E. Henry Wemme
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E. Henry Wemme (died late 1910s) was an immigrant from Germany who became a wealthy Portland, Oregon businessman. He was an active business investor during the pioneering era of automobiles and aviation.
According to an account published in 1932 by August Wemme, his brother, Henry Wemme began his career in Portland in 1883, "with a spool of thread and a needle or two as capital" Goths and Vandals of The Wemme Cases (1932) (http://www.biblio.com/books/2730739.html).
One of his ventures was as a supplier of tents and other supplies to those seeking to become part of the Klondike Gold Rush. [1] (http://www.nps.gov/klse/hrs/hrs2b2.htm)
Wemme owned the first automobile in Oregon, a Stanley Steamer bought in 1899 from what became the Locomobile Company of America. He also introduced other automobiles to the Portland area, including a Haynes-Apperson, an Oldsmobile, a Reo, and a Pierce-Arrow. He was president of the Portland Automobile Association. [2] (http://cliffhanger76.tripod.com/bikewest/auto/)
He at least briefly turned his attention to aviation, becoming the Pacific Northwest agent for Curtiss biplanes. One of his automobile salemen, Eugene Ely volunteered to fly Wemme's first Curtiss biplane to Oregon. Ely crashed without serious injury, and soon went to work for Curtiss. [3] (http://www.militarymuseum.org/Ely1.html)
He is also credited [4] (http://www.co.multnomah.or.us/oscp/caring/np_olook_main.html) with the development the Overlook neighborhood, overlooking the Willamette River, in North Portland.
In 1912, Wemme bought the Barlow Road from the Barlow family for $5400. He built bridges and made other improvements, and eventually bequeathed it to the state of Oregon. An unincorporated area near that road, which is part of the Mt. Hood Corridor, was named after him.
Wemme's brother (in Goths and Vandals...) cites his year and place of death as Los Angeles, California in 1914, though other sources cite 1917 [5] (http://www.columbia-center.org/SRBWC/Contents/ASSESS.HTM) or 1919 as the year. The book bemoans a probate dispute over "an estate appraised at more than a million dollars..."; the book was written to
- get before the American people...the facts as how E. Henry Wemme's will was set aside, rendered null and void, and how both heirs of his body and the E. Henry Wemme Endowment Fund [now administered by the Oregon Community Foundation (http://www.ocf1.org/) was pillaged and plundered and dissipated, and to show how and why I have been cast into prison, where I still languish at the age of sixty three...
References
Information on Wemme is limited; sources include Oregon Geographic Names (which mentions a November 8, 1999 Oregonian article), books by E. Kimbark MacColl such as Merchants, Money and Power: The Portland Establishment, 1843-1913 (1988, ISBN 0960340831), and online articles from county [6] (http://www.co.multnomah.or.us/oscp/caring/np_olook_main.html) and state [7] (http://www.odot.state.or.us/ssbpublic/BSS/rmds/history/~chron.htm) government.