I stumbled across an article from the June 18, 1913 New York Times, which reported eight Portland girls’ visit to Philadelphia. Apparently, they had some pretty high demands:

The girls… came to ask the Mayor of Philadelphia if they could have the Liberty bell to take back with them… If they don’t get the bell—and there is a chance they may not—they will be quite contented if they take back people… They will almost promise every nice girl a husband. “There are so many more men than women,” one of them said yesterday.

The article doesn’t say if Oregon ever got their womens, but interestingly, the Liberty Bell actually came to Portland in 1915 during a cross-country journey to the San Francisco World’s Fair. It didn’t stay here, obviously, but a replica was made and put in City Hall, where it stayed until 1970 when City Hall was mysteriously bombed, in a case that was never solved. (A second replica now sits in Terry Schrunk Plaza.)

And that’s your Portland history lesson for the day, folks.