Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/286

 our respects to the memory of one of the pioneer Argonauts of Oregon, who left us but a few short months ago.

Rev. A. J. Hunsaker was one whose outlook upon life and its responsibilities was far broader than that of the average man. He took life seriously. He cared little for the pleasures and the rewards of this world. His motto was service and he unselfishly dedicated all of his years to the good of his fellow men. In a life covering almost three generations he was a leading force, and for many years was an active, aggressive and effective minister of the Baptist denomination. He was a descendant of Hartman Hunsaker, a native of Switzerland, who came to America in 1632 and settled, with his family, in the State of Pennsylvania. His immediate descendants were industrious and reputable farmers. The later generations were prominent as ministers of the Gospel and as members of the professions of law and medicine. The father of A. J. Hunsaker was Joseph Hunsaker, a native of Kentucky, born July 4,1799. His mother was Elizabeth King, a native of North Carolina, and of English ancestry. They came to Oregon with their son in 1847 and settled upon a donation land claim in Marion county, where the mother died in 1864 and the father in 1869. Both are buried and lie, side by side, in the family burial plot on that claim.

A. J. Hunsaker was born June 10, 1834, in Adams county, Illinois, and died November 6, 1924. He was one of the youngest of twelve children. His life covered a period of 90 years, exceeding the scriptural limit of three score years and ten by two decades. As a boy of thirteen years, in 1847, he crossed the Great American Desert as the shepherd and guardian of his father's flock of 120 sheep, trudging on foot almost the entire distance. When he reached the age of 21 he followed the example of his father and located a donation land claim in Lane county, upon which he resided for three years. He was essentially self-educated, and from 1856 to 1861 he taught school