Samuel Rothchild

Samuel Rothchild, born in 1843, spent his early years in a small village in southwestern Germany, then grew to manhood on a farm in central Kentucky, and finally moved to the Pacific Northwest in a search for adventure and fortune. In Pendleton, Oregon, Rothchild became a store owner, a grain buyer, a dealer in real estate, an inventor, and a major stockholder in a newspaper, a bank, and a silver mine. He once had occasion to use his skills in defense of his town. When a group of Native Americans from outside the region invaded, the people of Pendleton felt threatened, and Rothchild �this son of Kentucky who could ride and shoot �joined a group of state militia volunteers who successfully held the invaders off just long enough for the regular army to arrive. (Native warriors at home in the region around Pendleton joined the army in repelling the invaders.) And this handsome and charming bachelor also found time for romance. He became one of the town's most admired citizens and the man whom nearly everyone trusted most. He was a long-time city councilor and was the author of many measures that abetted Pendleton's growth, its stability, and its ultimate leading role in eastern Oregon commerce. Perhaps most importantly, he worked consistently to promote the institutions of civil society. Later, Rothchild made similar contributions to civic life in the mining town that became known as Republic, Washington. He died in San Francisco in 1930. The American West owes its development not to the righteous lone gun-slingers of western fiction, but rather to settlers like Rothchild, who saw to it that a civil society developed in hundreds of small places.