THE PIONEERS Our Oldest Citizens, Who Made This Country What It Is
... Mrs. Camilla T. Donnell was the recipient of a pleasant reception by her neighbors of the Dalles, Oregon, on the occasion of her eightieth birthday anniversary on Wednesday, April 3rd. She was the daughter of John and Spicy G. Thomson, "pioneers" in fact (1823) of the county ... John Tomson, her father, was a descendant of an old Scotch-Irish family, which emigrated to this country about 1760, and was notable for its orthodox faith, and especially for the number of ministers it gave to the Presbyterian church, over thirty all told, one a missionary in Judea for over thirty years, and another a professor in Hanover College a good part of a life time.
The father, in connection with his brother-in-law, Elijah Mitchell, introduced the first wool carding machinery into this country, about 1826-27; was sheriff from 1829 to 1833, Associate Judge and Probate Judge until the office was abolished: founded the Greensburg Repository (now THE STANDARD) in 1835; was an elder in the Presbyterian church here from 1833 until his death in 1856.
The mother was a daughter of "Grandma" Mary Hamilton, also a pioneer of 1823, and a sister of the well known Hamilton family that occupied nearly all the roadside lying between Greensburg and Clarksburg. She died in 1838, at the age of thirty-six, an early age for the Hamilton stock. ...
