Archives West Finding Aid

A native of Shelbyville, Kentucky, John M. Shively was born April 2, 1804. After teaching school in the early 1830s, he went into the dry goods business and married Martha Meade Johnson in 1836. She died in 1842, and Shively crossed the plains to Oregon the following year. In 1844, he settled on half of the land claim of Bennett O'Neil at the mouth of the Columbia River at Astoria, where he began to lay out a town site. He eventually took over O'Neil's claim but came into conflict with other claimants, including Jesse Applegate. The Hudson's Bay Company forced Shively from the area, and eventually he went to Washington, D.C., to advise the U.S. Congress on matters relating to the rivalry with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory. In Washington, he married his second wife, Susan Elliott, and he aided in the negotiations between the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the British minister Sir Richard Pakenham. He was then appointed by President James K. Polk as postmaster in Astoria, Oregon -- the first U.S. postmaster west of the Rocky Mountains. In 1846, he published "Route and Distances to Oregon and California; with a description of watering-places, crossings, dangerous Indians, etc., etc.," in which he shared with travelers the experience he had gained from his overland crossings. By 1847, he was back in Astoria and serving as both postmaster and justice of the peace from his house at what is now the corner of 15th and Exchange streets. He went to California in 1849, and there he gathered funds (possibly through gold prospecting) and developed a scheme to establish steamship service between New York and Oregon via Panama. He purchased a steam engine and brought it back to Oregon by schooner, but the ship was wrecked at the mouth of the Rogue River and the plan was abandoned. He returned to Astoria, where he administered his extensive land holdings and remained until his death in 1893.

Charles W. Shively was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1839, the son of John M. Shively and his first wife, Martha Meade Shively. Coming to Oregon with his father around 1847, he grew up in Astoria and held various positions throughout the area. He studied dentistry in San Francisco in 1860 and wrote articles for the Alta Californian. He worked at many different occupations, serving for a time as purser and freight clerk on the steamer Active between Portland and Victoria, British Columbia. Settling finally in Astoria in 1876, he was elected Superintendent of Public Instruction of Clatsop County in 1889. His wife was Annie M. Dielschneider, a native of Prussia; they married in 1869.