Fred Lockley (March 19, 1871 – October 15, 1958) was an American
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
best known for his editorial column for the ''
Oregon Journal
''The Oregon Journal'' was Portland, Oregon's daily afternoon newspaper from 1902 to 1982. The ''Journal'' was founded in Portland by C. S. "Sam" Jackson, publisher of Pendleton, Oregon's ''East Oregonian'' newspaper, after a group of Portlander ...
'', "Impressions and Observations of a Journal Man", which appeared throughout the Western United States on a nearly daily basis. Lockley also authored many books which, like his articles, were largely about his travels and interviews with early settlers in the
Willamette Valley
The Willamette Valley ( ) is a long valley in Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. The Willamette River flows the entire length of the valley and is surrounded by mountains on three sides: the Cascade Range to the eas ...
. It was said that he interviewed "bullwhackers, muleskinners, pioneers, prospectors, 49ers, Indian fighters, trappers, ex-barkeepers, authors, preachers, poets and near-poets".
He also interviewed
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...
,
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American c ...
,
Ezra Meeker
Ezra Morgan Meeker (December 29, 1830December 3, 1928) was an American pioneer who traveled the Oregon Trail by ox-drawn wagon as a young man, migrating from Iowa to the Pacific Coast. Later in life he worked to memorialize the Trail, repeated ...
,
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
,
Count Tolstoy,
General Hugh Scott,
Harry Houdini, and
Jack London
John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to ...
.
Early life
Lockley was born in
Leavenworth, Kansas to English immigrant,
Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
Veteran and newspaper editor Frederic Lockley and Elizabeth Campbell on March 19, 1871.
[http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jtenlen/ORBios/flockley.txt ] The following year the family moved to
Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, th ...
where, along with business partners George F. Prescott and A. M. Hamilton, Frederic Lockley bought and ran the ''
Salt Lake City Tribune
''The Salt Lake Tribune'' is a newspaper published in the city of Salt Lake City, Utah. The ''Tribune'' is owned by The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc., a non-profit corporation. The newspaper's motto is "Utah's Independent Voice Since 1871."
History
A ...
'', working for seven years as the managing editor.
From there, the family took a wagon west to
Walla Walla, Washington
Walla Walla is a city in Walla Walla County, Washington, where it is the largest city and county seat. It had a population of 34,060 at the 2020 census, estimated to have decreased to 33,927 as of 2021. The population of the city and its two su ...
. Fred Lockley later wrote, "The odor of sagebrush today brings back vividly our evening campfires made of sagebrush, and the ever present coyotes with their mournful howl. Once more I can see the stagecoach sweep by with its four horses, traveling at full speed -- I can see too, the long lines of freight wagons and Indians. Here and there along the trail were the bleaching bones of oxen -- a grim reminder of the hardships of the Old Oregon Trail."
One year later the family moved to
Butte, Montana where Frederic became the first editor of the ''Butte Inter-Mountain''. It was for the Inter-Mountain that young Fred Lockley got his start in the newspaper business, as a carrier for the paper.
After four years the family moved to what is now
Oklahoma, then called the
Cherokee Strip
The Cherokee Outlet, or Cherokee Strip, was located in what is now the state of Oklahoma in the United States. It was a 60-mile-wide (97 km) parcel of land south of the Oklahoma-Kansas border between 96 and 100°W. The Cherokee Outlet wa ...
, settling on the
Ponca
The Ponca ( Páⁿka iyé: Páⁿka or Ppáⁿkka pronounced ) are a Midwestern Native American tribe of the Dhegihan branch of the Siouan language group. There are two federally recognized Ponca tribes: the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska and the Ponca ...
reservation. There young Fred Lockley met
Chief Joseph
''Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt'' (or ''Hinmatóowyalahtq̓it'' in Americanist orthography), popularly known as Chief Joseph, Young Joseph, or Joseph the Younger (March 3, 1840 – September 21, 1904), was a leader of the Wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa ...
while the former chief of the
Nez Perce
The Nez Percé (; autonym in Nez Perce language: , meaning "we, the people") are an Indigenous people of the Plateau who are presumed to have lived on the Columbia River Plateau in the Pacific Northwest region for at least 11,500 years.Ames, K ...
was held as a prisoner of war.
From
Oklahoma the family moved to
Albany, New York
Albany ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of New York, also the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about north of New York C ...
as Fredric Lockley toured the eastern and mid-western United States as a lecturer. Fredric Lockley soon returned to the newspaper business, purchasing the ''Arkansas City Traveler''. Here, young Fred continued his profession, working as an office boy and type sorter for his father.
Career
In 1888, Fred Lockley moved to
Salem, Oregon. He was hired by the ''Capital Journal'' as compositor by W. H. Byars, the surveyor general of Oregon from 1890 to 1894. Before long Byars began devoting a greater amount of time to his surveying and less to the paper, promoting Lockley to the position of business manager and editor for the paper. Lockley entered into the Oregon Agricultural College, now
Oregon State University
Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering c ...
, from 1889 to 1890, and later received a degree in education from
Willamette University
Willamette University is a private liberal arts college with locations in Salem and Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1842, it is the oldest college in the Western United States. Originally named the Oregon Institute, the school was an unaffiliated ...
in 1895.
For a year Lockley worked on a farm in
Polk County, Oregon
Polk County is one of the 36 counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2020 census, the population was 87,433. The county seat is Dallas. The county is named for James Knox Polk, the 11th president of the United States.
Polk County ...
followed by work writing for the ''Salem Statesman'' and as field editor for ''Pacific Homestead''. This took him on horseback across the Pacific Northwest, where he crossed paths with farmers, miners, hunters and pioneers. During these trips Lockley began gathering stories and writing articles on pioneer men and women. Lockley also worked for the federal government in the following years, assisting in geological surveys in what is now
Glacier National Park. He then worked as a carrier for the Salem post office, and by 1900 made his way to
Nome, Alaska. In Nome Lockley worked as a miner and also for the local ''
Nome Nugget
''The Nome Nugget'' is a weekly newspaper published on Thursdays in Nome, Alaska, United States and serves the entire Northwest region of Alaska. Additionally, it is printed in Anchorage, Alaska for newsstands and airports. It was awarded best ...
''. While in Nome, with the help of Ben Taylor, who had also worked for the Salem post office, Lockley established the first free mail delivery to Nome.
Upon the urging of his wife, Lockley moved to
Pendleton, Oregon
Pendleton is a city and the county seat of Umatilla County, Oregon. The population was 17,107 at the time of the 2020 census, which includes approximately 1,600 people who are incarcerated at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution.
Pendleton ...
, in 1901, where he bought a 25% interest in the ''
Daily East Oregonian''. After four years he left to become general manager of the magazine ''
The Pacific Monthly
''The Pacific Monthly'' was a magazine of politics, culture, literature, and opinion, published in Portland, Oregon, United States from 1898 to 1911, when it was purchased by Southern Pacific Railroad and merged with its magazine, '' Sunset''. ' ...
'', which merged with ''
Sunset'' in 1911 when the magazine was bought by the
Southern Pacific Railroad. Lockley moved to the publication that would make his reputation, the ''
Oregon Journal
''The Oregon Journal'' was Portland, Oregon's daily afternoon newspaper from 1902 to 1982. The ''Journal'' was founded in Portland by C. S. "Sam" Jackson, publisher of Pendleton, Oregon's ''East Oregonian'' newspaper, after a group of Portlander ...
'', in
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the list of cities in Oregon, largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, Columbia rivers, Portland is ...
.
It was while writing for the ''Oregon Journal'' that Lockley began his nearly daily column, "Thoughts and Observations of a Journal Man", or as it was shortened for his nickname, "The Journal Man". He spent a short time as a
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
correspondent for the ''Oregon Journal'', ''
New York Herald'', and the ''
London Globe'', during which time he also built huts and dig trenches for the combined Allied forces, sometimes under heavy fire,. He filed 347 war articles.
While Lockley wrote for the ''Oregon Journal'' for several years, his output tapered off as he spent more time on his books and with his family. His books included ''Oregon Folks'', ''Oregon's'' ''Yesterdays'', ''Oregon Trail Blazers'', ''Across the Plains by Prairie Schooner'', ''Vigilante Days in Virginia City'', and ''Vigilante Days in Carson City''.
Family and death
On June 16, 1897 Fred Lockley married his first wife, Hope Gans.
It was Hope who convinced Fred to leave the government postal work and invest in the ''Daily East Oregonian''. They had three children. Frederic Llewellyn and Hope both died in their youth. Lawrence Campbell Lockley lived to fight in
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
and graduate from the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...
, with a doctorate from
Harvard. He went on to teach at
University of Southern California
, mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it"
, religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist
, established =
, accreditation = WSCUC
, type = Private research university
, academic_affiliations =
, endowment = $8.1 ...
and
Santa Clara University.
In 1928, Hope Gans Lockley died and was buried in
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the list of cities in Oregon, largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, Columbia rivers, Portland is ...
, next to their daughter. Two years later Lockley married Laura Simpson. Fred Lockley died October 15, 1958. After Lockley's death Mike Helm,
an Oregon native and author, compiled portions of Lockley's extensive unpublished notebooks into several new books including ''Conversations with Pioneer Men'' and ''Conversations with Pioneer Women''. These collections are used as primary reference on Oregon history and pioneers of the Northwest.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lockley, Fred
1871 births
1958 deaths
Journalists from Portland, Oregon
People from Leavenworth, Kansas
Writers from Salem, Oregon
Oregon State University alumni
Willamette University alumni
People from Pendleton, Oregon