... I have but little to say of myself as my life has not been an eventful one and would furnish but little of interest for a story, and I would pass it without comment, but that perhaps some of my greatgrandchildren of the fourth or fifth generation, if this record shall chance to fall into the hands of such, may want to know something about its compiler. It is for such an one then that this page is written. I was born, as you may see in the record, in Adams Jefferson County N.Y. Nov. 14th 1825, where I lived until father moved to Ohio in the spring of 1838, and there my youthful years were spent; years full of interest to me as the years of youth are to every one, for them we owe the formation of character thought and habit that govern all out after lives.
I lived the life of a farmer boy until I was eighteen when I left the farm for the carpenter’s bench, and in that business in some of its forms I have spent the most of my life. My school days were mostly passed within the walls of the country schoolhouse. I attended school one winter in the Norwalk Academy, and in forty six and forty seven I was a year in the Oberlin Institute. At that time Rev. Asa Mahan was President of the Institute, and Rev. C G. Finney Professor of Theology, and I used to hear one or both of them preach every Sunday while I was there.
In the early days of 1851 I decided to come to the Pacific coast. The journey then could not be made in four or five days as it now can, for there was then not a mile of railway west of the Mississippi river. The journey had to be made by water from some Atlantic port via, Panama or Cape Horn, in from six weeks to six months, or it might be made across the continent with ox wagons in five or six months. I chose the latter route. I left home the last week of February by rail to Cincinnati, and thence by steamer down the Ohio and up the Mississippi to St. Louis, and on up the Missouri to Weston, Platt Co.; here we left the river and bought oxen and continued our journey by land up the Missouri to Council Bluffs. Our company to this point was Hiram Smith and family, Israel Cooke, myself and four or five more young men. At Council Bluffs we met more of Smith’s company, E.N. Cooke and family and some others who had made the journey to that place by land during the winter. Our train was here made up of about fifteen or twenty wagons drawn by from two to four yoke of oxen to each wagon, and three or four family carriages usually drawn by horses or mules. Our company now numbered from twenty-five to thirty “able bodied men besides women and children”. We were well supplied with provisions, such as flour, cornmeal, bacon, dried fruit and beans; and the cows we drove, furnished milk, and sometimes a little butter.
On the 6th of May we crossed the Missouri river at where is now the city of Omaha but was then only the site of an Indian agency, surrounded by scores of wigwams full of Indians. Here began what has been so often described as “that long wearisome, and dangerous journey across the plains.” Long it was, and to the oxen that hauled the wagons it was no doubt a weary one indeed as very many of them fell by the way; to me it did not prove particularly wearisome, but a pleasure trip I greatly enjoyed, and I have ever counted that Summer as among my “red letter days.” We went by the way of Salt Lake where we stopped four weeks and gave the teams a much needed rest, and Smith and E. N. Cooke traded with the Mormans for stock, giving in exchange dry goods which they had brought for that purpose.
I arrived in Portland Oregon the middle of October, there I stopped until the first of December and then went to Salem where I made my home. At this time Oregon included all the country west of the Rocky Mountains from British Columbia to its present southern boundry (sic). It was but ten or fifteen years since the first permanent settlement had been made. Portland was a village in the woods with more big fir stumps than houses, and there was but one brick building in the then broad Territory of Oregon; that was a small store at Oregon City and it was washed away by the flood of December 1861.
The early settlement of the country is often spoken of as a time of great privation destitution and suffering, but I doubt if there was then really as much want and hunger in this land as there has been during the past two or three years. I know we were then without many luxuries of food, raiment, furniture, houses, and equipage, that some now consider necessaries. Many of us have continued without these things to this day, without being counted as suffering privation or hunger. There was at times much suffering in “crossing the plains.” Many spent their all for team and outfit, then if their oxen died, or sickness came upon them there was trouble such as try men’s souls, but when once the Willamette was reached the weary and hungry found food and rest, and those without money could get plenty of work at big wages. Then Oregon was a land where a poor man could live with less worry and toil than he can today; then all stood more nearly on a social level, and money had not the power as a social factor has now.
I must now draw my story to a close, I have already made it much longer than I had intended. If any of you to whom it is addressed want to know more about its compiler your can ask your father or mother to tell you. A grandfathers life is but short and soon mine will be only a memory, I have tried to live it so as to pass the name down to you unstained and honorable as I received it from my fathers.
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[cos1776 Note: see source for complete transcript of his letter.]
