Multnomah: The Tumultuous Story of Oregon's Most Populous County

5. Coxey's Army and Eight More Hangings (1888-1903)

33 5 Coxey’s army and eIght more hangIngs (1888–1903) In the 1880s and 1890s, it was difficult to find anyone closer to being a “native ” Portlander than Penumbra Kelly. he would serve eight years as a state representative and six high-profile years as county sheriff during turbulent times, winning the first of his three two-year terms as sheriff in 1888. born in 1845 in Kentucky as the son of an itinerant Methodist preacher, Kelly and his parents rode and walked the Oregon trail via wagon train in 1848, when Kelly was a toddler. the family took a donation land claim east of the Willamette river in what would become Multnomah County and set about clearing land and creating a farm. Penumbra Kelly worked the family land and became interested in government and civic life. At age twenty-nine, he won the first of four terms in the Oregon house of representatives, separated in 1876 by a single term on the Multnomah County Commission, which was then a part-time job. Starting in 1884, Kelly served three years as U.S. Marshal in Portland by appointment of President Chester Arthur, a job that largely involved the handling of federal court paperwork and overseeing custody of federal criminal defendants. In his third term as sheriff, Kelly became the unwitting victim of a nationwide financial panic that started in the east and swept westward in 1893. At the time, many Portland businesses were going bankrupt. Several banks closed.1 Kelly, like other Oregon sheriffs, was responsible for collecting property taxes, keeping this money safe, and delivering it, with interest, to the various local governments to whom it was owed. When Sheriff Kelly tried to withdraw school tax deposits from Oregon National bank in 1893, bank president George Markle told him that the bank would have to close its doors forever if he did so. Markle assured Kelly and others that he would be able to raise the funds needed to keep the bank afloat. this proved untrue. 34 chapter 5 three men—a bank cashier, President Markle, and Sheriff Kelly—were subsequently indicted by a Multnomah County grand jury for misuse of $318,000 in public funds. Not only had Kelly failed to withdraw public funds entrusted to his care, he had deposited an additional $200,000 to help shore up Oregon National bank. Oregonian editor harvey Scott and a former Portland mayor, David thompson, posted bail bonds for the indicted men. No court records were found to indicate how the case was resolved, according to historian e. Kimbark MacColl, who concluded that the charges were probably dropped.2 Sheriff Kelly had made a bad judgment call that resulted in heavy taxpayer losses. When the City of Portland sued the Oregon National bank to recover deposited funds, no assets were left from which they could collect. Ironically, an 1893 Chicago publication described Kelly as a “man of quiet character and ‘incorruptible integrity.’” Kelly had the misfortune to be unduly influenced by a powerful man in a highly volatile situation.3 In early 1894, Kelly faced another kind of fallout from nationwide hard times. A group of some fifty unemployed men arrived in Oregon by freight car and on foot from Northern California, intent on marching to Washington, D.C. Such jobless men had become known as “Coxey’s Army,” after an Ohio businessman named Jacob Coxey who organized a national movement to protest the widespread lack of jobs.4 Oregon’s“regiment”of the“United States Industrial Army,”as the movement was officially known, camped at the east end of Sullivan’s Gulch, not far from the Columbia river, in April 1894. Acting Portland mayor eugene Shelby and Penumbra Kelly served as Multnomah County sheriff for six years (1889-94), during a nationwide financial panic . in April of his last year in office, he led a posse to quell a contingent of “Coxey’s Army” occupying the Gresham railroad station . However, when Kelly’s posse arrived at the station, there was no disturbance to quell . (Multnomah County Archives) coxey’s army and eIght more hangIngs 35 Portland police chief Charles hunt at first supplied rations to the men, but after a day or two dissent among city council members ended this largess. Oregonians at the group’s previous train stops in Ashland, roseburg, Cottage Grove, and Salem had provided food to the indigents; Portland citizens now did...