Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/73

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Motives and Antecedents of Pioneers.
63

American family road to the tide wash of the Pacific. He has got to find a rational reason for the names of Jefferson, Lewis, Clark, Russell, Fleming, Crockett, Boone, and many others appearing not only as family names among early Oregon pioneers to Oregon, but these names and those of Floyd, Linn and Benton were often bestowed on boy babies born in frontier cabins after the time of the Lewis and Clark exploration to successful overland emigration by family wagons. He has got to explain why Oregon has towns and counties, and mountains even, named for Jefferson, Lewis, Linn, and Benton.

Dominion over Oregon was the ripe fruit of patriotic statesmanship, conceived, cherished and nursed by Thomas Jefferson, and consummated by poor men influenced by the spirit of the lesser American patriots I have mentioned.