Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/83



CARVER'S SOURCE FOR OREGON 55

the lines of surveying and draughting, civil engineering we would now term it, and was quite equal to that of the youth of well-to-do families of the period.

When mustered out of the army in the summer or fall of 1763 Captain Carver probably found himself in a poor state of mind for again taking on the duties of civil and family life, especially in a country community where opportunity for lucra- tive practice of his vocation would have been small. He was not a man of prominence or of property, as far as has yet been disclosed ; in fact he was impecunious. Mr. Lee has found certain petitions, by himself and by his wife, to the General Court of Massachusetts for relief ; and in later years his wife was engaged in school teaching at Montague. As far as is known to us Captain Carver removed to Boston vicinity; at any rate there he was in May, 1766, quite ready to accept a proposition to journey to the West on an enterprise of ad- venture and exploration. This information comes to us in Carver's own words, in the petition he presented to the King's Privy Council in London in 1769, a copy of which has been printed on page 111 of Vol. twenty-two of this Quarterly. The offer came to him from one Robert Rogers, the newly appointed governor and commandant at the important frontier trading post of Mackinac on Lake Michigan.

At this date, apparently (May 1766), began the active rela- tions between Jonathan Carver, civil engineer, age fifty-six, formerly captain in the English army but a comparatively obscure civilian, and Robert Rogers, major, age thirty-five, with national reputation as an Indian fighter, and a man of remarkable initiative, forcefulness and audacity. Major Rog- ers had only recently returned from London, where he had obtained appointment to the important position above men- tioned. While there he had brought out two books, which had attracted favorable attention ; one being the "Journals" of his career in the war, and the other being of a descriptive and historical character entitled "A Concise Account of North America." In his proposal to Carver he had in mind other activities than the mere administration of the office at Mack- inac, as will later appear.