Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/294

 276 T. C. ELLIOTT sixteen years of age Mr. Prevost became the stepson of Aaron Burr and was reared to manhood in the Burr family, attended and in due time married a daughter of the president of Prince- ton College of which Aaron Burr had been a brilliant gradu- ate. And in the year 1804 he was appointed District Judge of the United States for Louisiana, and in all probability was in New Orleans during the period of Aaron Burr's question- able activities thereabouts. He also for a term of years held the position of Recorder of the City of New York His own father, James Marcus Prevost, was a native of Geneva, Switz- erland, but with a brother, General Augustine Prevost, became an officer in the British army and served as such during the war of the revolution and died in 1779 in the West Indies. His mother, Theodosia Bartow Prevost 5, was one of the most talented women of the Revolutionary period, and her home, near Paramus, New Jersey, was widely known as the Hermit- age. There John Bartow Prevost was born in March, 1766, and he died in March, 1825, in Upper Peru after seven years of government service. The arrival of the "Blossom" at the Columbia River and the proceedings at Fort George are narrated in the official report of Judge Prevost to Secretary Adams, now repro- duced. (The exhibits mentioned in it are not reprinted be- cause already easy of access). 6 . The spirit of friendliness and conciliation on the part of the two commissioners was in accord with the instructions of the respective governments ; and it may be remarked that the same spirit continued through al* the years of negotiation which resulted in placing the boundary line at the forty-ninth parallel of North Latitude. There is reason to believe that the manner of participation in the act of surrender, if not the act itself, was in private deprecated by the British diplomats of later years, although argued as inconsequential. 7 As early as 1823 His Honour George Canning, British Foreign Secretary, requested the 5 See "Theodosia," the first gentlewoman of her time, etc., by Chas. F. Pidgin, Boston, 1907. 6 See Bancroft, Greenhow. Lyman and other histories. 7 See Greenhow, 1845, Edit. pp. 39-3i3; also Oregon Hist. Quar., Vol. 19, p. 206-7.