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Letter, Jesse Applegate to W. H. Rees, Secretary Oregon Pioneer Association.
W. H. Rees, Esq.,
Sec. O. P. A.
Dear Sir:
Your letter informing me that I had been named as a speaker to your association at the fair ground on the 15th June next has been received. I will not be present.
Did my circumstances permit, it would afford me great pleasure to meet my old friends and neighbors on that happy occasion.
Many of them crossed the plains when I did, and we have shared the toils and dangers of the journey, and the privations and hardships of settling a new country together. May they long enjoy in honor the just fruits of their enterprise.
It would be a great enjoyment once more to meet them and present them with an address. There are many pleasant and flattering things I could truthfully say to them, and some scraps of history in which some of the early settlers of Oregon deserve honorable mention yet untold, which I should like to see go on the record.
The pioneers of the U. S. are of illustrious descent. Their forefathers were that band of heroes who shed their blood for the rights of conscience in Europe three centuries ago. And rightly appreciating the blessings of civil and religious liberty, they ran all risks and endured all hardships to plant these precious seeds in a virgin soil. They have taken deep root, and, watered with the blood of patriotism, they have borne abundant fruit.
From Plymouth Rock to Cape Disappointment, from Mexico to the Pole, all is sacred to liberty. Multitudes of men of all
