Multnomah County OR Archives Biographies.....Pittock, Henry Lewis March 1, 1836 - January 27, 1919
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Ila L. Wakley iwakley@msn.com June 12, 2009, 6:52 pm

Author: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company

     HENRY LEWIS PITTOCK, who departed this life on the 27th of January, 1919, 
at the advanced age of eighty-three had for fifty-eight years been prominently 
identified with journalistic interests in Portland as managing owner and 
publisher of the Oregonian. While he was still an active factor in the world's 
work a contemporary biographer wrote of him: "Quiet and unostentatious, he has 
ever sought to keep his personality in the background, but as the man behind 
the paper which for over fifty years has led public thought and voices its 
sentiments, anticipated the public needs and fostered every movement for the 
development of the city during the entire period of its growth from a mere 
village to a metropolis, has been associated to some extent with its every 
thought and action since its infancy, his career is inseparably linked with 
that of Portland and the influence that his character has had upon the 
moulding of its history can hardly be appreciated."

     Mr. Pittock was born in London, England, March 1, 1836, a son of 
Frederick and Susanna (Bonner) Pittock, both natives of Kent county. His 
father first came to America in 1825, with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ralph 
Pittock, who emigrated from Dover, Kent county, England, and established their 
home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Frederick Pittock later went to London, 
where he learned the printer's trade and was married but returned to 
Pittsburgh in 1839 and spent the remainder of his life in that city, engaged 
principally in the printing business. Henry Lewis Pittock was the third in a 
family of eight children. A brother, Robert Pittock, formerly of Portland, 
died in San Diego, California, in 1908. Another brother, John W. Pittock, was 
the founder of the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Leader.

     In the public schools of Pittsburgh, Henry L. Pittock received his early 
education and later attended the preparatory school of the University of 
Western Pennsylvania. His father being a printer, he learned something of the 
trade while working in his office in Pittsburgh and was attracted to Portland 
by letters written to the Pittsburgh papers by members from the missionary 
colony founded in Oregon by the United Presbyterian church. He decided to seek 
his fortune in the new country, and in the summer of 1853, at the age of 
seventeen years, he and his elder brother, Robert, joined an emigrant party 
for the Pacific coast. At Malheur river they separated, the brother going to 
Eugene, while Henry Pittock came to Portland. He attempted to get work in the 
different newspaper offices of the city but failed. After looking for 
employment for several days without success he refused a position as assistant 
bartender at the Columbia Hotel because it afforded no possibilities of a 
career. In the latter part of October he was offered a situation by Thomas J. 
Dryer, proprietor of Weekly Oregonian, who agreed to give him his board and 
clothing for six months' services. Long before this period ended he had proved 
his ability and worth and at the end of the time he engaged for a year at a 
salary of nine hundred dollars, after which he was paid journeyman's wages.

     Frequently during the first years of his connection with the Oregonian, 
the responsibility of getting out the paper devolved entirely upon him, as Mr. 
Dryer was too busy with other affairs, and thus Mr. Pittock soon assumed the 
business management of the enterprise. During the campaign of 1860 he took 
charge of the paper under contract with Mr. Dryer, who made a canvass of the 
state as a republican candidate for presidential elector, and immediately 
following the election Mr. Pittock purchased the Oregonian. He at once 
instituted a progressive spirit in its management, and, deeming it necessary 
to make it a daily, soon went to San Francisco and purchased a cylinder press, 
arranged for news service from Yreka, California, by mail, and on the 4th of 
February, 1861, published the first issue of the Morning Oregonian. He made it 
a rule to conduct the paper on a sound business basis and pay all employes 
weekly, though to do so often required his last dollar. At that time there 
were three other dailies in the field and competition was very strong, but he 
exerted every effort to produce the best paper, and, in spite of being often 
handicapped by lack of means, the Oregonian became the only survivor of the 
four. At times Mr. Pittock found it difficult to meet the running expenses of 
the paper, yet in all the years of his connection therewith, it never missed 
an issue, although both fire and flood threatened to stop its publication.
     
     The Weekly Oregonian was established on the 4th of December, 1850, by T. 
J. Dryer, who conducted it as a four-page, seven-column weekly until it was 
purchased by Mr. Pittock in December, 1860. He began the publication of the 
daily, called the Morning Oregonian, as a four-page, five-column sheet, with a 
circulation of about three hundred copies. It is now an eight-column paper 
averaging twenty pages daily, with seventy-two to ninety pages in the Sunday 
edition. The average daily circulation is over fifty thousand and the Sunday 
paper has a circulation of over sixty thousand. Hard pressed financially 
through malicious competition, Mr. Pittock was obliged in 1873, to organize a 
stock company which he incorporated under the name of the Oregonian Publishing 
Company, but the competition being soon overcome, he gradually regained the 
larger part of the stock. The paper, easily recognized as the leading journal 
of Portland, ranks with the foremost publications of the Pacific coast, the 
policy having its root at all times in the progressive spirit which was 
instituted by Mr. Pittock when he assumed control. As he prospered in business 
he extended his efforts into other fields and became interested in timber 
lands; was vice president of the company which built the railway from Lyle to 
Goldendale, now a branch of the Northern Pacific; was one of the company which 
built the first paper mills in Oregon, located near Oregon City; was the vice 
president of the Salem, Falls City & Western Railway Company; and president of 
the Portland Trust Company; and also one of the company which built the paper 
mills at La Camas, Washington, now one of the largest enterprises of this 
character on the coast, owned by the Crown Columbia Pulp & Paper Company.

     For many years Mr. Pittock was very active in Masonic affairs and at the 
meeting of the grand lodge held in Portland in 1910 was elected grand senior 
steward for the state of Oregon. Aside from his connection with the Oregonian, 
the acknowledged champion of all that pertains to public progress, he was 
interested in various public movements that constituted an element in the 
city's growth and development.  

      Concerning the character of Henry L. Pittock, a prominent citizen of 
Portland who knew the publisher and managing owner of the Oregonian intimately 
penned these lines: "It is the fashion to reserve for obituary notices such 
praise as a man merits while he is yet living. Of adverse criticism, every 
energetic and forceful man in a community hears enough; of commendation very 
little. When such a man has lived his three score and ten and his twilight 
shadows lengthen, it is proper to record a just estimate of him. Henry Pittock 
has the finest perception of a newspaper's relation to its readers and to the 
commonwealth whose voice it is. No one within or without the field of 
journalism in Oregon could have a nicer sense of a newspaper's duties to the 
public. From the time, fifty years ago, when the daily Oregonian was a 
doubtful enterprise, financially a weakling and its roots barely set, until 
today when it is rich beyond its founder's dreams, influential and powerful -- 
Henry Pittock lent it freely and generously to every cause that made for 
material and spiritual advancement. In the early days of his paper and after 
it had been firmly established, he encountered very strong and at times 
unscrupulous opposition, backed by practically unlimited money. Almost alone 
and unaided he defeated every combination that was made to kill off his paper. 
He carried it at various times, through three crises that would have unnerved, 
if indeed they would not have bankrupted an ordinary man. Always 
imperturbable, he seemed calmer in great stress than under ordinary 
conditions. He is fair minded. He weighs men and things judicially. Slow in 
his judgment, having formed it, he never wavers. His success was due largely 
to his acute knowledge of the value of news. During the Civil war his 
expenditures for telegrams, considering the income of his paper, were 
enormous. The policy he inaugurated of securing important news at any cost, 
has prevailed to this day. After all is said, the Oregonian is the biggest 
institution in Oregon. Mr. Pittock laid its foundations and for fifty years 
upbuilded, hand in hand with its great editor. He has created his own 
monument."

     On June 20, 1860, Mr. Pittock was married to Miss Georgina M. Burton, 
whose childhood was spent in Clark county, Missouri, and Keokuk, Iowa. Her 
parents, E. M. and Rhoda Ann Burton, came across the plains to Oregon in 1852, 
settling near Milwaukie, where the father operated one of the first flour 
mills in the state and in other ways became prominent in business affairs. 
Mrs. Pittock died on June 12, 1918. The five living children of Mr. and Mrs. 
Pittock are as follows: Mrs. E. F. Emery, of Millsboro, Pennsylvania; Fred F., 
of whom mention is made on another page of this work; Mrs. F. W. Leadbetter, 
Mrs. Lockwood Hebard and Mrs. J. E. Gantenbein, all of Portland.

Additional Comments:
History of the Columbia River Valley From The Dalles to the Sea, Vol. II, 
Pages 858-860

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