down the Columbia to Portland, Ore., where he took passage on the steamer Active for Port Townsend, arriving at the latter place in September, 1868, and soon after settled at Snohomish, For the next four years he was employed in the lumber woods along the Snohomish River. In 1872 he built the well-known and popular Exchange Hotel in Snohomish city, which he still owns, and a few years later he erected the Cathcart Opera House. After operating the hotel for sixteen years he leased it to other parties and engaged in the general merchandise business, which he still continues. Besides his extensive mercantile business, he owns and operates one of the largest saw-mills in the county, with a capacity of thirty thousand feet per day, and is one of the best-known lumber men on the river, owning six thousand acres of choice timber and farming lands. He also has extensive real estate holdings in the city. In politics Mr. Cathcart is a zealous Republican. He was elected County Treasurer in 1882, serving four years, and has been a member of the City Council one term. He was married August 9th, 1876, to Miss Julia J. Johns, of Seattle, a native of the State of Ohio. They have had four children-Isaac C., Lizzie M., William, and Amy (deceased). COLE, GEORGE E.-There is probably no man in the entire State who has experienced a more varied and interesting career than that covered by the life of ex-Governor George E. Cole, of Spokane. The period was one full of the dangers and excitement of frontier life, and in its variable and changeable situations extending through a period of nearly forty-three years in Oregon as it formerly existed- -now comprising Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and that part of Montana lying west of the Rocky Mountains. Upon his advent into this vast region ten thousand white persons and many times that number of Indians, divided into numerous tribes, many of whom were warlike and troublesome, constituted its inhabitants. Governor Cole was born in Trenton, Oneida County, N. Y., December 23d, 1826. His father, Nathan Cole, was a well known character throughout the county, serving the public as a Justice of the Peace for many years. Young Cole's early youth was spent on a farm, attending the district school during the winter months, and putting in the summer in active out-of-docr life. After attending the district schools, he was a student at Hobart Hall Institute, at the village of Holland Patent, during which he taught school in winter and attended school during the rest of the year. In the spring of 1846 he moved to Fulton, Oswego County, N. Y., where he clerked in a store for six months, after which he taught school for a year and a half. In 1848 he went to the village of Corning, Steuben County, N. Y., where he accepted the position of Principal of the Union School. This position he held until March, 1849, when he started overland for California. The trip at that time, to one in this age of railroads and electricity, would seem primitive, going down the Chemung and Susquehanna rivers on a raft to Columbia, Pa., thence by packet via the Juniata Canal to Hollidaysburg, and thence over the Alleghany Mountains via the Inclined Plane Transit to Johnstown, from there to Pittsburg by packet boat, and thence by steamer to St. Louis, arriving there during the cholera epidemic of 1849. Here he took the cholera, and was detained until too late to cross the plains that season. Determined not to turn back, he went up the Mississippi River to Muscatine, Ia., by steamboat, thence walking to Iowa City, the capital of the State. Here he taught school and did copying in the office of the Secretary of State. In March, 1850, just one year from the time he left New York, he started overland for California. His trip to California was made with what was known as the Iowa City Company. On May 6th they crossed the Missouri River at Trader's Point, eight miles below what is now Council Bluffs, camping about five miles from the river. Here he had his first experience in standing guard, the Indians being troublesome. They reached Salt Lake City on June 26th, then a city of about five thousand inhabitants, and camped near by for a week for rest and supplies, starting again on their journey and arriving in Sacramento City, Cal., on August 13th. After his arrival Mr. Cole went to mining, operating on the American River. About this time the war between the squatters and the city authorities occurred, in which Mr. Cole experienced his first taste of Western martial law. Not succeeding in his mining venture, he went to San Francisco, and on October 24th, 1850, took passage on the brig Reindeer, bound for the Columbia River and Portland, touching at Umpqua River, at which place he disembarked. He and four other passengers clubbed together and bought a canoe of the Indians and proceeded to Scottsburg, then consisting of two tents and a log house with no roof. Cole, with a companion, started on foot to go to Old Fort Umpqua, the Hudson's Bay trading post, then commanded by Captain Garnier, a Frenchman. There his companion remained, Cole going on up Elk Creek to Yoncella Valley, the home of the three brothers, Jesse, Charles, and Lindsay Applegate, Oregon pioneers of 1843. From there he went on to Corvallis, known then as Marysville, arriving November 14th, 1850. It then consisted of two houses and a log schoolhouse. About six miles from this point he took up a donation claim, and in the following June was elected to the Oregon Legislature. He was re-elected the following year. A portion of the time he engaged in placer mining in Southern Oregon in the Rogue River valley. On the first Sunday in June, 1853, he, with Major Lupton, rode into an Indian ambush a few miles above Table Rock, which proved to be Cut-Face Jack's wild band of Upper Rogue Rivers. Having met the redoubtable chief on a former occasion, by dint of good talking-i.e., by satisfying Jack that they were not the "Bostons" he wanted-they were permitted to continue on their journey to Jacksonville, their point of destination. In 1863 he married Miss Mary E. Cardwell, of Corvallis, who had crossed the plains from Illinois with her parents the year previous. After this Mr. Cole engaged in the steamboat business on the Willamette River, operating a boat from Canema, above the Oregon City Falls, to Corvallis. Subsequently he engaged in the mercantile business until 1858, at which time he removed to Portland, and was appointed First United States District Clerk for Oregon upon its admission as a State in 1859. In September, 1860, he removed with a stock of goods to Walla Walla, then a small trading point in the Walla Walla valley. In the spring of 1861, upon the discovery of the Oro Fino mines, he established a store there and also at Pierce City. In 1862 he was actively engaged in the commission and forwarding business at Lewiston. In 1863 he was elected Delegate to Congress from Washington Territory. In the Thirty-eighth Congress he made the acquaintance of James G. Blaine, Samuel J. Randall, George H. Pendleton, and many others, with whom the acquaintance was kept up for many years. He was the first Delegate to Congress from Eastern Washington. In 1866 he was commissioned by Andrew Johnson as Governor of the Territory of Washington, serving until March 4th, 1867. During that year he returned to Portland, and in 1868 became actively engaged in the construction of the Oregon and California Railroad, then being built from Portland to Roseburg, serving there in different capacities until 1873, at which time he was appointed Postmaster at Portland by President Grant. He was reappointed by President Hayes, and served in that office for eight years and three months. In the latter part of 1881 and during the entire year of 1882 he was engaged as contractor in the construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad along Pend d'Oreille Lake and Clark's Fork. In 1883 he located in Spokane County, having purchased a section of land lying between Cheney and Medical Lake, upon which he resides. In 1888 he was elected Treasurer of Spokane County, and re-elected in 1890, which office he held until January 9th, 1893. He contemplates spending the remainder of his days on his farm as a practical farmer, an occupation in which his boyhood days were spent, and to which more than any other he has been attached. Though in his sixty-seventh year, he is by no means an old man, but is strong and active, and capable as ever of laborious work both physical and mental. WHITMAN, MARCUS, M.D.*—A volume might be written in regard to the life and death of this man. Hence, in the brief space here given to him, only a synopsis of his life can be given. He was born at Rushville, N. Y., September 4th, 1802, and was the son of Reza and Alice (Green) Whitman. His father having died in 1810, he was brought up by his paternal grandfather, at Plainfield, Mass. There he was converted in 1819; and in January, 1824, he joined the Congregational Church at his native place, of which he remained a member until 1833, when he united with the Presbyterian Church at Wheeler, N. Y., of which he was elected a ruling elder. In 1838 he was one of the original members of and the elder in the Presbyterian church at Walla Walla, the first church of that denomination on the Pacific coast. He studied medicine under Dr. Ira Bryant, of Rushville, receiving his diploma in 1824. He practiced four years in Canada, and afterward in Wheeler, where, in the winter of 1834-35, he became interested in Oregon, through Rev. Samuel Parker. He started the next spring with Mr. Parker, and went as far as the rendezvous of the American Fur Company on Green River, when it was thought best for the doctor to return for more missionaries, while Mr. Parker should proceed and explore. On his journey he performed some very important surgical operations on some of the mountain men, which gave him a reputation that was of great service to him afterward. On his return he took with him two Indian boys, who went to school that winter, and returned to Oregon with him the next * From "History of Pacific Northwest." |