Corbett family papers, 1859-1979

Henry Ladd Corbett (1881-1957) and Hamilton Forbush Corbett (1888-1966) were the sons of Henry Jagger Corbett (1858-1895) and Helen Ladd Corbett (1859-1936); they were also the grandsons of Henry Winslow Corbett (1827-1903), an early emigrant to Portland, Oregon. When Henry W. Corbett died, Henry L. Corbett and Hamilton F. Corbett, along with their brother Elliott Ruggles Corbett (1884-1963), inherited the elder Corbett's wealth and businesses. All three brothers attended Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Hamilton F. Corbett served in a field artillery unit during World War I, and was wounded during fighting along the Ourcq River in the Second Battle of the Marne. He returned to the front in time for the Armistice, and served as aide-de-camp for Major General James Harbord with American occupation forces in Germany until his discharge in May 1919. Henry L. Corbett, meanwhile, was president of the Oregon Defense Council and Portland chair of the United States War Trade Board. He began training for military service, but the war ended before he was to be commissioned.

Following the war, all three Corbett brothers engaged in a number of businesses and real estate enterprises, including the Corbett Investment Company and the construction of the Pacific Building in Portland. Henry L. Corbett also became involved with local Republican politics, and served in the Oregon Senate, including as president of the Senate for the 1927 and 1935 legislative sessions. He unsuccessfully ran for governor of Oregon in 1930. He was also a commissioner for the Port of Portland from 1924 to 1951, and was its president for 13 years.

Hamilton F. Corbett married Harriet Cumming in 1922. Henry L. Corbett married Gretchen Hoyt in 1908, and the couple had five children: Helen; Henry Ladd, Jr.; Alfred Hoyt; Elliott Ruggles II; and Rosina. Henry L. Corbett died of a heart attack in April 1957 in Dunsmuir, California, while en route to Portland from Santa Barbara. Hamilton F. Corbett died in 1966 in Portland.

Sources: Articles in the Oregonian, 1926-1966; vital records on Ancestry.com; Oregon State Archives, Oregon Legislators and Staff Guide, 1927 Regular Session, http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/RecordView/6785298; Oregon State Archives, Oregon Legislators and Staff Guide, 1935 Regular Session, http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/RecordView/6785306

Gretchen Hoyt Corbett was born in 1886 in New York City. After studying music and singing, she married Henry L. Corbett (1881-1957) in 1908, and moved to Portland, Oregon. The couple later had five children. Gretchen Hoyt Corbett helped to reorganize the Oregon Symphony, founded the Junior League of Portland, and served on the board of the Portland Art Museum. She died in 1978.

Sources: Obituary in the Oregonian, February 23, 1978.

Elliott "Yot" Ruggles Corbett II was born in 1922 in Portland, Oregon, the youngest son of Henry L. Corbett and Gretchen Hoyt Corbett. He attended the Thatcher Boarding School in Ojai, California, before going to his father's alma mater, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He left Harvard in early 1943 to join the military, first training with the 10th Mountain Division and then with the Army Air Corps. In 1944, he transferred to an infantry replacement battalion so that he would be sent overseas. He died of wounds received during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest on November 22, 1944, but due to an error made by a chaplain's clerk, his exact status was not known for certain until the spring of 1945.

Sources: Collection materials; articles in the Oregonian, 1944-1945; vital records on Ancestry.com.

Alfred Hoyt Corbett was born in 1915 in Portland, Oregon, the son of Henry L. Corbett and Gretchen Hoyt Corbett. He studied at Harvard University, and then earned a law degree from Yale University in 1940. During World War II, he served with mountain troops. After the war, he briefly worked as assistant general counsel for the Defense Electric Power Administration in Washington, D.C. He unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Congress as a Democrat in 1952, but was appointed soon after to fill out the term of an Oregon state representative who had died shortly after being elected; Corbett was reelected to the Oregon House in 1954, and elected to the Oregon Senate in 1956 and 1960. In 1956, he co-chaired the Oregon committee for Adlai Stevenson's U.S. presidential campaign. He lost a race for Oregon secretary of state in 1964 to Tom McCall, but soon afterwards Sargent Shriver appointed him to work at the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity, where Corbett would later work as budget and program management director of the agency's Office of Legal Services.

Corbett married Nancy deCanizares (1916-2005); the couple had five children. Corbett died in 2000.

Sources: Articles in the Oregonian, 1956 and November 16, 2000; vital records on Ancestry.com.

Howard V. Morgan was born in 1914 in Tillamook, Oregon, though his family then moved to Portland, Oregon. He attended Reed College in Portland, and in 1940 married Rosina Corbett (1919-2015), the youngest child of Henry L. Corbett and Gretchen Hoyt Corbett; the couple had four children.

Morgan served in the U.S. Navy Air Transport Service during World War II. In 1948, he was elected as a Democratic Oregon state representative. As representative, he helped lead the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunities Act. Morgan served as chair of the Democratic Party of Oregon from 1952 to 1956. U.S. President John F. Kennedy appointed Morgan to the Federal Power Commission; Morgan resigned from the commission in 1963, complaining that the board's majority favored private power companies over public utilities. He then ran a gravel and construction business in Portland, though he reentered politics in 1966 to run against Democratic incumbent Bob Duncan in Oregon's U.S. Senate primary, and co-chaired Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign in Oregon in 1968.

After retiring in the 1970s, Morgan and his wife lived in Spain and then on a houseboat on Sauvie Island, Oregon, before moving to a ranch near McMinnville, Oregon. Morgan died in 2012 in McMinnville.

Sources: "Howard Morgan (1914-2012)," by Grant Schott, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/morgan-howard-v/#.Y-qQeXbMIuV; vital records on Ancestry.com.