
Matthew Paul Deady was a lawyer, politician, and judge in the Oregon Territory. When Oregon became a state in 1859, Deady was named Oregon's first U.S. district court judge, and he sat at the federal ...

Albany Democrat-Herald newspapers on the western frontier were partisan and frequently flaunted their political affiliation. In the statehood era, Albany had two papers associated with the ...

John Beeson had been in Oregon only three years, but his outrage at the treatment of Native Americans by whites led him to become a strident advocate for Indian rights. In May 1856, he had so angered ...

In September 1859, Joel Palmer, the supervisor of Indian Affairs for Oregon, established the Alsea Subagency on the Coast Reservation to manage Indians who lived between Coos Bay and the Alsea River. ...

Oregon's first book was Nez-Perce's First Book, an octavo-sized pamphlet published in 1839 by the mission at Lapwai in present-day Idaho (then a part of Oregon territory). The book was a lexicon and ...

At age twenty-seven, William Sargent Ladd was the youngest mayor to ever serve in Portland. Ladd is best known, however, for his business acumen, his philanthropy, and his civic involvement, and for ...

Edward "Ned" D. Baker was born in London, England, on February 24, 1811, and immigrated with his family to the United States at age five. When Baker was a teenager, his parents moved to Illinois, ...

On February 14, 1859, two days after Congress decided to admit Oregon to the Union, President James Buchanan signed the bill that made Oregon a state. Telegraph operators sent the news by wire to St. ...

Oregon has a number of officially designated symbols, ranging from those that are essential to the state government, such as the seal and flag, to some that some may consider superfluous, including ...

St. Mary’s Academy in downtown Portland is a Roman Catholic high school directed by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. It is Oregon’s oldest continually operating secondary ...

Congregation Beth Israel (CBI) is the oldest and most prominent Jewish Reform congregation in Oregon. Temple Beth Israel, the congregation's home on Northwest Flanders Street in Portland, is an ...

Outspoken and often controversial, Abigail Scott Duniway is remembered as Oregon's "Mother of Equal Suffrage" and "the pioneer Woman Suffragist of the great Northwest." As lecturer, organizer, ...

In 1850, Anson Dart (1797-1879), of Wisconsin, was appointed as the first superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Oregon Territory. He received his orders on July 20, 1850, and arrived in Oregon in ...

In 1869, the Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine featured "Manifest Destiny in the West," by acclaimed eastern novelist and Oregon immigrant Frances Fuller Victor. Displaying a forthright style ...

Oregon's pioneer newspapers were also political organs, advancing their cause in news articles as well as editorials. The most prominent advocates were Asahel Bush of the Oregon Statesman (Salem) and ...

Joseph L. Meek, a mountain man, storyteller, and public personality, played a significant role in bringing Oregon into the United States in 1846-1848. A politician and a legislator in territorial ...

The Oregon Territorial Library was the first publicly funded library in Oregon. It was created by the U.S. Congress under the same act that established the Oregon Territory in 1848. Beginning with ...

Father Adrien-Joseph Croquet (pronounced “Crockett” locally) arrived in Oregon in 1859 from Belgium. Throughout his time in Oregon, he maintained an eclectic missionary lifestyle, ...

Monmouth’s claim to fame as Oregon’s last town to prohibit the sale of alcohol ended in 2002 when voters passed a ballot measure overturning a law that had its beginnings in the ...

In 1850, President Millard Fillmore appointed John B. Preston as Oregon Territory's first surveyor general. Preston arrived in the territory in 1851; and by the time he and the last of his surveyors ...

The Holy Names of Jesus and Mary is a Roman Catholic women's religious congregation established in accordance with Church law at Longueuil, Quebec, Canada, in 1844, for the Christian education of ...

Oregon became the thirty-third state on February 14, 1859. A century later, Portland hosted the Oregon Centennial Exposition and International Trade Fair to commemorate one hundred years of ...

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, only one Indian boarding school remained in Oregon—Chemawa Indian School, located along Interstate 5 at the 45th parallel north of Salem. Chemawa, ...

Minnie Myrtle Miller, the "Poetess of the Coquille," was born Theresa Dyer in Brookville, Indiana, on May 2, 1845. She was the daughter of Aaron and Sarah A. Dyer, who journeyed with their children ...

Willamette University, the oldest university west of the Mississippi River, was founded in 1842. Located in Salem, the university had its origins in a school for Native American children, operated by ...