page_title: George W. Joseph
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: George W. Joseph / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: George W. Joseph and Bertha Snell of Portland Oregon
context_page_description: George W. P. Joseph was an attorney and Republican politician in the U.S. state of Oregon. A native of California, his family relocated to Oregon when he was young. There he would practice law and serve in the Oregon State Senate.
context_section_description: Joseph was born on May 10, 1872, in a log cabin on Joseph Creek in Modoc County, California. The son of Delilah Jane Joseph (née Heath) and Edwin Worthington Joseph, Joseph moved to Oregon in 1876 with his parents. In 1889, he graduated from high school in Lakeview, Oregon. He then studied law under the tutelage of two local judges, and worked as a retail clerk. Judge Townshend encouraged Joseph to move to Portland to pursue a career in law, and arranged for his employment there.
  Joseph moved to Portland and began working for the law offices of Watson, Hume and Watson in 1892. He passed the bar exam in 1893. Joseph formed a close friendship with Julius Meier, who was also just completing his law studies, in 1892. The two formed a partnership in 1895, and Joseph was retained as an attorney by Meier & Frank and by several individual members of the Meier family.
  Two years later, the Alaska gold rush hit, and Joseph traveled to Alaska with a Judge Adams to explore the opportunity. They staked a claim and established a mine. Joseph ultimately returned to Oregon poorer than when he had left, and resumed his partnership with Meier. During this period, Joseph found a respect for the political progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt.
  Joseph married Bertha L. Snell in the fall of 1903 in Drain, Oregon. They had a son, George W. Joseph Jr., two years later. His son, George W. Joseph Jr., was born in 1905; George Jr. went on to chair the state hydroelectric commission, appointed by Gov. Meier, and also served as president of the Oregon mental health association.
  After Meier left the partnership to join his family's department store, Meier & Frank, Joseph partnered with Bert E. Haney to form the legal practice Joseph, Haney, and Littlefield. Notably, he drew up and executed the will of his friend E. Henry Wemme, owner of the Mount Hood Company and, thereby, the Bull Run Hydroelectric Project and the historic Barlow Road.
  Joseph was a noted opponent of an effort to call a state constitutional convention in 1905, which was generally popular among Portland attorneys.
caption: Joseph married Bertha Snell in September 1903.
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