Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/30

 to America, and add their blood, education and influence—whatever it might be—to the building of the new nation. From the north of Ireland settlement, three brothers, John, William and Alexander Gaston, emigrated to America in the year 1700, establishing their home in the Carolinas. From this Carolina stock came Alexander Gaston, bom in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1769, and who was the father of Dr. Joseph Gaston, who died at Lloydsville, Ohio, in 1833, and the grandfather of Joseph Gaston, of this review. Alexander Gaston removed from Charleston to Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1791, and there met and married Rachel Perry, a daughter of John Perry, a neighbor and friend of George Washington and under whom he served as a soldier throughout the Revolutionary war as an officer of the Virginia Light Dragoons.

In the year 1800, Alexander Gaston and his family, with that of John Perry and his family, removed from Pennsylvania to Belmont County, Ohio, settling near Morristown, where Alexander Gaston and his wife (the first woman physician in regular practice in the United States) practiced medicine until the end of their lives.

Dr. Joseph Gaston, aforenamed, was united in marriage to Miss Nancy Fowler, April 16, 1830. Miss Fowler was the only daughter of John Fowler, who fought with Commodore Perry in the battle of Lake Erie, and was one of the six marines who rowed the commodore through the British line after Perry 's flag-ship had been disabled; and Perry himself was a relative of John Perry, the great-grandfather of the author of this history.

Dr. Joseph Gaston dying prior to the birth of his son, he was reared in the home of his grandmother, Mrs. Jean MacCormack-Fowler, in Morgan County, Ohio; obtaining what education he could in the country log school house of the times, in which a three months' winter session was held in each year for five years. The remainder of the year was devoted to woi*k on the farm until he was sixteen years of age when he began life for himself, teaching country schools and working on farms and sawmills until he was twenty -two years of age, when he entered the law office of Daniel Peck of St. Clairsville, Ohio, as clerk and law student. On being admitted to the bar he practiced law for five years, and then removed to Oregon, reaching Jackson County, in April, 1862. Here he worked in the mines near Jacksonville for six months, and then entered into law practice in Oregon in partnership with John H. Reed, who was a member of the convention that framed the constitution of Oregon; and at the same time edited the Jacksonville Sentinel, the first Republican party paper in Southern Oregon.

In 1864 he took up the project of building a railroad from the Columbia river to the southern boundary of Oregon; and in 1864-5 prosecuted surveys for such a road from Jacksonville to Portland. In 1864 he removed from Jacksonville to Salem, Oregon, where he continued the practice of law, and edited the Oregon Statesman to earn money to pay family living expenses, while still following up the railroad project by agitating the subject before the people of Oregon and pressing it upon the attention of members of congress for a grant of public lands in aid of the enterprise. He followed the business of promoting and building railroads in the state from 1864 to 1880, an account of which will be found in Chapter XIX of this history. On retiring from this railroad work