372 FRED LOCKLEY
hung?' Uncle Ben said, 'I have seen enough of you, Adam. No, I ain't going.' Uncle Ben was the only man in Polk county to receive a personal invitation and he was about the only one who didn't take a day off to see the hanging.
"Churches are plenty nowadays and folks don't seem to set much store by them ; but when I was a girl we drove 25 miles to church and were mighty glad to get to go. The church I attended was held in a school house and the preacher was old Doctor R. C. Hill, a Baptist minister. I met my future husband there. I was fourteen and Frank was nineteen when we first met. The name he was christened by is Francis Marion Col- lins, but I always call him Frank. He went to the California mines in the fall of '54. He mined near Yreka. In 1858 he took a drove of cattle down to the mines and the following year we were married. We were married on August 29, 1859, by Justice of the Peace Isaac Staats.
"There is one thing I have always been glad about and that is that Gilliam county was named after father.
"Gilliam county was set off in 1885 with Alkali, now called Arlington, for its county seat. Two of my cousins, William Lewis and J. C. Nelson, were in the legislature that session. They were taking dinner with me one day and they began talking about cutting off a new county from Wasco county. W. W. Steiwer and Thomas Cartwright were lobbying to have the new county created. "Cy" said the new county was to be named after the man who had surveyed it. I spoke up and said, 'Why not call it after my father ; he was killed up in that country while fighting for Oregon.' Lewis said, 'Your father was killed at Wells Springs, which is in Umatilla county ; but I think it would be a good plan to name the new county after him.' Cy Nelson said, Til introduce a motion to have the new county named Gilliam county.' He did so and so the new county was called after father."
