Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/281

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Jason Lee.
275

lofty ideals, he was splendidly equipped for the work that made him famous and left the stamp and impress of his personality upon all the Pacific Northwest for the molding of character of the white population coming to these shores, fostering patriotic citizenship, and building up a heritage priceless to humanity. The little band under his leadership were the first to raise the Stars and Stripes in these ends of the earth, the first to put forth a successful effort to establish a local self-government here, and the first to bring to the attention of the Government of the United States the importance and desirability of extending National protection to the people and exercising National authority over this vast domain.

Born in Stanstead, Canada, in 1803, he was nevertheless a thorough American. His ancestor, John Lee, was one of the first fifty-four members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to settle at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1634. The names of his ancestors appear in every war of the colonies and of the United States prior to his time and in the Pequot War, in the old French and Indian War, at Concord and Lexington, at the siege of Boston, at the battle of Long Island, at the storming of Stony Point, with Washington crossing the Delaware, at Princeton and Trenton, Germantown, and Monmouth. Colonel Noah Lee raised and equipped at his own expense a regiment in Vermont and led them to the aid of Ethan Allen in the attack upon Ticonderoga. Captain Nathan Hale, Washington's scout, executed at New York as a spy by order of General Howe, was a descendant from Tabitha, youngest daughter of John Lee, as was also the celebrated divine, Rev. Edward Everett Hale. Among college presidents in this same lineage we find the names of William Allen Lee, of Bowdoin and Dartmouth, and John Parker Lee, of Los Angeles, California. Among statesmen is Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania; among jurists, Wil-