Central School in Salem, living on North Commercial Street. Hugh McNary died in 1883, making Charlie an orphan at the age of nine. Nina McNary became the head of the household, while other siblings took jobs in order to provide for the family. As a boy, Charles worked as a paperboy, in an orchard, and at other farming tasks. He met Herbert Hoover, a future U.S. president, who moved to Salem in 1888. He later worked in the county recorder's office for his brother John Hugh McNary, who had been elected as county recorder in 1890, and for a short time attended the Capital Business College. After leaving that school, he enrolled in college preparatory classes at Willamette University, with an eye towards attending Stanford University or the University of California. During this time he met Jessie Breyman, whom he began dating, at a social club he helped start. Another member of the club was Oswald West, a future governor of Oregon. Legal career In the autumn of 1896, McNary moved to California to attend Stanford, where he studied law, economics, science, and history while working as a waiter to pay for his housing. He left Stanford and returned to Oregon in 1897 after his family asked him to come home. Back in Salem, he read law under the supervision of his brother John and Samuel L. Hayden, and passed the bar in 1898. The brothers practiced law together in Salem as McNary & McNary, while John also served as deputy district attorney for Marion County. At this time, Charles bought the old family farm and returned it to the family. From 1909 to 1911 he served as president of the Salem Board of Trade, and in 1909 helped to organize the Salem Fruit Union, an agricultural association. While still partnered with his brother, McNary began teaching property law at Willamette University College of Law in the spring of 1899 and courting Jessie Breyman. In 1908, he was hired as its dean to replace John W. Reynolds. As dean, he worked to enlarge the school and secure additional classroom space. He recruited prominent local attorneys to serve on the faculty and increased the size of the school from four graduates in 1908 to 36 in 1913, his last year as dean. In his drive to make Willamette's law school one of the top programs on the West Coast, he had