Collection is open for research.
Documents dating from 1852-1862, gift of Donald H. Bates. Biography, gift of Edmund G. Fisher, December 1983 (Lib. Acc. 16644).
James B. Stephens (1806-1889) was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania. He worked as a cooper, and in 1844, he traveled overland to Oregon. Settling first in Oregon City, he came to the new town of Portland in 1845 and built the first house opposite the townsite on the east side of the Willamette River. He operated the horse-powered Stark Street Ferry, contracted with the Hudson's Bay Company to supply barrels, transported soldiers during the Yakima Indian wars in the mid-1850s, and laid out the townsite of East Portland. He died in 1889 and is buried in Lone Fir Cemetery.
James Bowles Stephens collection, Mss 2029, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
Vertical File: Biography - Stephens, James B., Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
Collection includes a manuscript bond of James Bowles Stephens and Gideon Tibbetts, August 30, 1852, for Stephens to keep a ferry across the Willamette River opposite Portland; manuscript articles of agreement between Stephens and Joseph Knott, March 25, 1861, and January 24, 1862, for rights to Stephens' ferry franchise; and a typescript photocopy of "James B. Stephens: The Life and Times of Portland's First Ferryman" by Edmund G. Fisher, 42 pages, circa 1983.
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