Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 18.djvu/258



230 News and Comment

the pioneer limit because in 1873 the territory then became a state, thus making a definite period in its political history. The president of the Association for the year ending July 22d was C)rrus Hamlin Walker, whose parents started from Maine to Oregon early in 1838, bearing commissions of the American Board as missionaries to the Oregon Indians. Mr. Walker was bom at Wai-il-at-pu, the Whitman mission station, six miles west of the present city of Walla Walla, Washington, December 7, 1838, and is the oldest male child bom of Ameri- can parents in the original "Oregon Country" now living. Mr. W. H. H. Dufur, a native of Vermont, but a pioneer of 1859, was elected president, and George H. Himes, a native of Pennsylvania and a pioneer of 1853, was re-elected secretary for the thirty-second time.