Page:Quarterlyoforego10oreg 1.djvu/426

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

DOCUMENTS. Carnegie Institution of Washington. Washington, D. C. Department of Historical Research. J. FrankHn Jameson, Director. The Editor of the "Oregon Historical Quarterly," Dear Sir : I lately found among the papers of my uncle, who died four years ago, the letter of which I inclose a careful copy. The writer was his elder brother, my father, John Jameson of Massachusetts. I have thought that its list of wholesale prices in Oregon in 1852 might be of some interest to students of economic conditions in that early period. My father, who was born in 1828, went out in 1851 to Oregon, going in a sailing vessel to San Francisco and' thence by steamer to Portland. After a brief stay there he went to Buteville. I see that in this letter he spells it "Buteville," but I had always understood from him that it was properly spelled Butteville. I do not find the name in the Postal Guide, but the village was in existence some years ago. Indeed, I think you printed nine or ten years ago the reminiscences of an ancient French-Canadian who had lived there some sixty years and whom my father, to whom I showed the article in your Quar- terly, remembered very well.^ These few months in Buteville were the only part of my father's life that was spent in commercial pursuits. He came back to Massachusetts in 1852, studied for the bar, taught for several years, and then practiced law. He died in 1905. The brother, ten years younger, to whom the letter is addressed, was subsequently Dr. R. Edwin Jameson of Boston. Very respectfully yours, J. F. Jameson. The Carnegie Institution of Washington, November 27, 1909. I F. X. Matthieu is no doubt the man to whom Dr. Jameson refers. See

Quarterly, Viol. I, pp. 73- 104. — Ed. Quarterly.----