Archives West Finding Aid

Martin Winch was born December 16, 1858 to Martin and Frances Wood Winch in Quincy, MA. After the death of the senior Martin Winch in 1870, his widow and two sons came to Portland to live with Mrs. Winch’s sister, Amanda Wood Reed, wife of one of Portland's leading businessman, Simeon Gannett Reed. The younger Martin proved himself highly capable while working for the Oregon Steam Navigation Company and then the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company (in which Reed owned substantial shares), in addition to running his own printing business at night. Later the childless Reeds entrusted Winch with their Oregon business affairs when they moved to Pasadena, California, and at Simeon Reed’s death, Winch was appointed as Mrs. Reed's financial agent. When Mrs. Reed died, Winch was named executor of her will, which included an endowment for the establishment of an educational institution in Portland. To uphold this bequest, Martin Winch contested the other heirs in court from 1904 to 1912, eventually winning a settlement that allowed for the establishment of what is now Reed College. He died in 1915.

Martin Winch's wife Nellie Amelia Wygant Winch was born in Oregon City in 1859 to Margaret Glen Rae Wygant and Theodore Wygant. Margaret Rae's mother was Eloisa McLoughlin, daughter of Hudson's Bay Company Chief Factor Dr. John McLoughlin. Margaret’s father was William Glen Rae, a relative of the Hudson’s Bay Company explorer John Rae. Nellie’s father, merchant Theodore Wygant, was an Oregon pioneer who traveled overland to Oregon City in 1850. Nellie’s oldest sister, Alice, married William Whidden, a prominent Portland architect. The second sister, Maria Louise Wygant, remained a spinster. Nellie Wygant married Martin Winch in 1882, and they had one son, Simeon Reed Winch, born in 1888. She died in 1940.

After his graduation from Princeton University in 1911, Simeon Reed Winch went on a European tour with his mother, Nellie Winch, after which he attended Harvard Law school in 1912-1913. Returning to Portland, he began work at the Oregon Journal, eventually assuming the position of the paper's business manager in 1921 -- a position he held until his death in 1946. During World War I he served as Assistant Food Administrator for Oregon and later entered officer's training school, although the war ended before he could serve at the front. His first wife was Olivia Failing, descendant of Portland pioneer merchant Josiah Failing. The couple had two daughters, Nella Winch McElroy and Emily Winch Baines, and in the 1920s the family built a large house at 2665 Cornell Road in Portland. After Olivia Winch's death in 1942, Simeon married Margaret Elizabeth (Mary) Tobin in 1943, with whom he had one son, Martin Tobin Winch, in 1944, two years before his death.

Mary Tobin Winch (known for a time as Toots Tobin) was employed at the Oregon Journal at the time of her marriage to Simeon Reed Winch. She later became active in local civil rights and charitable causes and served as a trustee of Reed College. She lived in the Cornell Road house until her death in 2003.