OLMIS

Philip was thirty-eight years old when he came to Oregon from Calais, Maine, in 1842. He was accompanied by his wife, Mary Charlotte Pettygrove, and the rest of the Pettygrove family (who went on to help start the city of Portland - naming it for their hometown of Portland, Maine, after winning a coin toss). When they arrived, there weren't many people in the Oregon Territory. Some immigrants, including Philip, came by ships sailing around Cape Horn. A journey like that could take a year or more - if a ship could be found at all. Philip and his party had to wait twice for transportation - once in Lima, Peru, and earlier in a place called the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii).

It would be more than one hundred years before the Sandwich Islands would become a part of the United States, but they were already an important trading center, and Philip benefited from his time there. While enjoying the warm tropical weather, he made contact with several distributors and merchants. These relationships paid off nicely for him once he arrived in the Oregon Territory.

Philip arrived in Oregon City in April of 1843, full of enthusiasm for starting his business. The smell of freshly cut lumber soon filled the air near the Willamette River ferry at the foot of Third Street as Philip and his partner built on a town lot they had bought from Dr. John McLoughlin. Their three-story building housed the Pettygrove Emporium, which opened for business in late May of 1843. The store occupied the ground floor, the Pettygroves the second, and Philip and his family lived on the third. Soon the doors to the store swung open regularly as residents of Oregon City came to admire some of the four thousand dollars' worth of inventory imported from the Sandwich Islands.

Though it was a success, Philip didn't stay at the store. He left it in the capable hands of his brother-in-law Francis Pettygrove, and moved his family to Eagle Creek in 1847. He acquired 824 acres from a man by the name of Samuel McSwain. Philip paid Mr. McSwain $100.00 to stop squatting on the land so that Philip could apply for a Donation Land Grant, which he received in 1867. Eventually the claim was reduced to the standard 640 acres accorded to a husband and wife.

Not only did Philip start a store and work as a farmer, he also built a road, and ran a restaurant and a hotel. The rest of Philip's story and the tales of many other Oregonians are available in Oregon at Work: 1859-2009, available for purchase online and at local bookstores. Find out more: www.OregonAtWork.org.