J. A. Guyer had provided the financial backing that the young son needed. On the editorial page was a 400-word article by Cox saying he was turning the paper over to the new owners February 1.
Thus was introduced into the journalism of Pendleton and of Oregon a character which has been one of the most influential in the history of Oregon journalism—"Sam" Jackson.
C. S. Jackson was born on his father's Virginia plantation September 15, 1860. His bent toward printing was early demonstrated. When he was 16 years old his father gave him $20 to help finance a trip to the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. Instead, the young Jackson used the money to buy a small hand printing-press and some type. With this he set up a little printing business, putting back into the "plant" the profits from job printing done for friends and neighbors.
Three years later young Jackson came west —oddly enough going to Pendleton in April, 1880, from Portland, a move he was to retrace later. His father gave him $250 for the trip to Oregon—and this time Sam used the money for the specified purpose. His first job in Pendleton was the agency for a stage line—and one of the best of the many Sam Jackson stories, some of which, with himself as the butt, he told over and over with evident relish, was included in an article written by Samuel G. Blythe for the "Who's Who and Why" department of the Saturday Evening Post, November 2, 1911. After relating that the young Sam thought Oregonians really had web feet, Blythe told of Sam's first job in Pendleton. "Dear Pa," the young man is said to have written, "I've got a good job. I get forty dollars a month and room and board, and I'm doing fine. Your loving son, Sam."
Three weeks later, so the story goes, Sam received this reply:
"Dear Sam: I have your letter saying you are getting forty dollars a month as stage agent. You must not keep that place, Sam. You are not worth it. Your loving father."
Jackson is supposed to have received the job because the employer thought he was as homely as Abraham Lincoln and believed such an unpromising looking youngster must, after all, be good for something.
As a publisher, a framer of editorial policies, a crusader for whatever he thought would benefit the people of Pendleton and of Oregon, there is a unanimity of praise for this son of Virginia.
Judge Norborne Berkeley, early resident, speaks (90) of Jackson's courage, generosity, and boundless energy—all of which contributed to his newspaper success. "He was entirely fearless," said Judge Berkeley. "'Sam, you ought to carry a gun,' I used to say to him; but in those wild days of 55 years ago he never did." This in spite of the fact that his paper was outspoken against the cattle-
