His interests later included banking, finance, insurance, river shipping, stage lines, railways, telegraph, iron and steel and the erection of Portland downtown buildings among other enterprises.

So the land South of British Columbia to the California border and West of the Rocky Mountain Divide was no longer US/British joint occupancy but undisputed United States territory.

He chartered a bark, the Frances and Louise, and loaded it with $25,000 worth of general merchandise, mainly assorted hardware; powder, shot, nails, brooms, implements and groceries; coffee, sugar, tobacco, drugs, medicine, millinery, silk goods and shoes.

[12] Corbett arrived on March 5, 1851, in Portland, a city of little over 821 souls[13] on the Willamette River, with a few small stores and businesses, large tree stumps bordering its two streets, Front and First, and backed by virgin forest.

[14] Arriving in Portland, he climbed the riverbank to the Warren House, the principal hotel, situated on the corner of Oak and Front streets, which would "accommodate, by judicious crowding, about a dozen people".

Corbett felt the tiny Portland with its strategic location would make a logical hub for commerce for the Territory and for shipping supplies of farm produce and timber to California.

Corbett's business at that time dealt in general merchandise, hardware and farming implements - supplying the ranchers and farmers and the new settlers who were beginning to arrive by the Oregon Trail.

When the transcontinental Union Pacific Railroad to San Francisco was completed on May 10, 1869, this more direct route was then used for shipping and travel connecting to Portland by boat or stage coach.

Corbett made lifelong friendships with his fellow merchants who had travelled out from the East in the months following his arrival in Portland on March 5, 1851: William S. Ladd (arrived April 8, 1851), Josiah Failing (also referred to as Jushua),[28] and his son Henry Failing and C. H. Lewis (on same boat, June 9, 1851) "All of these merchants were neighbourly, each commanding the others' fullest respect while practicing the rules of competitive business… With their Eastern backgrounds they helped impress upon the young community the distinct New England cultural tone which pervaded the town from its inception.

(James had initially stayed back in New York with his mother and two sisters in a house on Washington Square when Josiah Failing and his two eldest sons, seventeen-year-old Henry and ten-year-old Edward, had come to Portland on June 9, 1851, just three months after Corbett.

[57] Corbett and Failing were elected as directors of Oregon Railway and Navigation Company (OR&N) in June 1888, along with Henry Villard, Christopher Meyer, John Hubert Hall, Sidney Dillon, Charles S. Colby, Colgate Hoyt, C. H. Lewis, W. S. Ladd, Cyrus A. Dolph, W. H. Holcomb, and S. B.

[59] The completion of the OR&N line ultimately linked Portland along the Columbia River Gorge through to St. Paul, Minnesota with connections east to the Union Pacific Railroad.

There was no state-banking act in Oregon until 1907 so other banks at the time (like the Ladd and Tilton) were strictly private proprietorships, without a board, taking deposits and lending money without regulation.

When Rutherford B. Hayes was nominated as the Republican presidential standard bearer in 1876 Corbett wrote to him from Washington "…[I] have written to the "Oregonian", which I control, to give to you its most hearty and enthusiastic support".

At his death in 1903 Corbett's estate of 27 downtown Portland buildings would increase in value by over 500% within seven years, much of the appreciation due to the financial boom and population growth stimulated by the Lewis and Clark Exposition, which he had chaired.

He maintained that the government could fund its debt at a lower rate of interest, sustain its credit worthiness and save money in the long run by honoring its obligations.

It is not for the present that I speak, but it is that great, grand, and glorious future that I see for my country looming up before me, powerful and mighty as she is to be, destined to withstand, as one day she will, all the governments of the crowned heads of Europe.... We need only look back a hundred years to the march of events, when an American drew the lightning from heaven to see if it could be made subservient to man.

Another American takes it up and stretches his electric wires through the vast ocean for thousands of miles, and he makes it talk to all Europe.... Look at …your steamships on the Atlantic; and that magnificent line of ships upon the Pacific and China seas; and yet it is only three-score years.

Corbett's early business success made it possible for him to help provide the infrastructure that the sinews of commerce and industry required in a growing state and city, such as banking, transportation, railways, buildings, iron mining and steel, water, electricity and telegraph.

The burgeoning city doubled in population every few years but its isolation from the rest of the world meant that Portland welcomed each new group of arrivals and helped newcomers.

It later moved, as a result of Judge Matthew Deady's leadership, to a purpose-built Romanesque stone building of its own in 1893 on the South side of Stark Street between Seventh (now Broadway) and Park with the Portland Art Museum occupying the second floor.

This sale was made after Ladd's decision to cover all the obligations on the failure of the Title Guarantee & Trust Company of which he held only a 30% stake at a cost to him of over $2.5 million, even though he was not legally liable to do so.

Corbett donated substantial amounts to charitable causes and institutions during his lifetime and bequeathed endowments of about a tenth of his estate to a number in his will,[132] as had been his practise from his annual incomes when alive.

[142] (When President Grant's recently retired eight year Ambassador to France, visited in June 1874, he told Mrs Corbett that in Paris they would bestow the "Cordon Bleu" upon her cook.

Afterwards she continued to cook for the Corbetts in Oregon[144] ) Their residence was the last of the great houses in Portland to be built in the Second Empire style (the fashion had been influenced by Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie's reconstruction of the Louvre).

He and his neighbour Henry Failing had returned from Europe with art to fill their homes, decorating their walls with stencilling and painting their ceilings with 'frescoes' in the most fashionable styles of the day.

After many years the elegant home, set in its own city block, was surrounded by office buildings, but Mrs. Corbett and the family cow seemingly refused to be intimidated by their new neighbors.

In 1892 Corbett and his wife built a seaside home The Pines in Seaview, Washington, north of the Columbia River, which still stands there (now run as a resort inn).

The SS William S. Ladd (#2084) was launched on September 13, 1943, and was sunk by Kamikaze attack on December 10, 1944, 11 miles south of Dulag, Leyte, Pacific Islands.

He took hold of it with all his accustomed energy, subscribing a heavy sum of money to start it, and gave to the work of organizing it the last earnest efforts of his life.Corbett died in Portland on March 31, 1903, at the age of 76.