Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/288

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
HISTORY OF OREGON NEWSPAPERS
279

an anti-slavery paper going in the town. He soon turned over the paper to James Newton Gale, one of several journalistic brothers who came west in 1853 from Posey county, Indiana. Gale was at the time conducting a bookstore in Eugene. Like his three brothers,Jones, Tom, and Henry R., James Newton Gale was a printer, and Shaw regarded him as the man to keep the Republican flag waving.

Gale had married Elizabeth Kincaid, sister of Harrison R. Kincaid, and he employed Harrison, then just 26 years old, to help get out the paper. Kincaid already had distinguished himself, more or less anonymously, on the old People's Press, as told in a previous chapter. Gale ran the Republican until May, 1863, when it was consolidated with the Oregon Argus. Early in 1864 he went to Portland to become editor of the Union, started on the same floor as the Oregonian in its old waterfront office. Influential citizens were backing the new paper, on which two elements had combined—the Republicans who had fallen out with Editor Amory Holbrook of the Oregonian, and the printers, who, recently formed into a union, had had a disagreement with Publisher Pittock. W. Lair Hill was the first editor, acting for Governor Gibbs and fellow-Republicans. He was succeeded by Gale. When the Union was suspended in May, Gale was called to Astoria by a group of business men to edit the Marine Gazette, Astoria's first paper. He remained there a year. Mrs. Gale's dislike for the cool climate of Astoria led him to leave for Olympia, where he was associated with Elisha Treat Gunn in starting the Transcript. He and his wife went from Astoria to Olympia in Indian canoes, up the Columbia to the Cowlitz, then up the Cowlitz. . . . Handicapped in his later years by failing health, he died at Olympia in 1889, aged 58. His daughter, Mrs. A. C. Barette, lives in Eugene.

When the Argus-Republican merger was taken over by the Statesman in November, 1863, Mr. Kincaid, with Joel Ware and William Thompson, obtained the part of the Argus plant (including the old Spectator press) which was not needed on the Statesman, and started (March 12, 1864) the Oregon State Journal, Republican paper. Thompson left the partnership immediately, Ware took very little part in publishing the State Journal, and Kincaid carried on the paper for 45 years, suspending it in 1909, when he was 73 years old. He was secretary of state 1895-1899. The paper continued throughout a devoted and influential advocate of Republican policies.

The Register was established in 1884 by S. M. Yuran, practical printer, and J. M. Hodson, as a Wednesday weekly. Later Yoran Bros. (Darwin E. and William C.) handled the paper and conducted a semi-weekly, Wednesdays and Saturdays. In 1898 Condon & Edwards (Chester Edwards and Seymour W. Condon), who had bought the paper from the Yorans, established the Morning Register, which ran continuously until 1930, a short time before the