Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/56

46 Applegate was the oldest of the three brothers, and from a peculiar personal manner and mode of thought had more personal influence among men than his brothers, Lindsey and Charles, though perhaps both exceeded him in energy of character as men of action. They agreed as a family to put their means into live stock, a plan in which they had been joined by Daniel Waldo, with whom Jesse Applegate had been a partner in the ownership of a sawmill near St. Louis. The ignorance of the mission board Doctor Whitman enlisted under, the zeal for personal notice of some associated with him, and cold-blooded critics who Judge him after his heroic death at his chosen post (maintained for eleven years as a school for the natives and seven years as a place of rest and relief for the way-worn immigrant) may detract from this self-devoted man all they please. To me who never saw him, but got my impressions of his public spirit from fireside converse with other missionaries, he stands in first place as an American homebuilder, Burnett next, among Immigrants of 1843, Applegate, Nesmith, Waldo, and others following.

The origin of the Applegate family, according to a brief sketch given the writer by a daughter of Jessie Applegate, was English. Arriving in New England as early as 1635; from there to New Jersey, then to Maryland, and from Maryland to Kentucky in 1784. Fighters in the Revolutionary War, and hereditary enemies of British power. Waldo's father was from New England to Virginia in his youth. Nesmith was of the Scotch-Irish colony of New Hampshire called his Oregon home Derry, and naturally affiliated with the Scotch-Irish of Western Virginia, who filtered through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri to become the advance wave of the opposing force against the spread of British dominion in America. Jesse Looney was from Alabama. T. D. Keiser from North Carolina through Arkansas. A critical analysis of the origin of heads of families in Oregon prior to the settlement of the Oregon boundary, will show much the largest number to have been born south of Mason and Dixon's line, opponents of Great Britain, and to slavery. The leading men coming In 1844 were frontiersmen also, and would average with the last three names mentioned above in character, but not with Burnett, Applegate, and Nesmith in ability as legislators in a formative period.

Of the Applegate brothers I think it may be safely said the winning of Oregon for the United States was to them even more a first object than it was of Mr. Burnett, and they were more pasturalists than agriculturalists, as was Daniel Waldo. All of these left land unsold in Missouri.

In public affairs Jesse Applegate was the natural leader upon the highest plane of thought for the future of Oregon as an American community. He united in his character and acquirements in a remarkable degree the talents of statesmanship, civil engineer and a professional teacher by oral methods. The writer was under his influence for more than a month through much danger and toil, as a soldier, but the campfire