Portland, Oregon: Its History and Builders/Volume 3/James Robert Cardwell
The first resident dentist of Portland, Dr. James Robert Cardwell, still practices his profession in this city, which has been his home since 1852. As one of the organizers of the State Horticultural Society, the Oregon Humane Society, and the North Pacific Dental College, he has left his impress indelibly engraven upon the pages of the state's history. The story of his life is written in terms of honor, and in memory and activities forms a connecting link between the primitive past and the progressive present.
He was born in Springfield, Illinois, September 11, 1830, a son of William Lee and Mary Ann (Biddle) Cardwell. The first census taken in Virginia makes record of one Cardwell as the only one of the name living in the United States. He came from France and in temperament and physique was typically Latin. He married into a French family—the lady a Miss Perrin—and they settled in Lunenburg county, Virginia, where he conducted a tobacco plantation. Their family included several daughters and five sons—Richard, John, Henry, Daniel and Perrin. Family history has it that one of the daughters became the wife of the father of Robert E. Lee, which accounts for the middle name of William Lee Cardwell, father of Dr. Cardwell, who was a cousin of Robert E. Lee and to whom he was always loyally attached.
Perrin Cardwell, the grandfather of Dr. Cardwell, was an overseer—in the terms of the south—on the estate of John Randolph. He died in 1852 on his estate of six hundred and forty acres near Knoxville, Tennessee, which he had purchased from the government about 1809 for twelve and a half cents per acre. At that date he emigrated from Virginia to Tennessee, where he afterward made his home. Like his father, he was of the Latin type, dark complexion and of powerful physique, weighing two hundred and thirtyfive pounds when a young man. He was noted as a wrestler and all-round athlete. Fabulous stories are told in the family of his great feats of strength and wrestling bouts. His father lived to old age, and the mother to the age of one hundred and ten years, Perrin Cardwell himself being ninety-nine years of age at the time of his death. At the age of twenty he married a Miss Washam, a blond Saxon, aged nineteen, and they lived together for seventy-eight years. Thirteen children were born unto them, of whom nine reached middle life or old age.
Dr. Cardwell's grandmother on the maternal side was Polly Ann Capels, of Lynchburg, Virginia. The grandfather was Benjamin Biddle, the youngest son of a wealthy Welsh family, but primogeniture left him comparatively poor. Leaving home, he first went to Virginia about 1780. There he bought negroes which he took to the south, selling them to the sugar planters, and in 1830 he became a resident of Illinois. It was on Christmas day of 1829 that his daughter, Mary Ann Caples Biddle, who was then a resident of Tennessee^ became the wife of William Lee Cardwell, and in the spring of 1830 they removed to Springfield, Illinois, where on the nth of September of that year Dr. Cardwell was born, his mother being then in her eighteenth year, his father in his twentyfifth year.
William L. Cardwell had obtained a classical education, had taught school, had studied law for a short time and also was a licensed physician. He regarded farming, however, as the ideal life, and on coming to Illinois located and made his home on a sixteenth section—school land—in the vicinity of Springfield. Later he went security for a brother-in-law and in the financial panic of 1837 lost his property. He then removed to Carlinville, Illinois, and with another brother-inlaw turned his attention to building operations and furniture manufacture. He was a natural mechanic and readily took to the business, for he did not like the practice of medicine. In following that pursuit he was enabled to provide well for his family of five sons and three daughters. The three daughters died in infancy and he devoted his attention to the liberal education of his sons. Like his ancestors, he was a large, strong man, weighing about two hundred pounds, of dark complexion and of the French type. In July, 1862, he fell from a building and sustained injuries which caused his death.
Dr. Cardwell, who was the eldest of the family, spent his youth largely to the age of twelve years in caring for the babies of the household and assisting his mother in the house work. His parents instructed him in reading, writing and arithmetic, and his mother always told with some pride that he learned the alphabet in one afternoon when three years of age. As a boy his only amusement was in mechanics. In his father's shop he made kites, bows and arrows, cross bows, wagons, sled boxes, etc. He never played with other boys or has never had close association with men. He was always interested in music and fromthe age of fifteen years played the flute in band and concert work, and is well known throughout this section of the country as "the flutist." He was one of the organizers of the Philharmonic Club of Portland and during its existence, covering probably twenty years, played the flute and piccolo. He attributes the good habits formed in early life and to which he has since adhered to the fact that as a boy and young man he spent his leisure hours in music instead of going out with other boys. He attended a private school between the ages of twelve and fifteen years and was thus qualified to enter Professor Spaulding's preparatory school of Jacksonville, Illinois, and take the preparatory course qualifying him to enter Illinois College. He had had twelve lessons in the Spencerian system of penmanship, so that he was able to teach penmanship in the preparatory school. He also had a private evening class and thus more than made his expenses. During the vacation period he visited St. Louis and was employed by Dr. T. J. McNair, a druggist, acquiring some knowledge of the drug and prescription business. In his sixteenth year he entered Illinois College, but at the end of a half term found that his finances needed his attention, so that for a year or more he taught penmanship in the surrounding small towns, having from twenty to forty-five scholars who paid him a dollar and a half for twelve lessons. It was his ambition to pursue the classical course in Harvard and then enter Rush Medical College of Chicago. Believing that dentistry would furnish a good field of revenue whereby he could gain the money necessary to pursue his Harvard and Rush Medical College courses, he began studying under Dr. G. Y. Shirley of Jacksonville, a leading dentist of the west, who eighteen months later gave him a certificate of good moral character and competence to practice dentistry. He then visited Springfield and worked in three ofiices in that city so that he was allowed to refer to the Springfield dentists concerning his ability. Dental practice then consisted of removing tartar and extracting teeth, although to some extent the filling of teeth and the insertion of artificial teeth was practiced. But such methods were largely regarded with suspicion at that day.
In 1850 Dr. Cardwell located for practice in Decatur, Illinois, then a town of about five hundred inhabitants, and proudly hung out a sign of Japan tin on which was painted "J. R. Cardwell, Surgeon Dentist." He was the first practitioner in the town and at the end of the year found his receipts amounted to about one hundred dollars per month. Dental work was of the most primitive character and it was only the better class of people who were acquainted with the use of the toothbrush. Teeth were filled with Dunlevy's gold foil or Jones, White & McCurdy's tin foil, and he practiced twenty years before using amalgam or cement. Well-to-do people sometimes had artificial teeth inserted on gold or silver plates of wooden pivots.
In the fall of 1851 B. R. Biddle, an uncle of Dr. Cardwell, who had gone to California in 1849, returned to Springfield. He had spent a few months in Oregon and spoke so favorably and eloquently concerning the country and its resources that he induced more than one hundred people to go with him to the northwest the next spring. He proposed that Dr. Cardwell should accompany him and take charge of a nursery and fruit farm in Oregon on an equal partnership relation, Mr. Biddle to furnish the capital. To Dr. Cardwell it seemed the ideal business life, and on the ist of May, 1852, they left the Missouri river for Oregon with a fine nursery outfit of selected growing grafts and ornamentals thickly set in a wagonload of black Illinois soil drawn by four yoke of oxenAll went well until on the banks of Snake river, on a steep hillside, the wagon was overturned and the entire contents thrown into the river and carried away by the swift current. Dr. Cardwell saved only one Chinese Daily rose and now has a growing cutting from it more than fifty years old. This ended his dream of becoming a nurseryman and orchardist and, locating in Portland in November, 1852, he began practicing as the only resident dentist in this city, which at that time contained about one thousand inhabitants. Throughout the intervening years he has continued in active connection with the profession, advancing with the progress made. He opened an office in the Kamm building at the corner of First and Washington streets. The public manifested some doubt in the ability of so young a man, but he soon proved his worth and successfully engaged in practice at a time when five dollars was charged for an extraction, five dollars and upwards for gold fillings, ten dollars for teeth on a hickory pivot and two hundred dollars for a full set of teeth. These prices, however, were only in proportion to other professional charges and the prices paid for all commodities. Dental supplies and stock were generally purchased in San Francisco, to which place they had been sent by the water route. With ten and twenty dollar Spanish gold pieces upon a blacksmith's anvil they hammered out their plates and also made their own solder.
While practicing Dr. Cardwell took occasion at times to venture into other business fields. Portland was situated in the midst of a dense fir forest. The first salmon fishery, Chinook salmon, were selling in Oregon and San Francisco for forty-five dollars per barrel. Having some leisure, Dr. Cardwell joined a friend, I. N. Gove, who had had some experience in New England fisheries, in a barrel cannery project. The Doctor bought sixty dollars worth of twine of a local importer, learned the netting stitch of Mr. Gove, and when not occupied with professional duties made seine and gill nets. They rented an old Indian fishery on the Columbia three miles below Vancouver, and in June and July, 1853, put up one hundred barrels, all of which Dr. Cardwell dressed and packed personally. The run then stopped and the business ended. Owing to the stimulus of the high prices of 1852 the Sacramento fisheries put up a great surplus and overstocked the market, so that salmon were unsalable at from eight to twelve dollars per barrel. W. S. Ladd, then a wholesale grocer, took the output of Cardwell & Gove at the ruling price and was several years in disposing of it at small margins, notwithstanding there was never any question of the number one quality of the pack. Thus commenced and ended the barreled salmon enterprise in Oregon for more than a decade. Their books showed cash to balance even and three months' lost time.
At that day there was but one drug store in Portland and Dr. Cardwell, having had some experience at the prescription case in St. Louis, conceived the idea that a practical prescription drug store might pay. He planned with Mr. Gove to enter the business which could be accommodated in his office building where he had an unoccupied front room with shelf, counters and bay window. Dr. Cardwell planning to look after the business when not occupied at the dental chair. They sent to San Francisco for about fifteen hundred dollars worth of drugs and glassware, which early arrived, and from the beginning the business prospered and they engaged a druggist assistant for Dr. Cardwell's dental practice so increased that he could give but little time to the drug department. Later they accepted a tempting offer to sell and the business passed into the hands of Dr. Weatherford, who made enough money to invest in Portland realty and retire on a competence.
No town in Oregon was large enough to support one dentist, and it was the custom of dental practitioners to make periodical visits to other towns. In the winter of 1854 Dr. Cardwell closed his Portland office with the intention of visiting Roseburg, Eugene and Corvallis, his father and mother, four brothers and three sisters then living in Corvallis. He was liberally patronized there and was the first dentist to visit the three towns. He says that in those days "I often improvised a head rest by placing a chair behind the patient and putting my foot on the seat and resting the patient's head on my knee. I have stood many an hour on one leg and operated thus." While at Corvallis Dr. Cardwell bought lots and eighty acres in the suburbs and set out a family orchard on his father's place. He found an old neglected apple orchard, took sprouts and roots and grafted apples between the call of his patients, and started a nursery on his own eighty acres. Ninety-five per cent of the grafts grew and Philip Ritz, for many years a leading nurseryman in Oregon and Washington and a neighbor of Dr. Cardwell, often said that it was the Doctor's success and influence that induced him to go into the nursery business, in which he made a fortune.
Dr. Cardwell made annual spring visits to Corvallis to set out growing plants and trees until 1858, when the family removed to Portland. On one of these visits, in partnership with Dr. Jackson, a resident practitioner, he built an attractive drug store and established the first drug house in the valley beyond Salem. The death of his partner three or four years later and the removal of his family to Portland caused him to dispose of all of his holdings and young nursery stock at Corvallis. As a boy he had taken an interest in taxidermy, and from 1855 until 1860 his pastime and amusement was in mounting and casing the birds and animals of Oregon. He made a full collection of several hundred, including the large animals—cougar, bear and elk. He still has some of these, some are in Golden Gate Park at San Francisco, and others in the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, D. C. About 1859-60 he set out a ten-acre orchard on the Beninion Roggers place near Milwaukie—all Oregon fruits. In the early '60s his time was fully occupied by his profession, which was now a most lucrative one, and in making and beautifying a home, including the setting out of trees and ornamental shrubs. Withal he was an enthusiastic Mason and now wears the badge of the consistory.
About this time horticultural societies were being organized over the state and Multnomah county had its organization, meeting in Portland, in which Dr. Cardwell was an active and enthusiastic member. As early as the summer of 1858 he was connected with others in organizing the first territorial horticultural society in Portland, which held summer and fall meetings, made fruit exhibits and awarded prizes almost annually until the formation of the state society. The Oregon State Horticultural Society was organized in Portland, January 13, 1889, with a long list of active members and J. R. Cardwell was elected president. Each year he was unanimously reelected for twenty years, when he retired and was made honorary president. In 1893 Portland's first Rose Show was held and Mr. Cardwell, as president of the State Horticultural Society appointed a committee of ladies to promote this enterprise. The following year a large and creditable show for those days was made by the same committee, composed of Mrs. J. C. Card, president; Mrs. Ella Lehigh, secretary; Mrs. Shafford and Mrs. Lambertson. These shows were most popular events and were the forerunners of the splendid shows of later years.
In the meantime other interests and activities featured in the life of Dr. Cardwell. In reminiscences told concerning Portland and her history he speaks of how many of her citizens, including those who were regarded as the soundest and most sagacious business men, were taken in by the well told tales of dishonest promoters and more dishonest manipulators of mining property who told of the wealth to be made in gold, silver, copper and lead mines. He was among the victims and lost considerably through investments. At a later time prunegrowing claimed the attention of many of Portland's citizens as well as others throughout the state, and, as Dr. Cardwell expressed it, "The prune figured better than banking or any business, as the apple does today." Far-seeing business men speculated in prune lands. Dr. Cardwell bought prune lands and from 1870 until 1881, set out one hundred acres of prunes which, it is believed, was the first large commercial prune orchard in the United States. He had previously engaged in the cultivation of plums but found that they were not profitable for shipment and by graft he converted his plum into a prune orchard, met success in the undertaking and in so doing silenced the criticism of the conservatives and those who regarded his work only as an experiment, unjustified by horticultural knowledge. Dr. Cardwell has, indeed, been a leader in the work of cultivating fruit in Oregon, and his broad knowledge, gained from scientific investigation and from practical experience well qualified him for the presidency of the State Horticultural Society and merited his appointment to the state board of horticulture when it was created by legislative act in 1889. He was made the president of the board and so continued for ten years. On his retirement Governor T. T. Geer stated that he "made a record by resigning from a paying position." He was the horticultural commissioner from Oregon to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, winning seventeen prizes and turning back to the state several thousand dollars of the fund appropriated for the exhibit.
While various activities and interests have claimed the attention of Dr. Cardwell, he has continued also an active member of the dental fraternity. In 1872 he became one of the charter members of the Oregon State Dental Society and was elected its secretary. Twice afterward he was chosen its president, and for ten years he was president of the state board of dental examiners, after which he reigned. During his service as president over two thousand dollars receipts of the board were returned to the state. He was active in the organization of the Oregon Humane Society in 1872. of which B. Goldsmith became president, while Dr. Cardwell was chosen one of the vice presidents. He was one of the leading factors in organizing the North Pacific Dental College, of which he is now vice president and one of the trustees, and is now professor of dental history, dental jurisprudence and dental ethics. He was one of the first workers in behalf of the Portland Museum and has now an extensive collection of birds and animals which he is holding, awaiting the erection of a museum building, which question he is agitating before the public. As a collector his name is catalogued in the United States and Europe. He has also collected and is growing all the conifers of Oregon, and has twenty-seven varities growing upon his lawn. He has collected and mounted all of the birds in Oregon and has given much study to the geology of the state and made a large and valuable collection of its rocks and minerals. Upon all these subjects he has written quite extensively for the press. He still continues in the practice of dentistry and finds the same delight and interest in setting out and cultivating trees, shrubs and plants. Development as expressed in life and in science has always been of the deepest interest to him, and his own labors have been a valuable contribution to the world's progress.
CAPTAIN MELLIE ALBERTUS HACKETT.
Captain Mellie Albertus Hackett, as president of the Columbia Digger Company, has become so well known in Portland and the northwest that he needs no introduction to the readers of this volume. His life, especially in more recent years, has been devoted to the utilization of the natural resources of the state and his efforts have been of incalculable benefit to the section at large.
It was on the 20th of April, 1857, near Lawrence, Kansas, that Captain M. A. Hackett was born and he spent his youthful days in the home of his parents, Nathan and Lavina (Thurston) Hackett. He was only four years of age when the family removed from Kansas to Colorado and was a youth of twelve years when they started across the plains by wagon train to California, where the father engaged in farming until 1872. That year witnessed his arrival in Oregon.
Captain Hackett accompanied his parents on their removal to this state and has largely made his home here from the age of fifteen years. He was first employed in a salmon cannery until nineteen years of age, during which time he familiarized himself with various departments of the business until he was able to take charge of a cannery that he built for the firm of Hepburn & Jackson on Woody Island. He afterward took charge of a cannery for John Keirnan and Everding & Parrel, at Pillar Rock, Washington, and continued in close connection with the salmon canning industry until 1881, when he came to Portland. Here he built the first ferry that operated on what is now known as the Albina ferry route, continuing in charge for some time. He was also interested in the Jefferson ferry, which he operated for fifteen years, and likewise owned and ran the Selwood ferry. He was connected with this business until the Madison bridge was made a free highway and the support of the ferries naturally fell off. He then took the machinery of the Jefferson street ferry, using it in the building of the steamer Hattie Belle, which he ran on the Columbia river in the service of the government. Later he sold that vessel and commanded the steamer H. C. Grady, running between Portland and Astoria, for a year. On the 24th of March, 1899, Captain Hackett organized a company under the name of the Columbia Digger Company, and they engaged in diking tide lands in the vicinity of Astoria for a year. This w^as the first undertaking in the state of Oregon where the work was done by machinery. The purpose was to reclaim the lowlands and also to dig canals for the government. Still operating under the name of Columbia Digger Company, Captain Hackett opened a sand and gravel business at the foot of Ankeny street in April, 1903. Since establishing the enterprise over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars have been