Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 24.djvu/209

 that of Tom Owens. He settled there in 1843. I got well acquainted with Tom and his wife, but I knew the girls best. Diana Owens taught me to dance. She was a fine girl and a perfect lady. Her sister Bethenia, now known as Dr. Owens-Adair, was just the reverse of Diana; she was a harem-scarum tom-boy, up to all sorts of devilment, and she thought she could do anything a boy could, and was just as good and maybe a little better. Tom Owens, her father, was about six feet high. He was well-built and he could lick anybody in that whole country. His wife was not well educated in the line of books but she was one of the smartest women in that country. Another neighbor of ours was William H. Gray. He came to Oregon in 1836. He ran a dairy. Colonel James Taylor loaned him some money to go east and get a flock of sheep. Dr. Gray drove them across the plains and got them as far as Astoria safely. At Astoria he got a scow to take them across the river to his place. Colonel Taylor urged him not to and said : 'If you go across the river with this southwest wind blowing and a storm coming up, and lose your sheep, I'll make you pay for every one of them.' Gray was a man who couldn't stand opposition, so he said he was going across anyway. A squall came up, the river got choppy and the scow filled with water and became unmanageable. He finally got to Chinook Point but his blooded sheep were drowned.

"I got my schooling on Clatsop Plains. I went to school first to Truman Powers and later to Professor Brock. Wilson Morrison's children went to school at the same time I did. John Minto married the oldest of the Morrison girls. Then there were Henry and Billy Gray and Caroline and Mary Gray. Caroline married Jacob Kamm, the steamboat man, and I think Mary married the son of Governor Abernethy. Then there were Clatsop Smith's children, and quite a few others. I never saw the inside of a school house till I was 17 years old.

"Among the pioneers of Clatsop County were William