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Elliott R. Corbett
Banker and owner of Portland buildings
Civic leader and Benefactor
Personal details
Born
Elliott Ruggles Corbett

29 June 1884
Portland, Oregon, United States
Died2 May 1963
Portland, Oregon, United States
SpouseAlta Rittenhouse Smith
EducationPortland Academy
Harvard University
OccupationBanker and a builder of Downtown Portland Oregon buildings

Elliott Ruggles Corbett (1884–1963) was a Portland, Oregon, banker, business leader, owner and builder of a number of the city's buildings, as well as civic leader and benefactor. He was born 29 June 1884 in Portland Oregon and died 2 May 1963 at his home in Dunthorpe, Portland, Oregon, aged 78. He and his two brothers, Henry Ladd Corbett (1881–1957) and Hamilton Forbush Corbett (1888 – 1966) were required at a young age to take on the burdens of the businesses, banking and real estate holdings that their grandfather Henry W. Corbett had developed, as their father Henry Jagger Corbett (and his younger brother Hamilton Corbett) had both died, predeceasing their own father.

His grandfather

Sen. Henry W. Corbett

Elliott Corbett's grandfather US Senator Henry W. Corbett (1827 – 1903) died when Elliott was 18. Henry W. Corbett had been born in Massachusetts and started the Corbett family dynasty in Oregon when he arrived at the tiny settlement of Portland in 1851, having crossed the Isthmus of Panama which he had reached by boat from New York. He had previously chartered a ship in New York and sent it, loaded with hardware, dry goods and other items, around Cape Horn bound for Portland, Oregon. He became an astute and successful businessman in Portland and Oregon and developed many of the various sinews of industry and finance that the growing city of Portland required. He also served as a US Senator from Oregon.[1][2][3]

Parents

Henry Jagger Corbett (1857–1895)
Elliott Corbett's father
Photo circa 1887 (aged 30)

Henry Jagger Corbett (1857–1895) was Henry W. Corbett's eldest son. Henry Jagger Corbett was born 6 November 1857. He died on 2 March 1895 from tuberculosis in Colorado Springs, Colorado, aged 37. He had married in 1879, sixteen years before his death, Helen Kendall Ladd (1859-1936),[4] the eldest daughter of William S. Ladd, one of the senior Corbett's fellow Portland business pioneers and an associate in a number of enterprises.

Henry Jagger Corbett and Helen Ladd had three sons Henry Ladd Corbett (born 28 July 1881), Elliott Ruggles Corbett (born 29 June 1884) and Hamilton Forbush Corbett (born 13 December 1888). Both Henry Jagger and his only brother the original Hamilton Forbush Corbett (1859-1884)[5] died of tuberculosis before their father. Mrs. Helen Ladd Corbett, Henry Jagger's widow, was left to bring up the three boys.

Education

Henry and Elliott Corbett circa 1890 with chipmunk
(Elliott R. Corbett Archives)

Elliott was educated at the Portland Academy,[6] a predecessor educational institution of the present Catlin Gable school.[7] He then went to Harvard University, graduating in 1907, from where his two brothers also graduated. All were football players at Harvard and also became keen polo players.[8]

Elliott was ten years old when his father died. His older brother Harry (Henry L. Corbett) was fourteen and his younger brother Ham (Hamilton F. Corbett) was seven.

Elliott Corbett shortly after his father's death when he was 10
(Elliott R. Corbett Archives)

His mother was aware that without a father the boys needed to be taught by others the skills that she felt young men would need. So as to be able to acquire good horsemanship and learn to be good shots she sent them as young boys to spend parts of their summers at the P Ranch in Eastern Oregon with men who could teach them those. The P Ranch was then owned by the French-Glenn Livestock Company and run by Peter French.[9]

William Sargent Ladd, a business & philanthropic associate of Elliott R. Corbett's paternal grandfather (Henry W. Corbett). Ladd was Elliott Corbett's maternal grandfather and is here with his grandson, Elliott (aged 6) beside coachman, at Seaview, Washington in 1890 where W.S.Ladd and H. W. Corbettt each had beach houses.

There they learned to be expert shots with a rifle, a shotgun and a hand gun (revolver); to rope cattle and herd and tie them; to control pack trains and to become good outdoorsmen; to set-up camp and to learn fly fishing. Their mother, Helen Ladd Corbett, also saw that they were well schooled in lesser matters that would serve them in later life, like the proper use of an axe and various practical uses with their hands like how to understand the new motor vehicle engines; be able to fix them, change tires and keep them running on remote journeys; to carve meat expertly for guests for the dinner table and to be able to do things she thought men should be able to do well and with expertise. In this, as a widow, she was successful in preparing them for their life ahead.[10]

Early responsibilities

With the death of their grandfather Henry W. Corbett in 1903, Elliott and his two brothers inherited his businesses,[11] including 27 downtown Portland properties,[3] among them the then First National Bank Building (predating the present one that they later built), The Worcester Block (Third and Oak Sts.), The Cambridge Block (Third and Morrison), the Neustadter building (Ankeny and Fifth), the Hamilton Building[12] (529 SW Third Avenue) [13] as well as majority ownership of the eight floor-326 bedroom Portland Hotel.[14]

Following their grandfather's death in 1903, within seven years his estate of 27 downtown buildings increased in value by over 500% owing to the financial boom and population growth stimulated by the Lewis and Clark Exposition,[3] of which their grandfather had been an original financial backer [15] and its chairman.[16]

The brothers also became involved with part of the Ladd estate and businesses which their mother Helen Kendall Ladd Corbett had inherited on the death of her father William S. Ladd, the Corbett brothers' maternal grandfather. She was actively involved with the direction of the Ladd estate businesses along with her Ladd siblings and mother.[17]

In World War I Elliott served as a first lieutenant in the field artillery, stationed at Camp Zachary Taylor, Louisville, Kentucky.[18]

Corbett Investment Company

Henry L. Corbett (1881-1957). Older brother.
(Elliott.R.Corbett Archives)

The Corbett Investment Company was formed by the three Corbett brothers, Henry Ladd Corbett, Elliott Ruggles Corbett and Hamilton Forbush Corbett. The Corbett Investment Company was to serve as the Corbett estate holding company and their investment arm. The shares were equally owned by the three brothers.[19] The brothers divided up Corbett Investment Company responsibilities to play to each of the brother's strengths, their developing expertise and special areas of interest.

  • Henry L. Corbett, the eldest, was the public face of the Corbett brothers. He dedicated most of his time to state politics as a Republican state senator,[20] the Port of Portland Commission and he took myriad other corporate directorships and had many civic and cultural affiliations.[21] He was also mainly responsible for their P Ranch.
  • Elliott R. Corbett was responsible for the management of their First National Bank of Portland holdings and the Corbett estate.[22] He also served on family and other boards and was involved in Oregon and civic causes.
Hamilton F. Corbett (1888-1966). Younger brother.
(Elliott R. Corbett Archives)
  • Hamilton F. Corbett was President of the Security and Saving Trust Company, a company the brothers controlled through the First National Bank of Portland and President of the Portland Chamber of Commerce. In the First World War he served in France.[23] He aided many civic causes and volunteer organisations.[24]

The three Corbett brothers concentrated their efforts on their real estate businesses, the First National Bank of Portland and its subsidiaries, which they controlled[3] and other investments that needed their own managing and financing. They left their other company holdings inherited from their grandfather H. W. Corbett, with experienced managements already in place, such as their holdings in Union Pacific Railroad, the Portland headquartered Home Telephone Company, the Oregon Electric Railway, the Oregon Surety and Casualty Company and the Portland Hotel, to largely operate on their own, usually retaining the role of directors (occasionally as officers) or even just passive shareholders so as to free themselves from their active day-to-day management.

The Corbett Investment Company's offices were located in the Corbett Building, at Southwest Fifth Avenue and Morrison, overlooking the Pioneer Courthouse.[25] The brothers completed the building in 1907, four years after their grandfather's death.[26] The Corbett Investment Company offices were on the tenth floor, Suite 1011 at the north east corner but the mailing address was simply the Corbett Investment Company, Corbett Building, Portland, Oregon.[27] The relatively compact space provided three offices for the brothers and an area for two secretaries and a filing and lunch room. From this modest space they oversaw their entire business holdings with their accountants in a separately accessed office on the same floor of the Corbett building.[28]

In 1956 the brothers sold their remaining buildings and gave up management of downtown Portland properties.[29]

After the deaths of the Corbett brothers, the 81-year-old Corbett Building was demolished by implosion on Sunday, 1 May 1988 (See Portland Buildings below).

First National Bank of Portland

The Corbett family had been the major stockholders in the First National Bank of Portland since in 1869 when Henry W. Corbett and his brother-in-law Henry Failing (with his father Josiah Failing) purchased almost all the shares of the Bank. H. W. Corbett held 500 shares, Henry Failing 250 and his father Josiah 50.[30]

The First National Bank of Portland had been the only bank in Portland (and for a long time the only one west of the Rocky Mountains) that was chartered under the National Banking Act.[31] The act was intended to make banking safer and guarantee the value of bank notes in effect creating a nationwide currency.[32] There was no state-banking act in Oregon until 1907 so other banks at the time were strictly private proprietorships taking deposits and lending money without regulation.[33] The First National was the exception from its outset.

On their purchase, Henry Failing had become President of the bank, Henry W. Corbett the Vice-President. Failing held the position until his unexpected death in 1898 when Corbett assumed the President's role until his own death in 1903.[34]

Elliott Corbett looked after the interests of the Corbett brothers in the Bank on behalf of the Corbett estate and also served as Vice-President and a director of the bank.

The First National Bank Building.
Built in 1916 when Elliott Corbett was responsible for the ownership.
(Michael Marlitt photo 2018)

On H.W. Corbett's death Abbot L. Mills was appointed President and the bank continued to prosper and grow. He retired in 1927. C.F. Adams succeeded him as President from 1927 until 1932.

The Bank grew solidly under the Mills and Corbett stewardship and soon had outgrown its quarters, so they constructed a new building as its main office. In 1916 the new First National Bank building was opened at 401–409 SW 5th Avenue, Portland.[35] The building became known as "The Marble Temple".[36]

After Mills' retirement and when his successor C.F. Adams was nearing retirement, Elliott Corbett needed to prepare a successor to Adams. Since 1911 the Strong and McNaughton Trust Company had managed the properties of the Corbett estate. So in 1928 Elliott Corbett offered their Trust a merger with the First National's Security and Saving Trust Company.[37] He also offered the position of a bank vice-president to MacNaughton. MacNaughton accepted Corbett's offer,[38] although Strong opted to remain in his own Trust business managing the Corbett estate.[39]

Banking in Portland, however, would change. The West Coast Bancorp merged with the US National Bank in early 1928. With this development Elliott Corbett knew that to stay ahead of their rivals the Corbetts and the other major stockholders, the Failings and Lewis families, would likely have to inject more capital into the bank to expand. Otherwise they could make a public share offering to increase the bank's capital. Elliott Corbett had been concerned for a while that bank shares were undervalued. Banking was therefore a less attractive investment than real estate and other opportunities which were opening up to them for the utilisation of their capital. He and the other stockholders were not in favour of increasing its capital by injecting more of their own or in diluting their own shareholdings by issuing more shares through a public offering. During the years since the Corbetts had been involved, the First National bank had been regarded as solidly run and "typifying the extreme conservatism for which Portland had been celebrated for half a century."[40]

The option was therefore open to them to sell the bank. It was an attractive option for the Corbetts and to the other minority stockholders. A ready purchaser was quickly found in the San Francisco based Transamerica, which owned Bank of America and Bancitaly, which was trying to strengthen its position on the West coast to compete with the New York and East coast banks.[41] An agreement was signed with Transamerica, in June 1930 and completed in 1932.[34]

As a result, for the first time in over sixty years the Corbett family no longer controlled a bank in Portland.[42]

Portland buildings

The Corbett Building
Built by the Corbett brothers in Portland, Oregon in 1907.
(David Rumsey Map Collection)

In addition to the buildings that their grandfather Henry W. Corbett built and left in the estate, most of them on a smaller scale, the three Corbett brothers through the Corbett Investment Company built and owned a number of additional downtown buildings. Among them were:

The Corbett Building

The Corbett Building, located at Southwest Fifth Avenue and Morrison, Portland Oregon (its mailing address was simply the Corbett Building, Portland, Oregon). The ten-story building was designed by Whidden & Lewis and completed in 1907. It "represented the arrival of the modern steel-framed skyscraper to Portland."[43] The offices of the Corbett brothers were on the 10th floor. Their grandfather Henry W. Corbett's Multnomah Building occupied the site previously.[44] The Corbett Building was demolished by implosion in 1988, after the three brothers' deaths, to make way for Pioneer Place.[45] It had been sold earlier by them on their retirement from building ownership in 1956.[46]

The Pacific Building
Built by the Corbett brothers in Portland, Oregon in 1925.
(Michael Marlitt photo 2018)

The Pacific Building

The Pacific Building, located at 520 SW Yamhill. Portland Oregon. The ten-story building was completed in 1925. The architect was A.E. Doyle and Associates. A young Pietro Belluschi worked on its design,[47] and later had the opportunity to work there[48] when Doyle moved the firm to the building.[49] The Pacific building was built on the landscaped grounds on northern half of the downtown block of the H. W. Corbett mansion where a number of eastern hardwood trees had stood [50] opposite the present Pioneer Courthouse. Here his widow, Mrs. Corbett, continued to live and grazed her cow for fresh milk.[51] The Pacific Building had the first underground parking garage in Portland that utilised unseen almost the entire block although the Pacific Building only utilises about half the block. The garage then extended beneath the reduced grounds of the H.W. Corbett mansion which previously occupied the entire block bounded by Taylor, 5th Avenue, Yamhill and Sixth Avenues. After the Pacific Building's erection the house, coach house and garden sat adjacent to the south.[52] It was still the residence of his widow Emma and she remained here until her death in 1936.[53] The Pacific Building is now listed on The National Register of Historic Places.[54]

The Corbett Brothers Auto Storage Garage

Corbett Brothers Auto Storage Garage Portland

The Corbett Brothers Auto Storage Garage (Broadway Garage), designed by A. E. Doyle. Completed in 1925. It was Portland's first self-service ramp garage. Access was off Pine Street. Store fronts were located on Sixth, Broadway and Pine. It is built in reinforced concrete. Alterations were made for the Corbetts by Pietro Belluschi in 1948. Listed on The National Register of Historic Places.[55]

In November 1956 the brothers began their transition into retirement. These buildings in addition to the other Corbett holdings were sold.[56]

Other business involvements

Elliott Corbett served on the Board of the Livestock State Bank (1914–1918), the Portland Home Telephone Company (1911–1918)[57] and the American Mail Line (1947–1953) amongst others.[58] He was President (1942–1943) and Trustee of the Portland Association of Building Owners and Managers.[59]

The P Ranch

The Corbett brothers had enjoyed their boyhood days spent at the P Ranch in the Harney Basin of Eastern Oregon.[60] At that time it had been owned by the French-Glenn Livestock Company and run by Peter French. This ranch was a vast spread in the Harney Basin watershed of the Steens Mountain and Blue Mountains. At the time of French's death, the P Ranch ran some seventy miles from the foothills of Steens Mountains to the south edge of Malheur Lake.[61] "The P Ranch was the greatest ranch in that country, compromising, with its satellite ranches, one hundred and forty thousand acres." Since it owned all the strategic waterholes and streams it also controlled vast acres of public range lands.[62] In 1903 the ranch additionally controlled 622,000 acres of grassland range leased from the government.[63]

Subsequently in 1906, when Henry Corbett was 25 and Elliott Corbett was 22, Charles Erskine Scott Wood,[64] their grandfather's former lawyer,[65] advised them that the heirs of French-Glenn Livestock Company which then owned the Ranch were interested in selling.[66] Wood became a minority partner with the Corbett brothers in the sale [67] and he represented the Corbett brothers during the acquisition.

The Harney country of the P Ranch

In 1906, when the Corbett brothers purchased it, the ranch was no longer a going concern as all the cattle had previously been sold.[68] It was renamed the Blitzen Valley Land Company. Bill Hanley, an owner of ranches in the area, was appointed their manager. He was someone they had known from their boyhood there.[69] Their aim was to restore it to a successful working ranch but the Blitzen Valley Land Company had first to improve the distribution of the water resources in the valley. They soon had increasing numbers of cattle on the range again. Between 1907 and 1913 the company built 17 and a half miles of new channels from the Donner and Blitzen Rivers in order to improve drainage of the wetlands. They also authorised construction of eight miles of the Busse Ditch and four miles of the Stubblefield Ditch to improve water distribution in the north end of the valley.[70]

In 1916 the Corbetts reorganised the operation as the Eastern Oregon Livestock Company (EOLC) and sold about 40 percent [71] of it to Louis Swift, the owner of the Chicago meat packing company Swift Brothers.[72] The Eastern Oregon Livestock Company's P Ranch then ran about 20,000 head of cattle but probably through lack of hay or other reasons they had heavy losses of cattle numbers in the next two years.[69]

In 1917 the Corbetts' and Swift's Eastern Oregon Livestock Company began the operation of their Harney Valley Railroad Company to transport its livestock out of the ranch with Henry L. Corbett becoming the railway's president.[73]

In 1918 the company constructed an irrigation ditch along the west side of the valley.[70]

In 1924 the Eastern Oregon Livestock Company built the Frenchglen Hotel about a mile away from the ranch house for cattle buyers and others having business with the ranch, as the nearest settlement was at Burns, Oregon, over sixty miles away.

In 1928 the Corbett brothers sold Swift all their remaining controlling shares in the company (EOLC). This was twenty-two years after their original investment and the brothers were apparently relieved to dispose of their remaining shares in the company to Swift as by then it was a losing proposition. Even the Swifts, as leading meatpackers, found it difficult to run profitably from 1928 until 1935 when they finally sold it to the US Government.[70]

The Frenchglen Hotel that the Corbetts' Eastern Oregon Livestock Company built at the P Ranch.
(Photo: Ian Pellet)

The P Ranch was sold to the Federal government because the government needed the Blitzen Valley water rights to protect water levels on the Malheur Lake Bird Reservation.[69] A part of the property is now the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and the rest is managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Some of the remaining P Ranch Buildings (the main ranch house burned down in 1947),[74] the Long Barn, French's Round Barn (for training horses) and the Beef Wheel and the Frenchglen Hotel are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Years later the P Ranch range lands became a source of contention when on 2 January 2016 the Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occurred, a militant protest and occupation lasting a number of weeks, led by some Nevada state ranchers protesting against US Federal control of lands. The standoff was covered on a daily basis by the US and international media.[75]

The investment had always been one of the Corbetts' less fortunate undertakings. It proved too large to manage effectively in those days with poor communications, especially by absentee landlords. When Elliott Corbett was asked if he had appreciated owning this childhood haunt, he replied that while he had enjoyed the place as boy, as an owner it had been a constant financial drain on him.[76] It was a costly early lesson to the brothers who never again invested in ventures in which they had an emotional attachment, nor in enterprises that they were not able to oversee directly.[77]

Public service and charitable activities

Elliott Corbett was involved with a number of charitable causes.

Oregon Voter on Elliott Corbett role

The Oregon Voter described his contribution. "In his long work in community and public affairs...he gave freely... of his knowledge and experience as a banker and manager of a family estate, to those charitable, philanthropic and educational institutions so that today most of them have sound budgets and practical administration procedures they might not have had but for him. ... He was kindly but firm [to others] working with him [giving] an education in what to find in a financial statement and the knack of seeing weakness and waste...in [what are] important facets of public philanthropy".[78]

Among these were:

The Oregon Historical Society

A life member and a director of the Society from 1942 until his death in 1963.[79] He was its president when it acquired the present Park Block site.[80]

Portland Art Museum

Elliott Corbett and his two brothers donated to the Portland Art Museum a number of art works from their mother Helen Ladd Corbett's collection of art after her death.[81]

Portland Library Association

A director (1911-1918).[82][83]

SS Henry W. Corbett Liberty ship launch 29 March 1943.
L-R: Elliott R. Corbett & wife, Mrs Henry L. Corbett & husband. Elliott Corbett's granddaughter Helen Macadam, WWII British refugee.
(Elliott R. Corbett Archives)

Portland Community Chest (later the United Way)

A founder and director (1935-1945), President 1943-1944.[84]

Oregon War Chest

A Director (1943-1945).[84]

Multnomah County Relief League

Chairman.[84]

Portland Committee on War Finance

Responsible for the Victory Bond drive and the voluntary financing of the War effort, Liberty Ships[85] etc.)[86]
Chairman.[82]

The Red Cross

Organiser of the Portland Chapter of the American Red Cross.[84]

U.S Committee for Care of European Children

Chairman.[84]

Reed College Elliott R. Corbett Loan Fund

Established in his memory in 1963 as a financial aid program for students to have access to loans when needed.[87]

Elliott R. Corbett Chart Room

Part of The Oregon Historical Society's Library and Archives created as part of a donation in his memory when their present building was being built.[88]

Liberty Ships

Elliott Corbett was one of those behind raising the funds for the building of Liberty ships, among them SS. Henry W. Corbett (launched 29 March 1943), SS William S. Ladd (13 September 1943), SS Henry Failing (7 April 1943) and SS Abbot L. Mills (18 October 1943) built by the Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation.[89]

Clubs

Life membership in: the Arlington Club (past President), The University Club, the Multnomah Athletic Club (all in Portland) and the Harvard Club (New York).[90] and the Deschutes Fishing Club, Oregon.

Alta Smith Corbett (wife)

Alta S. Corbett circa 1912
(Elliott R. Corbett Archives)

Elliott Corbett and Alta Rittenhouse Smith married in Portland on September 1, 1909.[91] She was born 10 June 1886 in Portland, Oregon, and died 9 September 1976 in Portland, aged 90. She was the daughter of Albert T. Smith (1833-1913) and Laura Rittenhouse (1852-1928) who moved to Portland in 1870. They built the first house in Portland Heights at what is now SW Carter Lane and Vista Avenue and gave Portland Heights its name (after their house The Heights).[92][93]

Alta graduated from the Portland Academy in 1904 [94][95] and was a 1908 honours graduate and Senior Councillor of Smith College[96] at Northampton, Massachusetts.[97] After graduation and before her marriage, she became a teacher. That was an early manifestation of her life-long interest in education and to furthering women's and civil rights.

Oregon Journal editorial Alta Corbett: True Civic Leader

The Oregon Journal published an Editorial after her death on 13 September 1976:

Alta Corbett: True Civic Leader
Alta Smith Corbett died at the age of 90, with several of her final years having been spent in a convalescent home.
Probably as a result, there are those who either never knew or had forgotten what a really remarkable career this woman had.
She was not one of those who merely "lend" their names to good causes.
For example, it was she who launched the drive for the present excellent Oregon Historical Society Building with a gift of $100,000 as a memorial to her late husband, Elliott R. Corbett.
The list of those organisations to which she gave service reads almost like a directory of agencies devoted to the "better life."
For example, she was a director of the National League of Women Voters, president of the Portland League of Women Voters, an original board member of the Girl Scouts, a trustee of Reed College and a member of the Riverdale School Board, trustee of Catlin Gabel School, president of the Portland Women's Union which built and operated the Martha Washington Hotel for women, founding member of Urban League and a member of the board of the Community Chest and the YWCA Travelers Aid.
She was the daughter of Albert and Laura Rittenhouse Smith, and her parents built the first house in Portland Heights.
Thus, she was a true daughter of Portland. And like so many of that early-day breed, she was not content to sit and enjoy the luxuries of life.
She used her time and energy to make Portland a better place in which we live.[98]

Among the women's and educational organisations she was involved with were:

Portland Equal Suffrage League

Appointed by Abigail Scott Duniway, Pacific Northwest suffragist, to its Finance Committee in 1912, not long after graduating from Smith.[99]

The Oregon Equal Suffrage Amendment was passed by the Oregon legislature in 1912 largely through the initiatives of the League and the efforts of these women. It meant that from then on women then had the right to vote in Oregon statewide elections and run for office in Oregon.

Oregon Equal Suffrage Alliance

President, 1918 - 1919 [100]

She was president of the Oregon Equal Suffrage Alliance during these two pivotal years in obtaining women's equal suffrage giving them the right to vote throughout the United States. The United States Congress had passed the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution on June 4, 1919, that would guarantee all women the right to vote but this then had to be submitted for ratification of three quarters of the states to secure adoption as part of the United States Constitution. The amendment was the culmination of a decades-long movement for women's suffrage in the United States, at both the state and national levels, and part of the worldwide movement towards women's suffrage and a forerunner of the movement towards women's rights.
Mrs. Corbett had called a large meeting of the Alliance [101] at the Multnomah Hotel in Portland on November 7, 1919, with representation from throughout the state at which leading US suffragette Carrie Chapman Catt spoke. It was agreed by the meeting and supported by Mrs. Catt that "Mrs. Elliott Corbett call a meeting ... to draft an appeal to the legislators to urge a special session" [of the Oregon legislature].[102] Mrs Corbett with two other women, Mrs. C.B. Simmons and Mrs. Harry B. Beales Torrey, of Portland met Governor Olcott and his executive on November 28, 1919. Mrs. Corbett, who acted as spokesman for the delegation, urged the governor to call a special session as until then he had been reluctant to do so. Mrs Corbett: "We feel that Oregon's influence is needed in the event that the so-called doubtful states are to ratify..." To that end the Alliance would welcome a special session of the legislature to ratify. If the expense of this was an objection of the Governor, Mrs. Corbett said that the women of the state stood ready to bear the expense of gathering the lawmakers. The governor responded that if the legislators asked for a special session, agreed to waive the per diem and mileage and confine their work to the Amendment he would call a special session.[103] [In the event the women's offer to cover the costs did not prove necessary as the Alliance contacted all the legislators and they agreed to call for a special session and waive all expenses to vote on the Amendment].
The Oregon legislature in special session voted to ratify the 19 Amendment a few weeks later on January 12, 1920, and on January 14, 1920, the resolution was filed by the Oregon Secretary of State and Oregon became the 25th state to ratify. After the required 36 states (3/4 of the then 48 states) had voted in the affirmative the Amendment was ratified by the US Congress on August 18, 1920, and the 19th Amendment then became part of the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing all women the right to vote.

League of Women Voters

Elliott and Alta Corbett in their garden
(Elliott R. Corbett Archives)

Portland president 1938-40.
National president 1940-42.
Portland honorary president 1944.
Supported the magazine The Voice of American Women.

The national Community Chest

Appointed by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1933 as the Oregon representative to the national Community Chest, the forerunner of the United Way, during the Depression.[104]

Urban League of Portland

A founding member in 1945 of this civil rights organisation.
Vice-President 1947, during the Portland Vanport district flood where the league was actively involved in aiding the largely black population there.

She described the league at the time as "a professionally staffed agency working to improve conditions to create a better climate of interracial understanding. The program focuses on job development, and employment, education and youth incentives, housing and health and welfare..."[105]

Portland Women's Union

Vice-President.

Founded in 1887 to assist working women. The PWU was the first all-women volunteer organization in the state of Oregon. Its primary mission was to provide a safe and respectable residence for women coming to Portland until they found a job or became married.[106] Alta Corbett gave it her enthusiastic support. She was Vice-President when it opened the Martha Washington Hotel in downtown Portland. The hotel provided a homelike environment for the single woman who was ready and willing to work for a living. It housed eighty women over four stories, including sitting rooms, dining room and laundry and other facilities. The Women's Union also taught secretarial skills there at night classes.[107]

The Girl Scouts

Original Board member in Portland.[108]

Oregon Historical Society

Alta Corbett helped launch the drive for the funds necessary for the erection of Oregon Historical Society Building with a financial donation in memory of her husband, Elliott R. Corbett.[108] The present OHS Building at 1200 SW Park Avenue is on the site which her late husband had helped acquire. She was an Honorary Member of the Life Council of the society.[109] The Oregon Historical Society Newsletter wrote after her death that Alta Corbett was "...an inspired and generous leader...So we find our great examples from history not only from Greece, Rome, Jerusalem, Cadiz...often we might look closer in space and time. Sometimes our inspiration is nearer at hand among those we have known, loved, and laboured with...".[88]

Schools' and Universities

Riverdale School. Dunthorpe. Portland, Oregon. Board (1915-1930).
Smith College. Trustee (1931-1939).
Reed College. Regent (1919-1941) and Trustee (1931-1934).
Catlin Gabel School. Trustee (1949-1951).
[110]

The Alta S. Corbett Lectureship Fund at Reed College

Established through a donation by her five daughters in her name the year after her death in 1976 and continues to support symposiums, lectures, grants and collective research fellowships.[111]

The Alta S. Corbett Grants for Research in Political Science, Reed College

A Reed College bursary.[112]

Oregon State Song

The Oregon State Song Oregon, My Oregon, composed by Henry B. Murtagh with lyrics by John Andrew Buchanan, was chosen from 212 submissions by a committee of five of which she was one of the members and designated by the Oregon Legislature as the state song in 1927.[113]

Daughters

Elliott and Alta had five daughters and no sons [114] who they brought up with the aid of Nurse Cochrane:[115]

Caroline Ladd Corbett

Caroline Ladd Corbett

Born 20 September 1910 in Portland Oregon. She died 28 August 1989 [aged 79] at East Runton, Norfolk, UK. She attended Riverdale School and Miss Catlin's School (now Catlin Gabel School) in Portland and Smith College, Massachusetts. After graduating Cum Laude she worked as the Personal Assistant to the US Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson before her marriage to Ivison Macadam (1894-1974), Director General of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in St James's Square, London, UK. They married on 1 January 1934 in Dunthorpe, Portland, Oregon and lived in London and at Runton Old Hall, East Runton, Norfolk, UK. They had four children, Helen Ivison Taylor, William Ivison Macadam, Elliott Corbett Macadam and Caroline Alta Macadam Colacicchi.

Gretchen (Day) Corbett

Gretchen (Day) Corbett

Born 2 November 1912 in Portland Oregon. She died 10 October 2004 [aged 91]. Like all her sisters she attended Riverdale School and Miss Catlin's School (now Catlin Gabel School). She married Dr. John Poulsen Trommald in 1934 in Boston Massachusetts.[116] She was active in civic organisations including the Visiting Nurses Association, President; English Speaking Union, Oregon Historical Society and was appointed to the Executive Committee of the Citizen's Conference on Oregon Courts in 1968. Active in Republican Party politics, she was an Oregon delegate to the 1960 Republican National Convention. She was involved in the creation of the Oregon Women's Division of the Nixon-Agnew Campaign Committee in 1968.[117] They had four children, John Poulsen Trommald, Elliott Corbett Trommald, Susan Trommald Roff and Peter Gunder Trommald.

Lesley (Judy) Corbett

Lesley (Judy) Corbett

Born 13 April 1915 in Dunthorpe, Portland, Oregon. She died on November 5, 2013, [aged 98] at Portland. She attended Riverdale School, Miss Catlin's School (now Catlin Gabel School), Portland, the Branson School, Ross, California and Smith College, Massachusetts. She married Dr. Donald Forster [118] on 16 September 1939. She was like her husband a keen fly fisher.[119] Active in the Portland Community, she served on the Board of Trustees of Reed College, the Parry Centre, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), and the Board of Riverdale School. She was an active supporter of the Portland Art Museum, the Oregon Historical Society, Smith College, Catlin Gabel School and the League of Women Voters. They had four children, Dale Edward Forster, Robert Douglas Forster, William Lloyd Forster and Helen Forster Chapman.[120]

Alta (Teta) Corbett

Alta (Teta) Corbett

Born 26, May 1918 in Dunthorpe, Portland, Oregon. She "set off on her next great adventure" on 28 August 2017 [aged 99] at Sequim, Washington.[121] She attended Riverdale School, and Smith College. Nature was important in her life. She was a horseback rider, fly fisher and poet. In her early twenties she made solo ascents of the Pacific Northwest's mountains, Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, Mount Adams, the Three Sisters and Mount St. Helens. During World War II she first worked in the US War Department for Air Branch G-2 [122] and on its formation she transferred to the Women Airforce Service Pilots, the WASP, where she flew as a Squadron Leader. She married Ralph Russell Thomas on 8 June 1961 in Portland Oregon starting married life on the Oregon Coast. Later, they self built a house and farm in Sequim, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula.[123] In 2010, the WASP were recognised for service during WWII, and at 92, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in Washington, D.C.[124] They had two daughters Deborah Thomas McGoff and Caroline (Kelly) Ladd Thomas.[125]

Lucy Elliott Corbett

Lucy Elliott Corbett

Born 16 March 1922 in Dunthorpe, Portland, Oregon – Died on 23 October 2007 aged 85 at Portland. She attended Riverdale School, and Scripps College, Claremont, California. She married Richard J. Marlitt on September 16, 1955, in Portland, Oregon.[126] Lucy served in the Red Cross during World War II and during the reconstruction of Germany afterwards. She was a generous donor to the Portland Art Museum of the works she and her husband had collected by the American Ashcan School and American Impressionism School of painters. She was a board member and active supporter of various other social and cultural organisations including the Portland Art Museum, the Oregon Historical Society and many others. They had two sons Thomas Corbett Marlitt and Michael Ladd Marlitt.

Named after him

Elliott R. Corbett II

Elliott and Alta had no sons but Elliott's brother Henry L. Corbett named his youngest son after him, Elliott Ruggles Corbett II (1922-1944). He was killed in action, aged 22, during the Allied liberation of Europe in WWII a few months before the end of hostilities. His parents donated the Elliott Corbett Memorial State Recreation Site in their son's memory).[127] A website devoted to Elliott. R. Corbett II is at https://www.elliott-r-corbett-ii.com

Elliott also had two grandsons named after him, Elliott Corbett Trommald and Elliott Corbett Macadam.[114]

Recreations

Elliott, along with his brothers, was a football player at Harvard University and at the Multnomah Athletic Club in his younger years. He was also a good horseman and polo player in Oregon. He was a keen fly fisherman and keen duck and quail hunter and excellent shot both with a shotgun, rifle and revolver. He and his wife took their family on camping trips with packhorse trains in the Oregon mountains.[128] They also had a motor vessel, the Widgeon, in their younger years in which they sailed up the Pacific Coast with their friends and elder daughters and into the British Columbia inlets for the salmon fishing.[129] Elliott was a regular Steelhead fisherman on the Deschutes River and others.

Residences

Elliott R. Corbett Dunthorpe house in 1915 from the SE.
(Elliott R. Corbett Archives)

After their marriage Elliott Corbett and his wife lived in the Park Blocks at 243 W. Park Avenue Portland, now 1119 SW Park, formerly the W. M. Ladd residence.[130] There Elliott Corbett and his brother Henry L. Corbett had adjoining properties.[131] The sites of the two houses occupied the block that is now the location of the Portland Art Museum Mark Building[132] across from the Oregon Historical Society Building.[133] The Elliott Corbetts' first three daughters were born there.[77]

Elliott R. Corbett Dunthorpe house north front 1915. In 1939 Elliott took off chimney & west end to right & third floor above.
(Elliott R. Corbett Archives)

Elliott and Alta Corbett then were intent on a move from the busy downtown area. Elliott and his brother Henry. L. Corbett commissioned A. E. Doyle and Associates to design two houses with adjoining grounds on six acres in Portland Heights[134] which ultimately were never built.

Elliott Corbett and his wife in 1913 embarked on the building of a "country cottage" in what became the Dunthorpe area that was about to be opened up for development near Lake Oswego.[135] While doing so the Corbetts decided to make the "cottage" at 01600 SW Greenwood Road[136] in Dunthorpe, their main residence so their children could grow up in a semi-rural environment. It was completed in the fall of 1915 and the 32 year old Elliott Corbett and his 29 year old wife Alta moved there with their then three daughters in time for Thanksgiving.[137] It was the first house to be built in the new area of Dunthorpe.

Elliott R. Corbett House present front externally same as after the 1939 alterations.(NRHP)
(Photo: Steve Morgan)

The Elliott Corbett property was set in 32 acres containing a two-story three-bay car garage with an under-car mechanic's well and workshop and staff quarters above, a separate barn and stables for their riding horses and groom's quarters (both entered by a side drive off the main circular one), a gardener's cottage adjacent to SW Iron Mountain Road (now Blvd.), a pair of tennis courts, a swimming pool and a children's "Swings and Rings" play area, all at a distance from the main house and mostly not within sight of it.[138]

Many of their Portland friends thought it was an unwise move but Elliott's brother Henry Ladd Corbett decided to follow suit and soon many of the leading Portland families had decided to build their homes there. An area which used to seem quite a distance from Portland became a pleasant area to bring up large families.

The Elliott Corbett's five daughters were brought up there. After the three eldest were married and the two younger were away at College, Elliott took off part of the west end in 1939, including the large formal living room, and the second and third floor above it [139] to make the house more compact for their smaller family then living there and created a new formal West walled garden for his wife on the former larger West wing foundation.[140]

The Elliott R. Corbett House is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and its front appears today as it looked after Corbett made the modifications.[141]

Elliott and Alta also had a beach house on the Oregon Coast at Gearhart, Oregon, and in later years, after giving that to their children and their families, had a smaller beach house on the sand dunes at Surf Pines, Oregon, north of Gearhart.[142]

Elliott and his son-in-law Dr. Donald Forster also built the Don Elliott fishing cabin on the Deschutes River in eastern Oregon.

Notes and references

  1. ^ Morning Oregonian, Portland, 1 April 1903. Front page headline story of H.W. Corbett's death, with photograph, https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn83025138/1903-04-01/ed-1/seq-1/ continued on all of page 10, http://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn83025138/1903-04-01/ed-1/seq-10/ and onto part of page 11. https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn83025138/1903-04-01/ed-1/seq-11/
  2. ^ Harvey Scott: History of Portland, Oregon with illustrations and biographical sketches of prominent citizens and pioneers.
  3. ^ a b c d E. Kimbark MacColl with Harry H. Stein, Merchants, Money and Power: The Portland Establishment, 1843-1913. The Georgian Press, 1988.
  4. ^ Helen Kendall Ladd was born 4 July 1859 in Portland,Oregon. Died 5 June 1936 in Portland Oregon ; Descendants of Robert Corbett; Thirteen generations, revised in 2001 by Gordon Corbett, privately printed. Source Elliott R. Corbett archives, Runton Old Hall, East Runton, Norfolk, UK.
  5. ^ Henry W. Corbett's younger son, the first Hamilton Forbush Corbett was born 1 December 1859 in Portland Oregon. He died 12 October 1884 in Portland Oregon, aged 24. His brother Henry Jagger Corbett then named his youngest son Hamilton Forbush Corbett following his brother's premature death.
  6. ^ The Portland Academy, founded by his two grandfathers Henry W. Corbett and the estate of William S. Ladd (his mother's father), was built in 1895–96 (not to be confused with the prior Methodist Portland Academy and Female Seminary that closed in 1878. The new Academy was Presbetarian-leaning rather than Methodist). The private school stood along Southwest Thirteenth Avenue south of Montgomery Street. The building was designed by Whidden and Lewis - probably the first Flemish–style building in Portland built in contrasting red brick and light-coloured stone common in the early twentieth century on campus buildings such as those found at Portland's Reed College (with some of the same family members responsible for gifting the land for it and overseeing the building of its campus). The success of free public schools in the area led to falling enrolment and the Portland Academy closed in June 1916 after twenty years of educating hundreds of future college graduates (including political activist John Reed).
    It was then occupied by St Helen's Hall, an Episcopal school for girls and young women. In 1964 the building was purchased by the State of Oregon and torn down the next year for construction of a new freeway, Interstate 405. Lost Portland Oregon, Val C. Ballerstrem, History Press, Charleston, S.C., 2018, pp 103 & 104 (with photograph of building), ISBN 978-1-5402-3707-1
  7. ^ Catlin Gable School, Ted Kaye, The Oregon Encyclopedia, A project of the Oregon Historical Society on-line.
  8. ^ They continued these sports in Portland at the Multonamah Athletic Club.
  9. ^ The Corbett boys were also looked after there by Bill Hanley and his wife.
  10. ^ Daughters' Caroline Corbett and Alta (Teta) Corbett reminiscences, Elliott R. Corbett Archives, Runton Old Hall, East Runton, Norfolk, UK.
  11. ^ "Gives to Charity…Liberal Bequests in H.W. Corbett's Will...Grandsons Are Made the Residuary Legatees", The Sunday Oregonian, Portland, Oregon, 5 April 1903, p. 1 and 10.
  12. ^ The Hamilton Building was named in memory of H.W.Corbett's son, and their father's brother Hamilton. The six-story building at 529 SW 3rd Ave, Portland, Oregon was completed in 1893, by architects Whidden & Lewis and was the first building in Portland designed in the Classical Revival style which later became widely used in commercial buildings.
  13. ^ History of Oregon, Volume II, Pioneer Historical Publishing Company, Chicago-Portland, 1922.
  14. ^ The Portland Hotel was opened in 1890, designed by McKim, Mead & White on the site where Portland Pioneer Courthouse Square is located today.
  15. ^ At the Lewis and Clark Exposition's opening The Oregonian remembered: "This is a time when it should be said that the Lewis and Clark Exposition and its splendid results are due to the late Henry W. Corbett. It was he who gave it the first forward movement. He took hold of it with all his accustomed energy, subscribing a heavy sum of money to start it, and gave to the work of organising it the last earnest efforts of his life." The Oregonian, June 3, 1905.
  16. ^ The Great Extravaganza: Portland and the Lewis and Clark Exposition, Carl Abbott, Oregon Historical Society,Portland, 1981.
  17. ^ Including her elder brothers William Mead Ladd and Charles Elliott Ladd of Portland and younger sister Caroline Ames Pratt (Mrs. Frederic B. Pratt) of New York, her youngest brother John Wesley Ladd and her own mother, Caroline Ames Elliott Ladd of Portland.
  18. ^ The Oregonian, May 3, 1963.
  19. ^ Corbett Investment Company shares subsequently were also settled on their spouses and children. Elliott R. Corbett Archives, Runton.
  20. ^ Henry L. Corbett served as a state senator for most of the legislature sessions from 1923 to 1936.
  21. ^ The Growth of a City: Power and Politics in Portland, Oregon 1915 to 1950, E.Kimbark MacColl, Georgian Press,Portland, Oregon, 1979.p. 397
  22. ^ The Growth of a City: Power and Politics in Portland, Oregon !915 to 1950, E.Kimbark MacColl, Georgian Press,Portland, Oregon, 1979, p. 397.
  23. ^ Hamilton Corbett enrolled in the US army on the United States entry into World War I in May 1917 for Officer training. He was commissioned as a first lieutenant and sailed to France in September 1917, serving there with the 151st Field Artillery, 42nd Division. He was wounded in July 1918 and was promoted to captain. When the war ended, he remained with the occupation forces in Germany, serving as aide-de-camp to Major General James Harbord until summer of 1919. Harvard's Military Record in the World War. Frederick Sumner Mead, The Harvard Alumni Association, 1921, p. 215.
  24. ^ The Oregon Historical Society had a small exhibition of Hamilton Corbett's war-time letters in 2017.
  25. ^ Senator H. W. Corbett got the Federal monies appropriated to build it, then called the US Federal Building, housing the Courthouse and Post Office, in an adjacent block to that occupied by his own house and grounds.
  26. ^ "Corbett Bldg built by his grandsons Henry L and Elliott R and Hamilton F in 1907 - 4yrs after their Grandfather's death (Multnomah Bldg occupied the site previously)." A correction written in pencil by Elliott R. Corbett in margin of the entry for Hon. Henry Winslow Corbett entry which had incorrectly indicated it was one of the buildings that H.W.Corbett had built. History of Oregon, Biographical Vol. 2, page 307, Pioneer Historical Publishing Company, Chicago and Portland, 1922. Elliott R. Corbett Archives, Runton.
  27. ^ Letterhead of the Corbett Investment Company. Elliott R. Corbett Archives, Runton.
  28. ^ Family reminiscences, Elliott R. Corbett Archives, Runton.
  29. ^ "Five Buildings Sold in City", The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon, 8 November 1956, page 1.
  30. ^ Corbett and the Failings had then immediately increased the bank's then capitalisation from $100,000 to $250,000 (which was further increased by the owners over succeeding years). Merchants, Money and Power: The Portland Establishment, 1843-1913. E. Kimbark MacColl with Harry H. Stein, The Georgian Press, 1988, p. 149
  31. ^ The National Banking Act of 1863 required nationally chartered banks to hold one third of the capital of the bank in US Treasury bonds. It allowed them in return to issue a uniform bank note backed by the bonds. The amount of the notes not to exceed 90 percent of the value of the bonds.
  32. ^ In 1865 the U.S. Congress enacted a 10 percent tax on any bank or individual using state bank notes. As a result, a number of banks converted to national charters, but many simply stopped issuing notes. Instead, demand deposit money was introduced — checking accounts.
  33. ^ Oregon Argonauts: Merchant Adventurers on the Western Frontier. Arthur L. Throckmorton, Oregon Historical Society, 1961, p. 313.
  34. ^ a b The Growth of a City: Power and Politics in Portland, Oregon !915 to 1950, E.Kimbark MacColl, Georgian Press,Portland, Oregon, 1979.
  35. ^ First National Bank building architect was Coolidge and Shattuck of Boston. Its design may have been influenced by the classicism of Henry Bacon's marble Lincoln Memorial classicism that had made an impact at the time when the memorial plans were unveiled for it in 1914 (although it was not completed and dedicated until 1922).
  36. ^ First National Bank building is now listed on The National Register of Historic Places.
  37. ^ Brother Hamilton F. Corbett was president of The Security and Saving Trust Company.
  38. ^ E.B. McNaughton later succeeded as President when the bank changed ownership.
  39. ^ The Growth of a City: Power and Politics in Portland, Oregon 1915 to 1950, E.Kimbark MacColl, Georgian Press,Portland, Oregon, 1979.
  40. ^ Oregon Voter, June 14, 1930
  41. ^ "The First National of Portland, Oregon, resources $50,000,000 ... purchased." The Story of Bank of America: Biography of a Bank, Marquis James, Bessie R. James, published 1954, 2002 reprint, Beard Books, p.310.
  42. ^ Their grandfather William S. Ladd's foundation, The Ladd and Tilton Bank, had already been sold under the presidency of his eldest son William M. Ladd. It had actually been under the control of his brother-in-law Frederic B. Pratt of New York, who was a part owner of Standard Oil. Elliott Corbett had declined to have the First National Bank take it over because of the risk inherant for the First National Bank when the Ladd and Tilton had got into financial difficulty. The Pratts and William M. Ladd had instead overseen its orderly transition for its depositors who were none the wiser over its difficulties and the fact that a number of family members had protected them at considerable cost. The Ladd and Tilton was amalgamated with the US National Bank in 1924 and its customer accounts safely transferred there. Growth of a City: Power and Politics in Portland Oregon, 1915 to 1950, R Kimbark MacColl, Georgian Press, Portland, 1979. p 202.
  43. ^ Lost Portland Oregon, Val C. Ballestrem, The History Press, 2018
  44. ^ Elliott R. Corbett's notes.
  45. ^ The Corbett Building demolition was described in the front page of the Oregonian under the headline "Buildings Fall draws thousands. In less than five seconds and with nary a hitch, the 10-story Corbett structure becomes a heap of rubble while 10,000 watch". The text beneath began "With deafening boom, backed by a chorus of cheers from thousands of early risers, the 81 year old Corbett Building shuddered and caved in on itself in a cloud of dust after dawn on Sunday...
    Police estimated a crowd of 10,000 viewed at 6:38 a.m. blast which came off without a hitch....The building was demolished to make way for the three block Pioneer Place project developed by the Rouse Co...It was the first time the implosion method of demolition was used in Portland..." The Oregonian, Portland, 2 May 1988. It was also carried on local television and CNN's national television broadcast and pictured in various papers around the world such as the Toronto Star (Canada).(See video May 1st, 1988 Corbett Building implosion in Portland, Oregon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlTuI67zLJA
  46. ^ Downtown Deals Mark Year, The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon, 30 December 1956.
  47. ^ Belluschi designed the lobby and much else. This was the first building Belluschi worked on.
  48. ^ Pietro Belluschi went on to a glittering career as architect of some of the US's most important and innovative buildings and later held the prestigious position of Dean of Architecture Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
  49. ^ A.E. Doyle moved his company offices to the Pacific Building on its completion. They were located to its top floor and under the eves with hidden terraces. Pacific Building listing in national Register of Historic Places. Also OHS.
  50. ^ Henry W. Corbett had replaced the native fir around his house and grounds, occupying the block, with one flowering tulip, three maples, one horse chestnut, a few holly, one distinctive almond and twelve elms he had carried from the east as saplings in 1955. They came from his sister's home in Lansingburg upstate New York. The Growth of a City: Power and Politics in Portland, Oregon 1915 to 1950, E Kimbark MacColl, Georgian Press, Portland, 1979, p 312.
  51. ^ It was known locally as 'The Million Dollar Cow Pasture".OHS.
  52. ^ The site on which house, garden, coach house and the rest of the grounds, other than the "Cow Pasture", stood is now the location of The Duniway Portland, a Hilton Hotel, formerly Portland Hilton Hotel Executive Tower.
  53. ^ In 1956 this part of the Pacific Building garage, by then under the Greyhound Bus terminal, was severed from the building when the Corbetts sold it.
  54. ^ "Registration form". npgallery.nps.gov.
  55. ^ It is listed on The National Register of Historic Places 96000999 https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/99a9e865-66f5-440f-a047-41e0090b00ac
  56. ^ "Five Buildings Sold in City", The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon, 8 November 1956, page 1
  57. ^ "The Home Telephone Company is altogether a local proposition...The Portland plant is one of the largest systems in the country constructed particularly for automatic equipment... .Morning Oregonian, October 06, 1909, Page 14
  58. ^ The Oregonian Journal, Portland, May 2, 1963
  59. ^ The Oregonian, Portland Thursday, May 3, 1963
  60. ^ Erskine Wood writes of a trip to Idaho; " My father (Charles Erskine Scott Wood), my brothers, Teddy Robinson, and the Corbett boys and I made a trip there in 1899, in the intervening years between our trips to the Harney Valley" [where the P Ranch was]. Life of Charles Erskine Scott Wood, by his son Erskine Wood, 1878, reprinted Rose Wind Press,, Vancouver Washington, 1991.
  61. ^ "The P Ranch House Fire: An Eyewitness Account", Clarence A. Oster, Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 106, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), p. 286, OHS. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20615531
  62. ^ Life of Charles Erskine Scott Wood, by his son Erskine Wood, 1878, reprinted Rose Wind Press,, Vancouver Washington, 1991, p. 72.
  63. ^ Harney Valley Items, Burns, Oregon, 27 June 1903,
  64. ^ Wood was a Renaissance man; soldier, lawyer, poet, satirist, patron of the arts and painter. He introduced many of the leading Portland families to contemporary American Expressionist painters of the time. Wood Works: The Life and Writings if Charles Erskine Scott Wood. Edwin Bingham and Tim Barnes, Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, Oregon, 1997.
  65. ^ Wood was a self confessed anarchist and his politics could have been called radical in his day, at least left wing, and although they were not shared by Republican Senator Corbett, Wood was admired as a defender of unpopular causes and civil rights. So it did not stand in the way of a close personal friendship with Corbett and most of the leading families whose businesses he continued, as their lawyer, to represent. Wood however took mischievous delight in giving Senator Corbett and other leading businessmen an annual subscription to the Masses. Diaries of Judge Matthew P. Deady, 1871 – 1892, (Pharisee among the Philistines) edited by Malcolm Clark, Jr., OHS, 1975 .
  66. ^ Hugh J. Glenn who originally had financed and who controlled the P Ranch was murdered in 1883 at his Jacinto, California ranch. The same year Peter French, his manager at the P Ranch married his daughter. In 1878 the native Paiute and Bannock raided the P Ranch. In 1897 Peter French was shot dead: the assailant, was a homesteader in the area who had petitioned for a road and felt it had been denied by the courts through French's influence. Upon French's death, the P ranch became the property of their various heirs but the "Wild West" and the P Ranch debts seemed to have been too much for them. Cattle Country of Peter French, Giles French, Binfords & Mort, Portland, Oregon, 1964.
  67. ^ Just when Wood ceased to have a shareholding is not clear, probably when the company was reorganised in 1916. There may be confusion with him acting as a nominee for Elliott Corbett. In his son's biography of his father he describes camping at the P Ranch camp his father had set up there on his 21st birthday in 1900 but that was six years before the Corbett purchase. There is no reference to his father's part ownership of the P Ranch in the book. However he does describe his love of the area and quotes his poetry about the area and describes the painting he did there.
  68. ^ It was estimated that the Corbetts bought it for just over 2 dollars an acre which would have appeared a good investment then (a 1906 dollar is worth approximately 26 dollars at a 2017 exchange rate).Cattle Country of Peter French, Giles French, Binfords & Mort, Portland, Oregon, 1964.
  69. ^ a b c Where Land and Water Meet: A Western Landscape Transformed, Nancy Langston, University of Washington Press, Seattle,2003.
  70. ^ a b c Malheur's legacy : celebrating a century of conservation, 1908-2008: Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Southeast Oregon. Carla D. Burnside, Government Printing Office, 2008.
  71. ^ The Swift percentage after the sale has mostly been described as 40% but in one case it is recorded as 46%.
  72. ^ An amusing story about Swift's visit prior to his investing from a Corbett family grandchild. "In the mid 1960s when I was about 18 I was tasked with driving Granny and her sister Elizabeth to the Malheur. We stopped at the hotel and we walked through the nearby ruins of some of the original buildings. Granny was able to identify and describe what they were. Eye opening for me still in my teens.
    "She enjoyed telling a story about Mr. Swift when he was staying at the ranch prior to purchasing. He was offered sausage for breakfast which he declined saying no one should eat sausage because of the indescribable horrors of what might be in the product. He was assured the sausage came from pigs grown on the ranch and hand made by the cook. He changed his mind and enjoyed his breakfast sausage." Reminiscences of Kate Morgan, granddaughter of the Henry L. Corbetts, 6 February 2016, Elliott. R. Corbett Archives, Runton.
  73. ^ Henry L. Corbett was president of Harney Valley Railroad from 1917 to 1929. The Corbett brothers had commenced building the railroad three years earlier. It connected to The Eastern Oregon Railway and Union Pacific, OHS Archives & Elliott R. Corbett archives.
  74. ^ The P Ranch house was destroyed by fire on 3 August 1947: "The P Ranch House Fire: An Eyewitness Account", Clarence A. Oster, Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 106, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 284-293, OHS. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20615531
  75. ^ "Oregon militia threatens showdown with US agents at wildlife refuge". Jason Wilson, The Guardian, London, UK, January 3, 2016.
  76. ^ He cannot always have felt that way as Corbett, when an owner, had commissioned Childe Hassam to paint the view from the Ranch house, for which he paid the then little known American Impressionist $200 plus room and board. The painting subsequently hung in Elliott Corbett's Dunthorpe home.
    Hassam also painted the reverse view of the ranch house (which later burned down in 1947) for his brother Henry and also a portrait of his wife that hung in the Henry L. Corbett house.
    Elliott R. Corbett Archives, Runton.
  77. ^ a b Elliott R. Corbett Archives, Runton.
  78. ^ Oregon Voter, Portland, Oregon June 1, 1963
  79. ^ Portland Financier Elliott R. Corbett Dies Of Heart Illness In Home at 78, Oregon Journal, Portland Thursday, May 2, 1963.
  80. ^ The OHS later expansion on the site was described Happy Birthday Oregon from the Oregon Historical Society (Statehood Achieved 14 February 1859). "OREGONS BIRTHDAY PRESENT. No public tax monies have been used for the $4.5 million expansion project enhancing the block-square Oregon Historical Centre in the heart of downtown Portland...," (with aerial rendering). The Sunday Oregonian, 12 February 1989.
  81. ^ The Helen Ladd Corbett bequests represented art works on canvas and Japanese prints but also Roman and Greek objects (including the mid-century BC Greek Attica Column Crater (vase), Painter of Tarquinia) etc.,Portland Art Museum Selected Works, 1996, p.144).
  82. ^ a b Oregon Journal, Portland Thursday , May 2, 1963
  83. ^ As a Portland Library Association director he and the majority voted in 1918 to uphold the right of the Assistant Librarian to claim "her constitutional American right privately to hold a minority opinion as she had disagreed with President Wilson's aims and ideals" and to not take out a Liberty Bond. A stand that had caused a minor furore in Portland against her stand .The Growth of a City: Power and Politics in Portland, Oregon 1915 to 1950, E.Kimbark MacColl, Georgian Press,Portland, Oregon, 1979.
  84. ^ a b c d e Oregon Journal, Portland Thursday, May 2, 1963
  85. ^ A Liberty Ship name could be preposed by any group which raised war bonds worth $2 million.
  86. ^ Roosevelt's Arsenal of Democracy. "Between 1940 and 1946, Portland literally transformed itself in many significant ways and gained national recognition for the skills and diligence its workers brought to the important wartime tasks at hand." It Takes More Than Bullets: The Wartime Homefront in Portland, George Kramer, Housing Authority of Portland Portland, Oregon, 2006.
  87. ^ Reed College, Reed 11, Vol. 55, number 12, July 1, 1977
  88. ^ a b OHS
  89. ^ The name for a Liberty ship could be preposed by any group which raised war bonds worth $2 million.
  90. ^ Elliott R. Corbett, 78, Dies in Dunthorpe. The Oregonian, Portland, Friday, May 3, 1963
  91. ^ Corbett-Smith Wedding is Society Event, Morning Oregonian, 2 Sept. 2017, p.9 column 3.
  92. ^ Community Leader dies At 90, Oregon Journal 9 September 1976 & Alta Corbett: True Civic Leader, Editorial, Oregon Journal, 13 September 1976.
  93. ^ Albert T. Smith was the proprietor with his brother of the Smith Brothers lumber business with a mill on the Willamette River approximately where John's Landing in Portland is situated today, off Macadam Road. He was the son of Peter Smith and Barbara Shouter of Pennsylvania. Family Tree researched by Richard Marlitt for his sons, Michael Ladd Marlitt and Thomas Corbett Marlitt, 1975, Elliott R. Corbett Archives, Runton.
  94. ^ The Portland Academy was a predecessor educational institution of the present Catlin Gable school. Catlin Gable School, Ted Kaye, The Oregon Encyclopedia, A project of the Oregon Historical Society on-line.
  95. ^ On her graduation she was the recipient of the Mathematics prize, The Corbett prize for General Scholarship, The Failing Prize for English and the Latin prize. Morning Oregonian, June 18, 1904, p.8
  96. ^ Smith College Yearbook, 1908
  97. ^ Smith was still a young college for women having opened its campus to a small number of students only on 9 September 1875. Early History of Smith, Selye.
  98. ^ Alta Corbett: true Civic Leader, Oregon Journal, Portland, Oregon, 13 September 1976.
  99. ^ Path Breaking: An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States, Abigail Scott Duniway, p. 276. Portland: James, Kerns & Abbott Company, 1914.
  100. ^ Mrs Simmons Wins Suffrage Election: New Alliance President Succeeds Mrs. Corbett, p. 12, column one, The Morning Oregonian, Portland, Oregon, November 25, 1919.
  101. ^ Shall Oregon Form A Branch Of The National League of Women Voters , Sunday Oregonian, November 2, 1919, p. 71, column 1
  102. ^ Women Divided On Mrs. Catt's Plan, The Morning Oregonian, November 8, 1919, p.1, column 8 and p.2
  103. ^ Governor Repeats Answer to Women, The Morning Oregonian, November 29, 1919, p.6, column 1.
  104. ^ Mrs. Roosevelt had written to Alta Corbett that "...our committee relies upon your crusade to arouse public opinion which will express itself in generous support of the agencies essential to our civilisation..." Alta Smith Corbett, 1886-1976. Biography by Kathleen McMullan, 15, January, 2005, OHS
  105. ^ On the Road to Equality:The Urban League of Portland, Dr. Darrell Miller, Urban League of Portland, 1995, Portland State University Library.
  106. ^ The Oregon Encyclopedia, Dana Platz, OHS.
  107. ^ Alta Smith Corbett, 1886-1976. Biography by Kathleen McMullan, 15, January, 2005, OHS.
  108. ^ a b Alta Corbett: True Civic Leader, Editorial, Oregon Journal, 13 September 1976.
  109. ^ Community Leader dies At 90, Oregon Journal 9 September 1976.
  110. ^ Organisations Alta S. Corbett was involved with: Community Leader Dies At 90, Oregon Journal, , Thursday September 9, 1976 and Alta Corbett, Portlander dies at 90, The Oregonian 10 September 1976.
  111. ^ Reed 11, Vol. 55, number 12, July 1, 1977.
  112. ^ Reed College.
  113. ^ The other members were Mabel Holmes Parsons, a poet, artist, and writing instructor for the University of Oregon; J. A. Churchill, the state superintendent of schools; Norman F. Coleman, a professor of English at Reed College; and Hopkin Jenkins, the principal of Jefferson High School in Portland. Oregon, My Oregon, entry by Richard Engeman, Oregon Encylopdedia, a project of the Oregon Historical Society.
  114. ^ a b Descendants of Robert Corbett: Thirteen Generations, Compiled in 1995 by Gordon L. Corbett and James L. Corbett, Revised in 2001 by Gordon L. Corbett. Privately printed. Copy in Elliott R. Corbett Archives, Runton.
  115. ^ Nurse Cochrane is described in The Riverdale School centenary book as taking Sunday School there in the 1920s: "The two teachers were Nurse Cochrane who supervised the Elliott Corbett offspring and Miss Lefler who performed the same service for the Henry Corbetts."
    "Freddy Bailey Davenport has vivid memories of the Sunday school:
    "I suppose it was about 1928. Nurse Cochrane and Miss Leflar gave up their Sunday mornings, coming down from the two Corbett houses to nurture moral fibre in some of the young.
    "We started with a hymn. Miss Lefler played the piano. 'Onward Christian Soldiers' we did with gusto. One little girl reported to her mother...that we sang a song about their dog. The hymn was 'Holy, holy, holy'. The dog's name was Oley. After the hymn we would settle down for a talk by Nurse Cochrane. The talk was generally about a small boy named Sammy. Nurse with her hands behind her back walked up and down telling us about Sammy and temptation, or Sammy and lying, or stealing cookies. Sammy would wrestle with the problem. Either God's word saved him from wrong doing, or he would go ahead and do what he knew was wrong. In the latter case Sammy wouldn't rest easy, his conscience wouldn't let him alone until he finally 'fessed up' and made peace with God or whoever it was that he had wronged.
    "...I have no idea how long Sunday school lasted, but I can't forget dear Nurse Cochrane, small, plump, marching back and forth, her Scotch accent enhancing the Sammy stories through which the word of God was put before us."
    Riverdale School: 1888-1988, Helen Weiman Bledsoe, Binford & Mort, Portland, Oregon 1988, p.59-60.
  116. ^ Dr Trommald was born in Portland. He graduated from Yale and Harvard Medical schools. He served as a major in the US Army Medical Corps in North Africa during World War II. In 1944 he became chief of surgery at Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, WA; he was a life member of the Oregon Medical Association; co-founder and past president of the Portland Surgical Society; assistant professor of clinical surgery at the University of Oregon School of Medicine; and chief of staff of Good Samaritan Hospital until 1967 when he was appointed the first full time director of the Workmen's Compensation Board's Physical Rehabilitation Centre in Salem, retiring in 1973. The Oregonian, 29 February 1992.
  117. ^ Obituary Gretchen C. Trommald, Sunday Oregonian,17 October 2004.
  118. ^ Dr. Donald E Forster, born in NY, graduated from Colgate College and Harvard Medical School and interned at Johns Hopkins Medical School before moving to Portland in 1938 because of his love of the Northwest outdoors. He served as a major in the US Army medical Corps during WWII, in Portland, in a New York hospital and the Mariana Islands. He was a life member of the Oregon Medical Association, the American Society of Internal Medicine, a fellow and life member of the American College of Physicians and assistant professor of medicine emeritus at the Oregon Health Sciences University. He was a specialist in internal medicine. He perfected the fly-fisherman's art in Oregon. He died September 12, 1982. Obituary, The Oregonian, 13 September 1982.
  119. ^ Helen Forster Chapman, daughter
  120. ^ Obituary, Portland Oregonian, 17, November, 2013
  121. ^ Alta (Teta) Corbett's daughters' description. 2018.
  122. ^ She moved with Air Branch G-2 to The Pentagon as its first wing was finished.
  123. ^ Her daughters never heard her speak ill of another. They said that she exemplified the quote on a plaque in their house: "There's so much bad in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us that it ill becomes any of us to find fault with the rest of us."
  124. ^ Congressional Gold Medal Honouring the Women Airforce Service Pilots. "Their motives for wanting to fly airplanes all those years ago wasn't for fame or glory or recognition. They simply had a passion to take what gifts they had and use them to help defend not only America, but the entire free world, from tyranny. And they let no one get in their way." — Lt. Col. Nicole Malachowski, first female pilot in the USAF Thunderbirds, remarks made at Congressional Gold Medal presentation ceremony on March 10, 2010 in Emancipation Hall of the U.S. Capitol.
  125. ^ Alta Corbett "Teta" Thomas (1918 - 2017) ObituaryThe Peninsula Daily News, Port Angeles, Washington 10 September 2017.
  126. ^ Richard J. Marlitt had an important residential architectural practice and designed a number of houses in Dunthorpe as well as other parts of Portland and Oregon. He was the leading residential architect in Portland in his last thirty years of practice designing many of its graceful homes. He was the author of Nineteenth Street, Richard Marlitt, Oregon Historical Society, 1968 and Matters of Proportion: Portland Residential Architecture of Whidden & Lewis, Richard Marlitt, Oregon Historical Society,1989.
  127. ^ Born 1 November 1922. Died in action November 19, 1944. Buried in Margraten War Cemetery, Holland.
  128. ^ With Ed their long-time groom. Caroline Corbett Reminiscences and photos. Elliott R. Corbett Archives.
  129. ^ Elliott R. Corbett 16mm home movies transferred to disc by Helen Forster Chapman.
  130. ^ W. M. LADD HOME SOLD FOR $90,000, Elliott and Henry Corbett Purchase Handsome Residence Property. Morning Oregonian, 12 May 1910, page 9.
  131. ^ The Henry L. Corbett house next door at 253 W. Park being the former home of their late father Henry Jagger Corbett.
    The brothers sold the properties when they built in Dunthorpe and the Masonic Temple was built on the site of the two houses.
  132. ^ The Portland Art Museum acquired its present site in 1930 at 1219 SW Park Avenue, Portland, and built its building on the former site of the Ladd School, which in 1914 had the largest enrolment of any elementary school in Portland at 1176 pupils.The Growth of a City: Power and Politics in Portland, Oregon 1915 to 1950. E. Kimbark MacColl, The Georgian Press, Portland, Oregon, 1979. page 48.
  133. ^ The Oregon Historical Society Museum and Archives are at 1200 SW Park Ave, Portland, Oregon.
  134. ^ Elliott R. Corbett house, National Register of Historic Places, Section 8 Page 5.
    An A.E Doyle rendering for a Portland Heights house (never built) is held at the OHS, researched by Gaye Richardson.
  135. ^ Dunthorpe was to be a new development on the former William S. Ladd (his maternal grandfather) and Simeon Reed's Oregon Iron and Steel Company lands. All properties there required a minimum of acreage of land for the house's grounds and various other stipulations.
  136. ^ Designed by Whitehouse & Fouilhaux
  137. ^ Elliott R. Corbett house, National Register of Historic Places, Section 8 Page 5.
  138. ^ The southern boundary of the property abutted SW Iron Mountain Road (now Blvd.) running from Greenwood Road to approximately opposite SW Glen Road at the time. The property has since been subdivided but the main house remained in 2018 very similar to the house in which Elliott Corbett had lived out his life.
  139. ^ Letters and photographs detailing alterations from Elliott Corbett to his daughter Caroline Macadam.
    Archive of weekly letters from Elliott R.Corbett and Alta S. Corbett to their eldest daughter Caroline or her husband Ivison Macadam in UK (ERC and ASC 1934-1962), (ASC only 1962-1975).
    Elliott Corbett archives, Runton.
  140. ^ This alteration by the Corbetts to their home required a new lower north front gable to be installed over the existing protruding semi-roof. The difference can be seen on the right (west) side of the two lower photographs of the house. A new fireplace and chimney was also installed on the other (south) side for a smaller second living room.
  141. ^ National Register of Historic Places: https://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/96001070.pdf.
  142. ^ Later given to a daughter and her family.
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