Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/370



362 FRED LOCKLEY

to Mr. Green's school. His school house was on our place and for two months I went to Alex. McCarty's log school on Rickreall creek. I learned my reading from a page torn from the Bible. He didn't have any sure enough readers, so he tore up a Bible and gave each scholar a page or so. Mrs. Skinner helped me to learn to read, for I took my pages home with me every night so I would have my lesson next day.

"There were six girls and two boys in our family. I was the next to youngest child and I am the only one of the family now alive.

"When we settled here our neighbors were Solomon Shel- ton, Uncle Mitchell Gilliam, Ben. F. Nichols and Uncle John Nichols.

In 1846 the Provisional Legislature authorized Tom McKay* to build a road for the emigrants across the Cascade moun- tains from what is now Albany, clear across the mountains to Fort Boise. He was to have it ready for travel by August, 1846, so the emigrants that year could use it. The day before the Fourth of July, it was on my seventh birthday, my father took out a party of men to pick out the route for the new road. My father's old friend, James Waters, was along, and so was T. C. Shaw, Joseph Gervais, Xavier Gervais, Antonio Delore, George Montour, J. B. Gardipie, S. P. Thornton, and Mr. McDonald and Mr. Thomas McKay. They couldn't find a good route over the mountains so a road was built over the Barlow trail instead, but they didn't have anything to do with that road.

"Next summer father headed a party to explore the Rogue River and Klamath River Valleys so emigrants could come in by that route.

Congress raised a regiment of riflemen for the Oregon country but the Mexican troubles caused them to send them down there so Oregon never saw a hide or hair of them.* At

Himes.
 * December 16, 1845, instead of 1846. Oregon Archives, p. 145. Geo. H.

The Mounted Rifles came to Oregon in 1849, arriving at Fort Vancouver on October 4, 1849. See page 227, Report of Secretary of War, Nov. 30, 1850. George H. Himes.