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Rh force for the work, started East over the plains. This was in 1838, more than five years before "Whitman's ride," undertaken for a similar purpose. Passing through Peoria, Illinois, in the winter of 1838, he delivered a lecture on Oregon. This started a party of young men from Peoria for Oregon in the spring of 1839. The party disagreed and divided. A portion of it passed the winter at Brown's Hole, on Green River, some miles below where the main line of the Union Pacific Railroad now crosses that stream. In the spring of 1840 it came on to Oregon, arriving at Vancouver in May, 1840. In this Peoria party were Joseph Holman, Sidney Smith, Amos Cook, and Francis Fletcher, all of whom lived to old age and left descendants, now living in various parts of the State.

Before he had arrived at the end of his journey eastward, Jason Lee heard of the death of his wife in Oregon shortly after he had left her. Bowing as man must to so great a grief and loss, yet his purpose was not shaken. He bestirred himself with all energy to obtain further help for the mission in Oregon, and in October, 1839, with a large party that included many names which became widely known in our pioneer life, sailed from New York in the bark Lausanne for the Columbia River. The vessel arrived in the river just as the Peoria party which had started a year earlier came down the Columbia to Vancouver, that is, in May, 1840. The party that came by the Lausanne became known in missionary annals as "the great reinforcement."

White left Oregon in July, 1840, by sea, for New York. In 1842 he came out again to Oregon, over the plains. With him came a large party, among whom were persons afterwards well known in the history of Oregon as J. R. Robb, S. W. Moss, Medorem Crawford, the Pomeroys, Andrew and Darling Smith, and many more. White himself went back over the plains in 1845; came again to