Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/504



And when each brain in that vast train

Was perfectly inverted, My slumbers broke and I awoke

And foimd the place deserted.

Yamhill, November 10, 1848.

CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE.

The boundary question between England and the United States was settled in 1846: and that fact with the prospect of the donation land law passing congress produced the great immigration of 1847, the largest coming into Oregon in any one year from 1842 doAvn to the completion of transcontinental railroad. Every immigration to Oregon the plains across had been attended by much suffering and loss, and this year it was worse than ever before. The foremost companies on the trail exhausted the grass which compelled the later companies to halt to recruit their teams. And this delay brought them to Oregon late in the season and in a starving condition, which brought on much sickness. The great numbers of people and cattle also alarmed and angered the Indians who attacked the small companies at every opportunity from the Blue mountains to the Dalles, robbing the wagons and tearing the clothes off the women, leaving them naked in the wilderness, and committing other outrages. It would be in- teresting to give some account of all these pioneers; but that is impossible, for but few of them ever took any care to leave any record of their antecedents or lives. Mrs. Frances Puller Victor hunted up for Bancroft's History all that has been preserved of these brave pioneers, and which is given in the following note to this chapter, and which shows the character of the early settlers of Oregon.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Dr. Perry Prettyman was born March 20, 1796, in Newcastle Co., Del. He married Elizabeth H. Vessels, Dec. 25, 1825, and began the study of medicine in 1828, at the botanic medical school in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1839 he moved to Mo., and 7 years later to Oregon. He settled in 1849 on a farm near East Portland, where he remained till his death, March 27, 1872. Portland Advocate, April 4, 1872. Mrs. Prettyman died December 26, 1874, in the 71st year of her age. She was born in Lewiston, Del., in 1803. She was the mother of ten chil- dren, only four of whom survived her. Id., Jan. 7, 1875.

John Marks, born in Virginia, January 10, 1795, removed when a boy to Ky., and in 1818 married Panny Forrester, m 1838 moved to Johnson Co., Mo., and in 1847 to Oregon, and settling in Clackamas Co., where he resided until his death, January 5, 1874. He was a soldier of the War of 1812, and received in his declining years a pension from the government.

Thomas N. Aubrey was born in Va., in 1791, and moved westAvard with the ever-advancing line of the frontier until he settled on the shore of the Pacific. He was the oldest mason in Oregon, except Orrin Kellogg. Eugene City Guard, May 31, 1879.

Rev. William Robinson left Missouri in 1847. Mrs. Susannah Robinson, his wife, was born in Pa., in 1793 ; married in Ohio, and in 1833 removed to Indiana, thence to Platte Co., Mo., and finally to Polk Co., Oregon. She outlived