Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 18.djvu/250

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222 Fred Wilbur Powell

to Oregon, Hall J. Kelley is worthy of permanent remem- brance."^

"Some of the Oregon historians have been disposed to be- little Kelley's work for Oregon ; but they only expose their own want of knowledge of the subject .... There is not a church history or a church docimient that has ever been printed that had the justice to give Kelley what was due to him . . . . Unappreciated and misunderstood, by some called a fanatic, by others a crank, and by the Hudson's Bay Company treated as a horse-thief, the ghost of Hall J. Kelley appears and disap- pears through the shifting scenery of Oregon's strenuous his- tory with such kaleidoscopic presentment as almost baffles de- scription .... Hall J. Kelley is justly entitled to have his name enrolled among those who saved Oregon to the people of the United States."*^

"He gained a place in history and his name is gratefully mentioned as the earliest and one of the truest friends of the 'Americanization of Oregon.' No history of Oregon can be written that does not thus record the name of Hall J. Kelley."**

Kelley complained that his name had been suppressed in the books and reports on Oregon written by Lee and Frost, Green- how, Slacum, Howison, and others. Had he lived to read the estimates here reproduced, he might have been satisfied; for it is now acknowledged that his figure bulks large among those who have lived and labored for Oregon. A number of sugges- tions have been made as to a proper memorial to his name. So far as is known Kelley street in Three Rivers is his sole memo- rial, and this is no small distinction in a village which has g^ven to its streets such singularly unimaginative appellations as Main, Front, and High. The map of the Northwest Coast is sprinkled with the names of Lewis, Qark, Jefferson, Astor, Benton, Linn, Polk, Whitman, McLoughlin, and others who figured in the early history of the Oregon country. Oregon

34 W. D. L]nnian, The Columbia River, i6i.

35 Gaston, Hwf. of Oregon. I, 115-6, a68, 272,

36 H. K. Bines, Hist, of Washington, 105.