Multnomah County OR Archives Biographies.....Culbertson, William Clifton September 12, 1874 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/or/orfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Ila L. Wakley iwakley@msn.com August 23, 2010, 4:13 pm Source: History of the Columbia River Valley From The Dalles to the Sea, Vol. III, Published 1928, Pages 502 - 506 Author: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company WILLIAM CLIFTON CULBERTSON. In the opinion of Fred Lockley, William Clifton Culbertson is one Portland citizen who has numerous irons in the fire and manages to keep them all hot. It has been said that if you want a thing done promptly and well, go to a busy man. Mr. Culbertson's friends and associates certainly believe in this maxim, for before he had been in Portland a year he was made a trustee of the Progressive Business Men's Club. Shortly thereafter he was made a director of the Portland Ad Club and at various times has filled numerous public offices of trust and importance. In business affairs he has achieved the full measure of success, being the proprietor of four up-to-date hotels in Oregon, and is also a well known journalist and a progressive agriculturist. The history of his career is best told by Mr. Lockley, the author of the following article, published in the Journal of June 9, 1926: "'I was born at Rolla, the county seat of Phelps county, Missouri,' said Mr. Culbertson in answer to my question as to his birthplace. 'The School of Mines and Metallurgy is located at Rolla. It was established there in 1870, four years before my arrival, for I was not born until September 12, 1874. Rolla is about midway between St. Louis and Springfield and is on the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad. During the Civil war it was the terminus of this road and there was a fort at Rolla. My father, Benjamin Culbertson, was of Scotch-Irish descent and was born in West Virginia. My mother, whose maiden name was Harriet Momen, was born in Missouri. My brother, Benjamin Franklin Culbertson, is and has been for the past thirty-six years with the Rolla Herald. My mother died when I was a little shaver and from then on I had pretty hard sledding. The first job I landed was in a combined grist mill and woolen mill run by a Seventh Day Adventist. My job was carding wool. The next job was printer's devil on the Rolla Herald. I worked there four years and I would not have quit then, but I was drawing only three dollars a week and the proprietor of the other paper offered me a job as foreman at six dollars, providing I would also serve as a reporter on the side. Six dollars a week meant a dollar a day, and that looked like pretty big wages, so I changed jobs. In those days we were required to have coats off and be at the case promptly at seven A. M. We worked till six P. M. except on press day, when we came back after supper and worked until about eleven P. M. "'I forgot to tell you that before landing the job as printer's devil I carried the mail from the post office to meet the St. Louis train, which came in about two A. M. I secured the morning papers — the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the Chronicle — and delivered them to the subscribers, after which I rounded up our cows, milked them and delivered the milk before breakfast. After that I ate my breakfast and got cleaned up to go to school. When I was eighteen the proprietor of the Rolla New Era made me manager of his paper. I ran it for a year. This occupied my week days pretty well, but on Sundays I preached at eleven A. M. in country schoolhouses near Rolla, preached again at three P. M. and came back to Rolla to preach or conduct revival services in the evening. They called me the "boy exhorter." I planned to devote my life to preaching, but my father had other plans and wanted me to become a lawyer. I started preaching when I was seventeen. The church I established in the schoolhouse at the crossroads a few miles from Rolla is now one of the flourishing Baptist churches of that part of the country. "'When I was nineteen I realized I needed more education, so I went to Liberty, Missouri, and attended William Jewell College, a well known Baptist institution. I made my way through college by doing job work on the Liberty Advance. It was while working on the Advance that I heard for the first time of the Mergenthaler linotype. We rather scoffed at the idea that such intricate and expensive machines would ever be used except on large papers. While attending college I put in my afternoons and Saturdays working on the paper, but I got my board and lodging by serving as night clerk at the hotel. I studied law during intervals of leisure while clerking at the hotel. One night a man came in and registered and, noticing the book I had laid down, he said: "What are you doing, young man?" I said: "I have been studying law for the last two years and I am going to take my examinations for the bar next week. They tell me the judge before whom I will appear is a pretty hard case." He said: "They told you right. I know him well. You can't run any bluffs on him. You have to know the answers to the questions he will ask you." The next week when I appeared for my examination I discovered the man I had been talking to was Judge E. J. Broaddus. I shivered in my shoes when I remembered what I had said to him. He laughed, and while he gave me a stiff examination, I assed successfully. "'I was a junior in college, but I was twenty-two and, having been admitted to the bar, was anxious to get to work. So I quit college, went to Kansas City and secured a position with the law firm of Wallace & Wallace. Judge William H. Wallace was considered, and rightly so, the greatest orator in that part of the country. His father and a brother were Presbyterian ministers. He himself was a regular crusader. He feared neither man nor devil. He was death on jury-bribers and one of his favorite pursuits was sending them to the penitentiary. He was a great criminal lawyer. Within a year I was admitted as a member of the firm, at which time the style of Wallace, Wallace & Culbertson was adopted. "'I practiced law in Kansas City eighteen years. From Kansas City I went to Stevensville, Montana, where I ran a farm for six years. Although my legal residence was on my farm, nevertheless my fellow townsmen elected me city counsellor and I served for two terms. I practiced law in Ravalli county, Montana, while running my farm. From Stevensville I moved to Missoula, Montana, where I made my first venture in the hotel business, buying a half- interest in the Florence Hotel. I took a few months off and traveled through Oregon and California, looking for a suitable location. I decided Portland had a greater future than any other city I had visited, so in July, 1919, I purchased the Cornelius Hotel, which is seven stories in height and contains ninety rooms and forty-five baths. On June 1, 1920, I bought the Seward, a modern hotel of six stories, provided with one hundred and twelve rooms and sixty-four baths. Located at Tenth and Alder streets, it is properly termed the "House of Cheer" and Hotel Cornelius, which stands on the corner of Park and Alder streets, has been named the "House of Welcome." In 1926 I acquired the New Hotel Salem, "Where Hospitality Awaits You," and on November 18-19, 1927, opened Hotel Corvallis, also known as the "House of Cheer." This is a four-story structure, supplied with sixty rooms and forty-five baths. I am also interested in Hotel Tacoma, which was designed by the noted architect, Stanford White, and contains two hundred rooms. Until recently I published the Hubbard Enterprise and am now the owner and editor of the Canby Herald. "'In 1919 I married. Katherine M. Bateson, of Montana. My stepson, Cornelius Bateson, is managing my Twin Rivers Farm in Clackamas county. I get a lot of pleasure out of this farm. It is located where the Molalla joins the Willamette. Pudding river is almost in the center of our place. On the farm is a slough, fed by springs, sufficient to irrigate two hundred acres. We raise most of the things, such as butter, cream, vegetables, chickens, eggs, etc., that are used in our dining room at the Hotel Seward. "'One of the things that I am rather proud of is that I had full charge of the two Thanksgiving Day rose shows held here in Portland,' said Mr. Culbertson. 'You yourself know that they were very successful, but when I agitated the matter practically everyone told me it would be impossible to secure enough roses so late in the year to hold a good show. I like to keep busy and I long ago discovered that Solomon was right when he said, "There is that scattereth and yet increaseth and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty." In other words, the man who is willing to give his time, his own business is increased by his efforts to promote the welfare of his fellowmen. Too many people forget that they can't fish in a pond all the time without putting any bait back into the pond. I certainly get a lot of pleasure out of running the newspaper I own. If I had my life to live over again, I would carry out my original intention and be a minister in place of a lawyer. However, a man can do a lot of preaching without occupying the pulpit, so I try to do my preaching through my daily contact with my fellowmen and through the columns of my paper.'" On Easter Sunday, April 8, 1928, he married Charlotte Kandace Bowen, a member of an old family of Bellingham, Washington. On August 4, 1928, he was elected chairman of the state democratic central committee of Oregon, after he had been nominated on May 18, 1928, for congress, on the democratic ticket, in the third Oregon congressional district. He was afterwards endorsed by the independent ticket and the progressive party in Multnomah county for congress. As a true editor Mr. Culbertson always has in mind the dignity and worth of his profession and its responsibility to the public. He stands for progress, reform and improvement in public affairs, and exerts his influence to further the best interests of the city and state of his adoption. He was elected a director of the Rose Festival Association of Portland and in 1925 was made prime minister of the Royal Rosarians. As a member of the trade and commerce committee he takes a leading part in the activities of the Portland Chamber of Commerce and is also serving on the World war veterans' state aid commission, receiving his appointment from Governor Pierce. Along fraternal lines he is connected with the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks and is also a Knight Templar Mason and Shriner. Systematic and methodical, Mr. Culbertson is dominated at all times by an accurate sense of business exigency, and that he is an executive of exceptional capacity is indicated by the high standard of efficiency maintained in the management of his hotels and newspaper. Endowed with the ability to relate not only cause and effect but the separate elements essential to important achievement, he has assembled the machinery of his dreams and made it serve the largest practical purpose. An earnest, sincere Christian, Mr. Culbertson is a firm believer in his fellowmen and the ultimate triumph of the right, and his efforts have been directed into those channels through which flows the greatest and most permanent good to the greatest number. Photo: http://www.usgwarchives.net/or/multnomah/photos/bios/culberts1225gbs.jpg File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/or/multnomah/bios/culberts1225gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/orfiles/ File size: 11.9 Kb