government matters. Taken all in all, I should say, "Honor to the Memory of Jason Lee."
And here I may be permitted to pay a word of tribute to the woman who gave her life as a sacrifice to the work of Jason Lee. By the courtesy of Miss Anna Pittman, a niece of Ann Maria Pittman, the first wife of Jason Lee, I have been permitted to read several autograph letters written by Mrs. Lee before she was married, and while she was preparing to come to Oregon. In her last letter of date June 9, 1836, written from New York to her brother, George W. Pittman, who was then at Troy, New York, but who in 1834 was at Fort Gibson, Arkansas River, Arkansas Territory, with the United States Dragoons, she said:
"I have taken my pen in hand to address you for the last time. The time is drawing nigh when I must bid along farewell to all I love. I quit the scenes of my youth, the land of my birth, and in a far and distant land among strangers I expect to dwell. Soon the rolling billows of the tempestuous ocean, and the towering mountains, rugged steep, will intervene between us, and perhaps we see each others face no more. * * As the hour approaches for my departure, I still remain firm and undaunted; I have nothing to fear, God has promised to be with me even to the end of the world. Dear brother, farewell; may Heaven bless you, and oh remember your sister who goes not to seek the honours and pleasures of the world, but lays her life a willing sacrifice upon the altar of God."
This letter written in a bold and firm hand and signed "Anna Maria Pittman" breathes the spirit of the martyr. In a postscript to the letter she says:
"In the ship Hamilton we leave Boston the 1st July. The mission family will be in this city the 20th June when a farewell missionary meeting will be held. We will leave sometime that week. The number is nine, five are females, three are married."
She came and paid the sacrifice with her life. She was married to Jason Lee on the 16th day of July, 1837, not far from where Salem now stands. She died on the 26th of June, 1838, and is buried in the old mission cemetery. In that sacred spot where we are about to reinter
