Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/284

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274
Reminiscences of James Jory.

and putting in a crop, while the four boys old enough for work built fences. There were negro slaves on the farm, but they were not severely taxed with work, and seemed happy and contented, and liked their master. However, James Jory, Sr., did not like the slave system, and James, the son, recalls with what a shock he reflected that the negro who came to convey their baggage from the city to the farm was the property of a master, the same as the oxen which he drove.

It was partly for this reason that it was decided to move over into Illinois, across the Mississippi River, into Pike County, of that state, where the land was as also found to be good, and an abundance was still open for settlement. Land was very cheap, being obtained by sale of tax titles, or use of soldiers' or other warrants. The Jorys bought of the government 40 acres of the richest of land, partly prairie and partly timbered. This was in the fall of 1837.

Here they remained nearly ten years, James Jory, Jr., buying the place of his father, who removed to a farm in Brown County, some 40 miles away.

On March 12, 1846, James Jory, Jr., was married to Sarah Budd, daughter of Aaron and Phoebe Ogden Budd. This lady, who has shared equally with her husband in the work and privations experienced in building up a commonwealth on the Pacific Coast, belonged to an old American family, her grandfather Budd having been a soldier in the War of Independence, and her father a resident of Duchess County, New York, until removing to Illinois at an early date. On the side of her mother, who was Phoebe Ogden, she was also of revolutionary stock; so that the Jory family in Oregon embraces both the strains of the independent working class of west England and the original American of the Atlantic States.