Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/581

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530
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1845.

affairs, currency, the sale of spirituous liquors, weights and measures, the seat of government, and a new road

    Thomas Simpson Kendall, born in Ohio, was educated at Jefferson College and Cannonsburg Theological Seminary, Pennsylvania. His first congregation was in Tennessee, from which state he was driven on account of his denunciation of slavery. He was an influential minister of the Presbyterian denomination in Oregon from 1845 to the time of his death, which occurred Dec. 5, 1871, at the age of 62. His wife was the daughter of James Williams of Linn County. Albany Register, Dec. 10, 1870. Francis S. Holland was born in Liberty, Indiana, Dec. 21, 1823. He settled in Clackamas County in 1845, of which he was clerk for many years. In 1862 he removed to the Dalles, where he held the office of recorder for the remainder of his life, his death occurring in San Francisco, Feb. 10, 1867. He left two children. Dalles Mountaineer, March 2, 1867. William Berry emigrated from Farmington, Illinois. He was one of the men left at Fort Deposit in the Cascade Mountains in the winter of 1845. He went to the Willamette Valley in the spring of 1846, but eventually settled on the Lewis and Clarke River of Clatsop plains. In March 1875 he died alone in his boat, in which he was returning from Astoria, at the age of 55 years, leaving a family. Astorian, March 27, 1875. Mrs. Rebecca Fanning, mother of Levy Fanning, died at her residence near Albany, in Feb. 1881. She was believed to have been 100 years of age on the 1st of January previous. She was the mother of 18 children, 15 of whom lived to be men and women, and 13 of whom were living at the time of her death. Portland Standard, Feb. 18, 1881. Samuel Simmons settled on Howell Prairie. His wife died November 6, 1879, aged 79 years. Their children were 5 sons, and one daughter who is the wife of Wesley Shannon of Salem. Salem Statesman, Nov. 14, 1879. Thomas Hart settled in Polk County soon after arriving in Oregon. For 30 years he resided on his farm, amassing a considerable fortune. He was 95 years old at the time of his death, in February 1874, and until 5 years before had continued to labor upon his farm, doing the work of a man in his prime. He served in the war of 1812, being then 33 years of age. Portland Oregonian, Feb. 14, 1874. Elisha Packwood, brother of William and Samuel who arrived the previous year, was born in Patrick County, Virginia, in July 1810, and removed with his father's family to Indiana and Missouri, whence he migrated to Oregon. He remained two years in the Willamette Valley, after which he went to Puget Sound with his brother William, who determined to settle there, but not liking the country, returned to the Willamette, and in March 1843, went to California by sea with his family, arriving just before the gold discovery. His first expedition from Yerba Buena was to the Santa Clara Valley, where a cousin, Parrington Packwood, was living. He then went to the New Almadea quicksilver mine, but soon hearing of the gold found above Sutter's Fort, fitted up a wagon, and with it moved his family to the gold-field. He spent the summer of 1848 working with his 16-year old son Samuel Tait, at Mormon Island after which he went to Coloma and established a trading post, where he remained until November 1849, when he returned to the States by way of the Isthmus of Panama, by the steamer Unicorn, Captain Paster—a British vessel with an American crew—arriving by way of New Orleans and the Mississippi River at their former home. In the spring of 1850 Mr. Packwood returned across the plains to California, with a large train, arriving in the San José Valley in October. He brought out several hundred cattle, chiefly cows, and went into the business of supplying fresh milch cows to milkmen, taking from them their old stock. In 1852 he brought out, by an agent, another herd of cattle, and continued in this business of dealing in neat stock until the great flood of 1861–2, having acquired property to the amount of about $40,000; but the disasters of that memorable year deprived him of