Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/50



Joel Graham Trimble, a retired Major of the United States Army, lives at Berkeley, California. He may well be called a soldier of Old Oregon, because, save only the interruption of the Civil War, for thirty years he was a frontier soldier in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

Major Trimble is of medium height, compact in build, white-haired and white-bearded, clear of eye, pleasant in speech, genial and modest in manner. Despite his age he is still erect and alert. Somewhat of the agility of the seasoned cavalryman still characterizes his movements. Veteran instincts survive also in his love for his good horse, which it is his delight to care for personally. He still treasures his old saddle, which in these days of his honorable repose brings back vividly the long rides and the hard charges of the Old Oregon days. The land for which he fought is very dear to him and its later development a matter of fatherly pride. Keen, also, is his interest in its history. Very willingly, therefore, he gave the writer the facts on which the following sketch is based.

The life story of Major Trimble commences back on the old Atlantic shore at Philadelphia in 1832. Soon after his birth the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. When the lad was seventeen he entered Kenyon College. Hardly had he done so, however, when there came the tidings of gold in California. Having secured his father's consent, he left college and started with four companions for California. At St. Joe, however, the cholera summoned two of the party to shores other than those of the Pacific, and two others turned back. Not so young Trimble. Though now out of money, he had become fascinated with Western life. So he tramped sixty weary miles to Fort