Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/404

394 trail on the bank of the river, and they were obliged to lead their ponies over the bluffs to Fort Vancouver, a fact Doctor McLaughlin could hardly believe when they arrived, at 11 o'clock June 1, 1840. In the afternoon of the same day a ship arrived at Fort Vancouver from New York, with forty Methodist missionaries to teach and convert the Indians. A Miss Almira Phelps, from Springfield, Massachusetts, was one, to whom Joseph was married in less than a year. He was twenty-six years of age, and even then showed a progressive spirit. The four, Mr. Cooke, Mr. Fletcher, Mr. Kilbourn, and Joseph Holman, rode around looking for places to settle. They took up land and built a cabin. The Methodist mission employed them for a time and paid them in stock.

Joseph Holman cut the first stick of timber on the present town site of Salem, and just back of the asylum for the insane he took up his claim of land, which was a mile square. He rode a horse to the east, to the north, to the west, to the south, and staked it. Years afterward surveyors said he surveyed it correctly on his horse, a mile square. Mrs. John H. Albert, now living, was born on this land, Joseph Holman's eldest daughter. His only son, George Phelps Holman, was the first white child born in Salem, or the county.

Joseph Holman's heart and soul were for Oregon, for its building up, its prosperity. His loyalty was unbounded. He was honest, affectionate, and true.

This short statement was dictated by Mr Joseph Holman to his wife during his last illness in 1880. He was on a lounge, and told these facts, and she penciled them down and copied them June 27, 1902, in the present form.