and Living in Oregon”.
She had forgotten the conventional punctuation for such double titles. It was correctly Captain Gray’s Company; or, Crossing the Plains and Living in Oregon. Portland, Oregon: Printed and Published by S. J . McCormick, 1859. The caustic “Squibbs” said of Ruth Rover that the style was “as usual apologized for in the preface.” The hard-hearted rascal indeed knew the habits of the “authoresses” of the 50’s in such matters, to which Mrs. Duniway was no exception. When she sent her book out into the world from “Sunny Hill Side, Oregon,” a farm in Yamhill County, she gave the reader many reasons for his indulgence:
   A sensible and popular lady writer has remarked that want of time should be no apology for defects of authorship. I heartily agree with that lady's views, but when a frontier farmer's wife undertakes to write a book, who has to be lady, nurse , laundress, seamstress, cook, and dairy-woman by turns, and who attends to all these duties, unaided, save by the occasional assistance of an indulgent husband who has cares enough of his own, in such a case—and this is not an exaggerated one, as many who know me can testify—“want of time”—is a necessary, unavoidable excuse for fault of style or discrepancy in composition. Youth and inexperience, also, are other excuses, which, though I am not exactly ashamed of, especially the former, must, in justice to myself, be hinted at, in this my first literary effort of magnitude.
At the time her book was published she was twenty-five years old and had been married for about six years to Ben C. Duniway, a young farmer of Clackamas County. “Such learning as she received consisted chiefly of a five-months term in an academy ... in Illinois.” She was the sister of Harvey W. Scott and had come to Oregon in 1852. After spending the winter at Lafayette, she was a teacher in Polk ​County at Cincinnati, later called Eola. Then she married, lived for four years on a Clackamas County donation claim, and five years on a Yamhill County farm, where between times of the drudgeries she referred to in her preface, she wrote Captain Gray's Company. It was opportunely finished, for the small amount of leisure she had somehow found and had so profitably used, was soon to be taken from her with a completeness beyond her gallant energies to control. The farm was lost, her husband was crippled in an accident; she had him and her children to support. She taught school and kept boarders at Lafayette. Later at Albany she taught school for a year and then ran a millinery store for six years.
In the meantime she had become active for woman's suffrage in Oregon. She bought a printing plant in Portland, and, in May, 1871, started the New Northwest, a weekly journal, which she continued for 16 years. It was a vigorous champion of woman's rights, but was also an able and important literary paper. She was a friend of Belle W. Cooke, the Salem poet, and sided with Minnie Myrtle Miller in the public airing of her shattered romance with Joaquin. To the civic and cultural development of Oregon her contributions were great and her leadership extended without fatigue over a long period of time. She was the mother of six children. One of her sons was state printer of Oregon and one was president of the University of Montana. She died in Portland on October 11, 1915, at the age of 81.
Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor said of Captain Gray's Company that the incidents of the book "showed little imagination and a too literal observation of camp life in crossing the plains. Mrs. Duniway did better work later, although her abilities lie rather with solid prose than fiction." In addition to numerous addresses and articles, her later books were My Musings, 1875; David and Anna Matson, 1876; From the West to the West, 1905; and Pathbreaking: An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States, 1914.
​Captain Gray's Company is now very rare and when a copy turns up and goes on the market it commands a high price. The reason for its scarcity has been explained by Mr. Frederick W. Skiff in his interesting book, Adventures in Americana:
   The first romance or novel printed west of the Rocky Mountains was entitled Captain Gray's Company, written by Abigail Scott Duniway and published in Portland, Oregon, in 1859. The printing and binding of this volume was very poorly, even crudely done. The edition was small. Mrs. Duniway either could not or did not remove the larger part of the edition from the printing plant and subsequently the printing plant burned and the fire consumed the unremoved portion of the edition. It is probable that less than seventy-five copies of the book were actually given out to the public and of this number Mrs. Duniway presented copies to relatives and friends. From these presentation sources over the space of years have come nearly all the available copies that we have had. Three copies of the book have passed through my ownership, while a fourth copy remains in my possession.
Mrs. Duniway divided Captain Gray's Company into 36 chapters, engagingly captioned as follows:
"Marrying for Land"
From Chapter 28 of Captain Gray's Company
Reader, as we wish to give you a general idea of the different classes of Oregonians, we propose to take you to a mountain home, where lives the proprietor of a section claim, ....
Gustavus Willard soon found himself immensely rich. But as the rapid accumulation of property too often increases a desire for more, he became eager to hold more of the valley prairie than as a bachelor, he was entitled to claim.
Gustavus Willard must have a wife. That was settled. If he couldn't get somebody, he must take nobody, or her sister. A squatter lived about three miles from our bachelor's ranche. He had a daughter thirteen years of age, "verdant" as the grass she trod; more thoughtless than the cows she milked. Our bachelor called at the residence of the mountain lassie. He thought she wasn't much like the dark-eyed niece who kept house for him at his ranche, neither did she suit his fancy like Fanny Waters, who wouldn't have him.
"But then," he mused, "she'll hold that splendid half section of land in the bottom, if I'll marry her, and I can't think of giving it up. I'll be compelled to, though, by next December, if I don't marry somebody."
5
The Lost Frontier Stories of Charles Applegate of Yoncalla
The only authority for calling Charles Applegate an author is Bancroft's History of Oregon. In volume two there is this reference:
   Charles Applegate wrote and published some tales of western life, which he carefully concealed from those who might recognize them.
To write factual accounts, and adventures if they were true, seemed to have been respectable enough, and romances could be openly acknowledged by women like Mrs. Bailey and Mrs. Duniway, but when a robust pioneer turned to fiction his inclination was to keep it dark. Moss was reticent about Prairie Flower until it made a stir in the world; Adams published "Breakspear" anonymously; Ogden did not reveal his authorship of Traits of American Indian Life and Character; and Charles Applegate had the most sustained and successful secretiveness of all.
As has been mentioned, his descendants remember nothing about his writings. Miss Eva Applegate, one of his twin granddaughters at Hot Lake, Oregon, in helping to locate the stories, said:
   My sister and I are at a loss which way to turn, as we have never read these writings of our grandfather and know nothing of them.
Dr. Joseph Schafer, who has written extensively on the Applegates, likewise has no knowledge of Charles Applegate as an author:
   I have never heard that Charles had literary proclivities, although I see no reason why the blacksmith of the family should not have written quite as well as the carpenter (Lindsay) who had written some things. It may be that Charles Applegate gave H. H. Bancroft a manuscript of his recollections. In that case it will be at Berkeley.
The assessment rolls of 1844 show that he was one of the substantial taxpayers of the territory, though somewhat below Lindsay and much below Jesse. His big house about two miles from Yoncalla is still the loveliest dwelling in northern Douglas County. This, in the old days, was the ​favorite gathering place of the Applegate clan. Jesse was contributing letters and articles to the newspapers and was later to write his pioneer classic, A Day With the Cow-Column. It was a literary atmosphere.
The reference quoted from Bancroft is in confirmation of another given as a footnote in volume one:
   Charles Applegate was two years the senior of Lindsey. In 1829 he married Miss Melinda Miller, and with her and several children emigrated to Oregon. He is described as a man of iron constitution, determined will, and charitable disposition. He also possessed considerable natural ability as a writer, having published several tales of frontier life. He died at his home in Douglas County, in August, 1879; respected by all who knew him. Salem Statesmen, Aug. 15, 1879; Roseburg West Star, Aug. 15, 1879.
Mr. Ronald H. Beattie, not finding the stories in the Bancroft Library, nor a manuscript of recollections mentioned as a possibility by Dr. Schafer, reported also that only one of the two newspaper references was available there:
   The Bancroft Library has the Statesman files and in the issue of August 13, 1879, I find a notice of Charles Applegate's death at Yoncalla on August 9, 1879. Included is the sentence about his being a man of iron constitution, but nothing as to his being a writer. Presumably the latter statement appeared in the account given by the Roseburg paper but it is not in the Bancroft files.
   There is nothing catalogued in the Bancroft Library about Charles Applegate, nor can I find any other clue as to his writings. Thus I do not know whether they were published in book form, in periodicals or newspapers.
The Roseburg West Star, containing the Charles Applegate obituary, is likewise absent from all Oregon libraries and cannot be found in Roseburg or Douglas County. The search, so far ending everywhere in discomfiture, is too interesting to be abandoned. It is a provocative case for a literary secret service.