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"After all is said and done, people are just folks and if you feel a real and sincere interest in them, and if you are a good asker and a good listener, you will be rewarded by getting good human interest stories." - Fred Lockley, 1871-1958
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Fred Lockley was one of Oregon's pioneer newspapermen. He worked for newspapers in Montana and Kansas before coming to Oregon in the late 1890s, where he worked first for the Capital Journal in Salem. In 1905 he was in Pendleton, where he owned a 25% interest in the East Oregonian. He then moved to Portland, where he worked for the Oregon Journal. Fred Lockley was known as the Journal man, and, for nearly 20 years, his column, "Impressions and Observations of the Journal Man", appeared daily on the editorial page of the Oregon Journal.
During his career, Lockley interviewed more |
than 10,000, "bullwhackers, muleskinners, pioneers, prospectors, 49ers, Indian fighters, trappers, ex-barkeepers, authors, preachers, poets, and all sorts and conditions of men and women." These interviews, many of which are contained in Conversations with Pioneer Women and Conversations with Pioneer Men, are a human view of pioneer days in the Oregon Country, recorded in the words of the people who walked to Oregon in the mid-1800s or were born during those years on their parents' donation land claims and lived to tell about it in the early part of this century. |
