Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/396



It is a labor of love to say that when the writer first met W. H. Rees in 1844, the latter was, for a man in his twenty-fifth year, in advance of his general surroundings. His intelligence and manner of telling what he knew on any subject drew men near his own age to him strongly. There were, I found on riper acquaintance, family reasons for part of this. His father (then a citizen of Hamilton County, Ohio), had been a member of the legislature of his native state of Delaware, and his mother had a place in the literati of her day. The father was of Welsh stock, and judging by the son, an active, ardent member of the Whig party at the time. Willard and I were thrown together in the tide of emigration setting out from Saint Louis towards the rendezvous of proposed emigrants to Oregon. The boat we were on landed at Weston, and from thence we hired a team belonging to other emigrants to haul our effects, and we walked to Saint Joseph. From thence Rees and I footed it ten miles higher up the Missouri to the camp of the emigrants under Gilliam's leadership. Learning there that a man living but three miles off needed two assistants to get his family and effects to Oregon, we were at his residence next morning as he rose from breakfast, and within five minutes were engaged to come to Oregon with him as his assistants. Within twenty-five minutes, mounted on a good horse, with gold coin to purchase breadstuffs for ten persons for three months' journey, Rees was on his way back to Saint Joe. He and I then began a year of such intimate relations to each other as leads me to say Capt. R. W. Morrison, our employer, made no mistake in trusting Mr. Rees with the most important acts in conducting his