City of Roses: Will Overton, Founding Father
Originally posted on July 31st, 2006
Re-posted on July 5th, 2008
Although credit usually goes to Francis Pettygrove and Asa Lovejoy for founding the township that would become Portland, it was really Will Overton that came up with the idea of claiming the land. Here's a little comic about him that I came up with.
Stories of Overton meeting his end in Texas are hard to verify. In Harvey Scott's History of Portland, it's Pettygrove that describes this as his fate, while it's Lovejoy's wife that claims he actually went back to Louisiana to take care of his mother. Either way, there's not a very good record of Overton's story.