Joseph N. Dolph was born in New York in 1835. In 1862, he joined the Oregon Escort, an outfit responsible for protecting settlers from Native Americans as they travelled to Oregon. Later, he settled in Portland where he established a law firm. Between 1865 and 1868, he served as Oregon’s U.S. District Attorney and, in 1866, was elected to the Oregon State Senate where he represented Multnomah County. In 1882, Dolph was elected to the United States Senate, a position he held until 1895.
When he failed to gain reelection to the U.S. Senate, Dolph opened a law office in Portland, Oregon with his son, Chester Dolph, and partner, Richard Nixon. Dolph, Nixon, and Dolph specialized in land disputes and represented several mining concerns and railroad companies, though the firm also engaged in miscellaneous other civil and criminal suits. Dolph died in March 1897 from complications resulting from a diabetes-induced amputation. Chester Dolph and Richard Nixon continued to operate the firm following Joseph Dolph’s death.
The collection is comprised of four 500-page letterbooks containing outgoing correspondence from the Dolph, Nixon, and Dolph law offices between 1894 and 1899. Predominate among the cases handled by the firm were Oregon land disputes relating to property use and upkeep, payment of rent and mortgages, foreclosure proceedings, and sales. Litigants included the Oregon Gold Mining Company, the Last Chance Mining Company, the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, the American Loan & Trust Company, and the Candelaria Fruit Company, among others. The firm also engaged in Indian depredation suits, provided defense in numerous Chinese immigration cases, represented several inventors in patent claims, and engaged in debt collection and remittance efforts, estate disbursements, divorce proceedings, and other civil and criminal suits. Also included is a small amount of correspondence relating to the political career of senior partner Joseph N. Dolph (U.S. Senator, 1883-1895) and subsequent death (1897).
Each letterbook is arranged in chronological order and accompanied by an index organized by recipient.
The collection is open for research.
The Dolph, Nixon, and Dolph Letterbooks (MSS Dolph), Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.
The Dolph, Nixon, and Dolph letterbooks were donated to Oregon Agricultural College in 1906. The books were transferred to the OSU University Archives in the 1960s and now reside in the OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center.
The OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center holds Frederick Miller Roth's