HUGH O'BRYANT

'Hugh D. O'Bryant' was the first mayor of Portland, Oregon, serving from 1851-1852.
Winning Portland's first mayoral election by a mere four votes over challenger Joseph Showalter Smith,^[2] O'Bryant's one-year reign was known for the failure of Portland's first government to effectively govern the city, leading to a new city charter in 1852.^[3]
In O'Bryant's only year as mayor, he missed seven out of thirty-one council meetings. Although the council passed resolutions to build roads, build a jail, and purchase a fire engine, none of these materialized under O'Bryant's leadership. Funds for the fire engine were authorized by city-wide vote on May 26, 1851, but it was only a week before his term ended, the following March, that O'Bryant notified the council that the bills authorizing this purchase were sitting on his desk, ''unsigned''.^[4]
O'Bryant was many things in his personal life. During 1848 he served in Second Company of the Oregon Riflemen for the Provisional Government of Oregon as a first lieutenant during the Cayuse War that was a result of the Whitman massacre. Brown’s Political History of Oregon: Provisional Government, , J. Henry, Brown, Wiley B. Allen, ,
Later he performed justice of the peace duties, and was a gold prospector. However, perhaps his greatest assets in Portland were his carpentry skills, which were in great demand with new immigrants flooding Portland.^[5]
Two years after his term as mayor ended, O'Bryant left Portland, moving to the Puget Sound region, serving in the Washington territorial legislature. He later moved to Salem, then to Roseburg, where he married his wife, Matilda, and had seven children. While in Southern Oregon O'Bryant served in the Oregon Territory’s legislature beginning in 1855.^[6] The following session he returned, again serving as a Democrat representing Douglas, Coos, Umpqua, and Curry counties in the upper chamber Council.^[7] Then in 1857 he became the President of that chamber.^[8] Lastly in 1858 he was a member of Oregon's last Territorial Legislature as Oregon awaited statehood.^[9]
He moved on to Walla Walla, and finally Merced County, California, where he died sometime between 1880 and 1890.^[10]
O'Bryant Square in Portland is named after O'Bryant.^[2]

Contents

Footnotes

References

Footnotes

1. Census records are the only way to track down O'Bryant in his later life. Lansing states that O'Bryant shows up in the 1880 census records in Merced County, California. However, nobody by the last name of O'Bryant shows up in the 1890 census in California, Oregon, or Washington.
2. Lansing (2003), pp. 26
3. Lansing (2003), pp.26-49
4. Lansing (2003), pp. 42-48
5. Lansing (2003), pp. 29
6. Oregon Legislative Assembly (7th Territorial) 1855 Regular Session
7. Oregon Legislative Assembly (8th Territorial) 1856 Regular Session
8. Oregon Legislative Assembly (9th Territorial) 1857 Regular Session
9. Oregon Legislative Assembly 1859 Special Session
10. Lansing (2003), pp. 31
11. Lansing (2003), pp. 26

References

★ Lansing, Jewel. (2003). ''Portland: People, Politics, and Power, 1851-2001''.