Homer Calvin Davenport was one of the most important and influential political cartoonists working in the United States during the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. A native of Silverton, Oregon, he worked with prominent newspaper editors and developed a friendship with Theodore Roosevelt, who was the subject of many of Davenport's cartoons. He was also a skilled breeder of horses, a line of which became known as the Davenport Arabians. Davenport was born in the Waldo Hills, several miles south of Silverton on March 8, 1867. He was the fourth child of Timothy Woodbridge Davenport, who arrived in Oregon in 1851, and Florinda "Flora" Geer Davenport, who arrived in Oregon in 1847.