Clatsop-Marion-Statewide County OR Archives Biographies.....Byland, Orville Hamilton 
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Ila Wakley iwakley@msn.com January 30, 2011, 11:42 pm

Source: History of the Columbia River Valley From The Dalles to the Sea, Vol. III, Published 1928, Pages 821 - 823
Author: .The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company

     ORVILLE HAMILTON BYLAND, who for many years has served as county school 
superintendent of Clatsop county, has had a long and honorable record in the 
field of education, covering a period of almost six decades, and he commands 
to a marked degree the respect and esteem of those who know him, many of whom, 
his former pupils, are now prominent and influential in the world's affairs. 
Mr. Byland was born on his father's plantation in Kentucky and is a son of M. 
D. and Lodoiski (McPherson) Byland. His father, who was a Virginian by birth, 
was descended from English ancestry, the progenitor of the family in this 
country having come from Yorkshire during the period of the Commonwealth under 
Oliver Cromwell and settled in Virginia. Some of his descendants served under 
General Washington during the Revolutionary war. In 1852 M. D. Byland brought 
his family across the plains, with ox team and covered wagon, and on reaching 
Oregon took up a donation land claim about six miles below Albany, on the 
Willamette river, and about a mile west of what is now Consor station on the 
electric line. Their early neighbors were the Knoxes, the Babers, the Farlows, 
the Hales, the Meekers, the Millers, the Fenns and the Haights. Mr. Byland was 
active in politics in Linn county during the Kansas-Nebraska trouble and prior 
to and during the Civil war. At first he was a Douglas democrat but later 
became a stanch Union man. He also served as a lieutenant under Captain Settle 
and Colonel Cornelius during the Indian wars of 1855-56. He died in 1897 at 
the home of his daughter Mrs. Krebbs, near Adams, Umatilla county, and was 
buried in the Keys cemetery beside his second wife. Lodoiski (McPherson) 
Byland was a native of North Carolina and her ancestral families were the 
McPhersons and the McDonalds, who came to America from Scotland because of 
religious persecution about 1764, settling in North and South Carolina. 
Members of these families were participants in the Revolutionary war, serving 
under General Greene. Mrs. Byland and her father died in Keokuk, Iowa, after 
which Mr. Byland, Grandmother Margaret McPherson, her son, W. A. McPherson, 
and the two children, Donald and Orville H. Byland, made the journey to 
Oregon. W. A. McPherson became prominent in public affairs in this state, 
having been elected state printer in 1864. He established the Albany Journal, 
a radical Union paper, and later founded the American Unionist at Salem. After 
his newspaper career he died and was buried in Lone Fir cemetery at Portland. 
He ranked high as a literary writer. Grandmother McPherson, who had been more 
than a mother to her motherless grandsons, died near Scio in 1862 at the age 
of sixty-two years. Donald Byland, after coming to Oregon, went to the gold 
mines of California and also worked in the woods of Scott's valley, that 
state, after which he returned to Oregon and completed his education. After 
teaching school for awhile, he turned his attention to the medical profession, 
to which he devoted the remaining years of his life. In 1888, while practicing 
medicine in Woodburn, he was elected coroner of Marion county. In 1890, during 
a severe epidemic of the grippe, he died of the disease, and was buried in 
Bellpasse cemetery, near Woodburn.

     When Orville H. Byland was brought to Oregon he was a puny, sickly child, 
and one time, while ill in bed, he heard his grandmother say to a visiting 
neighbor woman that she was afraid that she would never raise "Orvie." 
Nevertheless, for thirty years "Orvie" has been the sole survivor of the 
family. At Albany, Oregon, December 10, 1864, Mr. Byland and his brother 
Donald enlisted in the First Regiment Oregon Infantry, Captain A. W. Waters 
commanding, and served nineteen months in the frontier campaign against the 
Indians. After returning to civil life, he entered Santiam Academy, at 
Lebanon, which was the second or third school of importance in Oregon at that 
time. Among Mr. Byland's schoolmates at that time were Judge M. C. George, of 
Portland; James K. Weatherford, of Albany; John Dennison, who afterwards 
became a very prominent Methodist preacher; Charles Elkins and Charles 
Ralston, of Lebanon. In 1867 he and his brother were in the gold mines and 
lumber woods of California, and on his return to Oregon he completed his 
school training. In 1869 he taught his first school in "Happy Holler" school 
district, about three miles north of old Sublimity, in Marion county. Later he 
taught school at Crawfordsville and other places in Linn county, and taught 
about ten years in St. Paul, Champoeg, Buttsville and Aurora, in Marion 
county. In 1878 Mr. Byland went to the Walla Walla country, Washington, where 
he taught at Valley Grove, Dixie, Spring Valley and Union. After returning to 
Oregon, he was admitted to the bar in October, 1883, after which, in 1884 and 
1885, he taught school two years at Canemah, a southern suburb of Oregon City. 
On leaving that school, he was appointed special referee in the Oregon City 
land office, under Louis Barin, registrar, and John Pillsbury, receiver. At 
that time an agent appointed by President Cleveland was investigating alleged 
land frauds in Columbia and Clatsop counties.

     In the following year Mr. Byland was nominated on the republican ticket 
for the legislature from Clackamas county. Chinese labor at that time was the 
paramount question. Sylvester Pennoyer, a radical opponent of Chinese labor, 
was chosen governor of Oregon at that election. One of Mr. Byland's opponents 
on the legislative ticket was Peter Noyer, whose name appeared on the 
democratic ticket as P. Noyer. Large numbers of Clackamas county voters voted 
for P. Noyer, thinking they were voting for Pennoyer, and Mr. Byland was 
defeated by twenty-six votes.

     In 1900 Mr. Byland went to Vale, the county seat of Malheur county, where 
he served as principal of the schools for five years. He was then appointed 
United States commissioner for Oregon, in which capacity his duties chiefly 
had to do with the locations of homesteads, preemption claims, desert land 
claims, stone quarry claims, water rights and townsites. He was also a justice 
of the peace, with a jurisdiction that extended to the borders of Nevada and 
Idaho. At one time the sheriff's fee for serving papers in Jordan valley 
amounted to eighty dollars mileage.

     Returning to western Oregon, Mr. Byland became principal of the school at 
Rainier, Columbia county, where he remained two years, after which he was 
principal of the school at Warrenton, Clatsop county, for three years. During 
his last year in that school he was elected school superintendent of Clatsop 
county, which office he assumed in January, 1913, and has held continuously 
since, his term expiring in 1929, at which time he will have served sixteen 
years. However, he will undoubtedly serve longer, for in the primary election 
of May, 1928, he was nominated for another four-year term, a splendid tribute 
to the able and faithful service which he has rendered during the past years.

     Mr. Byland was married at Salem, Oregon, by Rev. P. S. Knight, to Miss 
Rachel Johnston, and to them were born three children, namely: Edith, who died 
in 1882 and is buried at Waitsburg; Grace, who died at Hubbard, Oregon, in 
1896; and Blanche, who is living in Portland. In 1899 Mr. Hyland was married 
to Miss Elizabeth A. McDonnell. In his political views Mr. Byland has always 
been a republican, while religiously he is a Presbyterian by heredity and 
affiliation. He is a Scottish Rite Mason; an Odd Fellow and an Elk. His long 
and useful life as one of the world's workers has been one of close devotion 
to his calling, which he has dignified by the splendid type of service which 
he has rendered. A man of vigorous mentality, broad and well defined views on 
life and its problems, and a consistent supporter of those things which make 
for the betterment of society, he has exerted a marked influence on the lives 
of those who have sat under him, and he is held in the highest regard by all 
who know him, being regarded as one of Clatsop county's best citizens.

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