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The First Oregon Poem
By Mrs. Jason Lee
Edwin Markham says his mother was the first Oregon poet. This distinction, however, belongs to Anna Maria Pittman, who came to Oregon as a missionary in 1837 and soon afterwards married Jason Lee. At least nine of her poems have been preserved—one of 16 lines accepting Jason Lee's proposal of marriage, three acrostics, one called "Anna Maria Pittman's Composition," three respectively inscribed to her parents, her brothers and sisters and Henrietta, her future sister-in-law, and her well known good-by poem included here.
This was written in farewell to Lee in March, 1838, and was placed in his hands just before he started East. In September a courier from Dr. McLoughlin reached him in Missouri and informed him of the death of Mrs. Lee in childbirth in June. "One of the letters from Oregon bore a black seal, a fearful omen to his eye. He broke it with trembling hand only to read in the first line that his Anna Maria and his infant son were numbered with the dead. She was the first white woman to die in Oregon and is buried in the Lee Mission cemetery in Salem." Nevertheless when Jason Lee returned to the Williamette Mission in 1840 he brought a new wife with him.
Sad and lonely here to dwell?
If tis duty thus that calls thee,
Shall I keep thee? no; farewell!
Though my heart aches
As I bid thee thus farewell.
To protect and save from harm:—
Though thou dost remove far from me
Thou art safe beneath His arm.
Go in peace then,
Let thy soul feel no alarm.
All thy footsteps to attend;
Though you may feel anxious for me,
