Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/687

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636
POLITICS AND PROGRESS.

and 1844 animated by a romantic idea of founding a

    mony being performed by Justice of the Peace Thurman, afterward U. S. senator from Ohio. Merrill subsequently returned to Ill., where he resided until 1847. In the spring of 1848 he settled in Columbia County, Oregon. He died at his home May 6, 1879, regretted by the community in which he lived. Portland Standard, May 13, 1879.

    Mrs John Fisher lost her husband at the crossing of the Platte River, June 6, 1847; and on Snake River she buried her little girl 2 years of age. She arrived late in the autumn at Tualatin plains, where during the winter she met W. A. Mills, who had arrived in 1843. He proposed marriage, and they were united in 1848, continuing to reside near Hillsboro. Mrs Mills had 5 children, 2 sons and 3 daughters. She was born in Wayne County, Ind., April 20, 1822, and died December 11, 1869. Salem Farmer, March 26, 1870.

    William Glover settled in Marion County. Mrs Jane Jett Graves Glover was born in Pittsylvania Co., Va., in 1827, removed with her parents to Missouri in 1830, and was married to William Glover in 1843, with whom she came to Oregon in 1847. She died December 31, 1876. Id., Jan. 12, 1877.

    Leander L. Davis was born in Belmont Co., Ohio, and crossed the plains in 1847, settling in Marion Co. He served in the state legislature in 1866. He died June 29, 1874, at Silverton, aged 48 years. Id., July 4, 1874.

    Mrs Olive Warren Chamberlain was born in Covington, New York, Feb. 12, 1822. While she was a child, her father, an itinerant Methodist preacher, removed with her to Michigan, where in 1843 she married Joseph Chamberlain, and came to Oregon. She was the mother of 10 children, 8 of whom survive her. She died October 27, 1874, at Salem. Salem, Or., Statesman, Nov. 7, 1874.

    Mrs R. A. Ford, who settled with her husband in Marion County in 1847, after becoming a widow studied medicine, and practised in Salem, educating a son for the profession. She died in March 1880, in the city of Portland. Portland Standard, April 2, 1880.

    T. S. Kinsey died at Cornelius, in Washington County, November 15, 1877.

    John Jewett died January 25, 1880.

    William H. Dillon was a native of Kent Co., Del., from which he removed when a child to the Scioto Valley in Ohio. When a young man he removed again to Indiana, and thence to Oregon. Dillon lived one year on Sauvé Island, when he went to the California gold mines, returning in a few months with a competency, and settling near Vancouver.

    Samuel T. McKean was from Delaware County, New York, where he married a Miss Hicks in 1817, and removed to Richmond, Ohio, from which place many years later he again removed to Illinois, where he founded the town of Chillicothe, naming it after the old Indian village of that name in Ohio. When he came to Oregon he had a family of 6 children. In the autumn of 1848 the family settled at Astoria, remaining there till 1863, when they removed to San José, Cal. During his residence in Oregon McKean held several places of trust and honor, as member of the legislative assembly, clerk of the district court of Clatsop County, and afterward as county judge, and president of the board of trustees of the town of Astoria. He died at San José in 1873, and his wife followed him in 1877, leaving many descendants. San José Pioneer, April 28, 1877.

    John W. Grim was born in Ohio in 1820. He settled on French Prairie near Butteville. I have a valuable manuscript by him entitled Emigrant Anecdotes, which treats in an easy conversational style of the events of the journey overland, his settlement in Oregon, the Cayuse war, the Canadian French, etc.

    George La Rocque, a native of Canada, was born near Montreal in 1820. At the age of 16 he entered the United States, and like most Canadians, soon sought employment of the fur companies. Being energetic and intelligent, he became useful to the American Fur Company, with whom he re-