Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/439



By the death, on November 14th, of Frances Fuller Victor there was removed the most versatile figure in Pacific Coast literature, a literary pioneer on the coast, and a woman to whom Oregonians owe much. Frances Fuller was born in the township of Rome, New York, May 23, 1826, and had, therefore, reached the ripe age of seventy-six years. She was a near relation of Judge Ruben H. Walworth, Chancellor of the State of New York. Through her ancestor, Lucy Walworth, wife of Veach Williams, who lived at Lebanon, Connecticut, in the early part of the eighteenth century, she could trace her descent from Egbert, the first King of England, while Veach Williams himself was descended from Robert Williams, who came over from England in 1637 and settled at Roxbury, Massachusetts.

When Mrs. Victor was thirteen years of age her parents moved to Wooster, Ohio, and her education was received at a young ladies' seminary at that place. From an early age she took to literature and when but fourteen years old wrote both prose and verses for the county papers. A little later the Cleveland Herald paid for her poems, some of which were copied in English journals.

Mrs. Victor's younger sister, Metta, who subsequently