Orlando Plummer

Orlando Pleasant Shields Plummer (often O.P.S. Plummer) was born in Greenville, Mercer County, Pennsylvania, on April 13, 1836, to Elizabeth (née Craig) and John Boyd Plummer.[1][2] His grandfather on his mother’s side was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War.[3] Plummer received his early education at the local public schools and at the Greenville Academy.[1][2] He then was employed as an assistant at the local telegraph office, which led to additional jobs working for the telegraph company in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland.[2] Plummer continued in this line of work at an office in Rock Island, Illinois, where his brother S. C. Plummer was a doctor.[2]

Orlando read medicine from his brother before he returned to his native Pennsylvania to enter medical school.[2] He attended school at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia where he graduated in 1857 with a Doctor of Medicine.[1] Plummer returned to Illinois and practiced medicine in the communities of Aledo and Moline from 1858 to 1863.[1][2] In 1859, he married Sarah B. Cool with whom he had three daughters, with the marriage ending in divorce.[1][2][3] One daughter married Claude Gatch, one-time mayor of Salem, Oregon.[2] In 1863, Plummer took the Oregon Trail to California to continue working for the telegraph company, traveling by mule team.[2] He spent the winter of 1863 to 1864 working in a telegraph office there before receiving a promotion.[2]

Plummer was promoted to manager of the Portland, Oregon, office of the California State Telegraph Company.[1][2] He arrived on April 9, 1864, and became the first interstate telegraph operator in the city.[1][2] In the fall of 1866 he resigned from the company and moved south to Albany to resume practicing medicine.[2] After two years Plummer returned to working in the telegraph industry, now for Western Union, who had purchased Plummer’s former employer.[2] He was hired as the superintendent for their Oregon district, and served in that position from 1868 to 1875.[1][2]

During his time as superintendent, he began teaching at the Willamette University College of Medicine in Salem.[2] Plummer taught hygiene and medical electricity for three years at the school.[2] In 1874, he married Martha Elizabeth Kelly, daughter of Rev. Albert Kelly Rev. Albert Kelly and niece of Clinton Kelly and aunt of Penumbra Kelly.[1][4] Martha was fourteen years younger than Orlando, and they had five children; Grace, Agnes, Ross, Hildegarde, and Marion.[2][4] Land that constitutes Albert Kelly Park in Portland was gifted by Hildegarde in 1956.[5]

In 1877, Plummer returned to Portland to practice medicine and opened a drug store at First and Salmon streets in what is today Downtown Portland.[2] Willamette University’s medical program moved to Portland in 1879 and Plummer returned to teaching at the school .[2] He was the first dean of the school, and also taught materia medica and therapeutics.[2][6] Plummer left the school after three years to concentrate on his drug store.[2] He bought a new home in 1881, and remodeled the building.[2] In 1891, he relocated the store to Third and Madison, and his store became the home of the first telephone in the city.[1]

Plummer was a member of the United States Examining Surgeons, serving as the secretary of the board on several occasions.[2] He also helped found the State Medical Society of Oregon and was later appointed by Governor Sylvester Pennoyer to the newly created State Board of Medical Examiners.[1][2] Plummer spent some time as a professor at the University of Oregon’s medical school, located in Portland.[1] That school and the Willamette medical college were merged in 1913 and later became Oregon Health & Science University.

In 1865, Plummer entered politics and was elected as a city council member for Portland.[6] He served one term on the council, from 1865 to 1866.[6] In 1880, he was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives from Multnomah County (where Portland is located) as a Republican in District 41.[7] He won re-election to a second two-year term in 1882, but represented District 39 during that session.[8] He only served during the 1880 and 1882 legislative sessions. Plummer also served as chairman of the Republicans' city and county conventions for one year.[2]

Plummer was a horticulturalist and owned a 20-acre (81,000 m²) fruit farm that was then southwest of Portland.[1][2] There he introduced the Italian prune to the state.[1] In 1865, he helped found the First Presbyterian Church and Society of the City of Portland.[6] Plummer was an elder at the church for decades, and also helped organize another Presbyterian Church in South Portland.[2] He was a member of the Masons and of the Al Kader Temple.[2] Orlando Plummer died on December 7, 1913, in Portland at the age of 77.[1]

• Pen Pictures of Representative Men of Oregon
• Occupational and Medical Lore: Ross Plummer
• Portland, Oregon, Its History and Builders