Wells, William Bittle, 1872-1965

William Bittle Wells was born in Floyd County, Virginia in 1872. After first moving to California in 1874, Wells’ family settled in Portland, Oregon in 1881. He graduated from Stanford University in 1897 with a degree in English and a certificate in education. At Stanford, Wells had developed an interest in publishing and publicity. He was an editor of several school newspapers, including The Daily Palo Alto and Olla Podria .

In 1898 Wells founded the western magazine Pacific Monthly, which featured book reviews, reports on the development of the pacific coast, literature, and humor. Wells made the magazine into an outlet for the work of young American writers. Pacific Monthly was not a financial success, and after he encountered difficulties obtaining editorial assistance, Wells finally sold the magazine in 1906. It was later consolidated with Sunset Magazine .

After severing his ties with Pacific Monthly, Wells began working as an advertising salesman for Sunset Magazine, which had begun as a publication of Southern Pacific Railway. He became northwest editor and manger for the magazine from 1907-1912.

During his tenure with Sunset Magazine, Wells began to publish promotional booklets about regions and cities served by the railroad on the west coast. Under his guidance as manager of Community Publicity, the Harriman Lines railroad began its publicity program with a booklet about the Rouge River Valley and Medford. Wells coordinated not only the advertising for these booklets, but he also oversaw all aspects of the organization of this project, including coordinating writers with the targeted communities.

Wells left Harriman Lines and Community Publicity after Harriman’s freight department exerted its influence to eliminate the Sunset Magazine venture, agedly because it adversely affected freight traffic. Although Wells worked hard to counteract these allegations by producing a report with contrary statistics, his efforts proved fruitless. Harriman offered to keep Wells as a passenger agent, but he elected to resign.

Wells next ventured into the printing and publishing business as the proprietor and manager of his own company, Wells and Company, from 1912 to 1915. Wells quickly discovered that he was not suited to the business and abandoned the operation after only three years.

Although at this point Wells was nearly penniless, he undertook the management and editing of a new magazine, Better Cooking, another publicity venture for cities across the nation. The venture was short-lived; Wells and the owner failed to agree on the direction of the magazine. After two years, Wells once again found himself looking for work.

In 1917, Wells signed a contract with New York Life Insurance Company where he worked during he next forty years. During his career in insurance, Wells not only sold insurance but also wrote promotional literature about the sale and benefit of insurance for businesses and the general public, including The Beneficiary of Partnership Insurance .

Highly successful as an agent, Wells interrupted his insurance career only during World War II when he worked in the shipyards of the Willamette Iron and Steel Company (WISCO) as chief clerk, editor, and inventory technician. Wells retired from the insurance business in 1940 when he was seventy. Near the end of his career, he had developed an intense interest in religion. After he retired, he spent the remaining eighteen years of his life writing extensively on Christian religious topics. He published several booklets, including Studies in Modernism, Heirs of Promise, and What Shall We Do with Christianity, in which he speculated on the role of religion in mid-century America. He died in 1960 at the age of eighty-eight.

From the guide to the William Bittle Wells papers, 1890-1960, (Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries)

William Bittle Wells was an editor, publisher, and insurance agent who lived most of his life in Portland, Oregon. Born in Floyd County, Virginia, in 1872, he was the son of George and Lucinda Phillips Goodwin Wells. His father was a physician who went on to become one of the founders of the University of Oregon Medical School (now Oregon Health and Science University). The family migrated to California in 1874 and moved to Portland in 1881. William attended Portland High School (where he founded The Student magazine) and Portland Academy. He went to Lawrenceville School in New Jersey in 1892-1893, and graduated from Stanford University with a degree in English in 1897.

In 1898 Wells helped to found The Pacific Monthly, an influential west coast review. He sold his interest in the magazine to 1906 and became the editor of the Pacific Monthly 's successor, the Southern Pacific Company's Sunset Magazine in 1907. While at Sunset, Wells organized the Bureau of Community Publicity, a subsidiary of the Harriman railroad system (which then included the Southern Pacific and the Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation Company), which worked with business groups in various localities and created elaborate advertising brochures designed to attract home seekers to each locale. (The Oregon Historical Society holds a collection of these and other booklets in its Pacific Northwest Promotional Brochures Collection, Mss6000). Wells later established his own printing concern, Wells and Company, and founded Better Cooking magazine in 1912.

From 1917 to 1943 Wells served as a special agent of the New York Life Insurance Company. He left the firm in 1943 to work with Willamette Iron and Steel Company in producing war materiel, and then returned to the insurance business in 1946.

Wells married Mabel Lavern Parker in 1905. He was a talented amateur violinist and composer and helped to found the Portland Symphony Orchestra, which became the Oregon Symphony. He died in 1965 at the age of 93, in a nursing home in Forest Grove.

From the guide to the W. Bittle Wells Papers, 1834-1964, 1888-1964, (Oregon Historical Society)