Medare G. Foisy performed the first Oregon printing in 1845 with type owned by the Catholic mission at St. Paul. Apparently without the benefit of a permanent press, he printed at least two official forms, and there is evidence that he produced tickets for an election held on June 3, 1845. Foisy was a French Canadian who had worked at the Lapwai mission press for Henry Harmon Spalding (see p. 63, above) during the fall and winter of 1844-45.[107]

Later certain forward-looking settlers organized the Oregon Printing Association, obtained a printing press, hired a printer named John Fleming, who had migrated to Oregon from Ohio,[108] and founded the Oregon Spectator at Oregon City on February 5, 1846. This was the earliest English-language newspaper in North America west of the Missouri River.[109] The earliest Oregon printing in the Library of Congress is the ninth semimonthly number of the Oregon Spectator, dated May 28, 1846. It is a small four-page sheet presently bound with 15 other numbers of the Spectator through May 13, 1847. All bear the newspaper's motto: "Westward the Star of Empire takes its way." When this ninth number was printed, the Oregon Country was still jointly occupied by the United States and Great Britain. Shortly after, on June 15, 1846, the U.S. Senate ratified the Oregon Treaty, whereby the Oregon Country was divided at the 49th parallel. News of the ratification as reported in the New York Gazette and Times of June 19 reached Honolulu in time to be printed in the Polynesian of August 29, and the information was reprinted from that paper in the November 12 issue of the Spectator, which is included in the Library's file.

The issue of May 28 has a decidedly political emphasis because of impending local elections, and among its articles is an amusing account of a meeting at which several inexperienced candidates proved embarrassingly "backward about speaking." The difficulty of obtaining information for the paper is illustrated by a section headed "Foreign News," consisting of a letter from Peter Ogden, Governor of Fort Vancouver, in which he gives a brief account of the political upheaval in Britain over the Corn Law question. He cites as the source of his information a letter he received via "an express ... from [Fort] Nesqually." He concludes, "In three or four days hence we shall receive newspapers, and I trust further particulars." The last page of this issue is given entirely to the printing of an installment of "An Act to establish Courts, and prescribe their powers and duties," which had been passed by the provisional legislature.

In addition to its small volume of issues from 1846 and 1847, the Library of Congress has an incomplete volume of Spectator issues from September 12, 1850, to January 27, 1852, when the paper had a larger format and appeared weekly. Evidence for the provenance of the earlier volume is the inscription, "J. B. McClurg & C.," on the issue of December 24, 1846, designating a Honolulu firm which carried this advertisement in the same Spectator:

Several issues in the later volume are addressed either to the "State Department" or to "Hon. Daniel Webster," who was Secretary of State at the time. The Library's A Check List of American Newspapers, published in 1901, records holdings only for December 12, 1850, to February 27, 1851, but all of the Spectator issues look as if they have been in the Library from an early date.