Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/399

 THE MCNEMEES AND TETHEROWS waters of the Malheur and in the Malheur mountains in search of the cut-off. My father, having no money to hire a batteau, cut some trees near the river bank, made a log raft, on which he put the family and the household goods, and on this raft they floated down the Columbia river to Fort Vancouver. "At Fort Vancouver he bought a batteau and plied for the next few months on the river, transporting pas- sengers and freight from The Dalles to Fort Vancouver. Dr. John McLoughlin furnished wheat and salmon to father on credit on which they lived during the winter of 1845 while staying at Linnton. "In the spring of 1846, when my father built the fourth house in Portland, he learned that Lovejoy and Petttigrove had only a squatter's right to Portland. They had never surveyed the land. Father hired a surveyor and filed a claim on 640 acres. For years this case was in the courts and, finally, the Supreme Court of the United States, in 1858, decided against my father. Salmon P. Chase, Montgomery Blair and William Gardin- our were my father's lawyers. They were to receive one-third of the 640 acres if they won the case. Ben Stark, D. Lownsdale and W. W. Chapman were the ones contesting my father's claim to Portland. "In 1849, the year after I was born, Rev. J. H. Wilbur built the Taylor Street Methodist church. Settlers had very little money, but Rev. Wilbur would go into a saloon and make his appeal; and very frequently the men who were gambling would say 'you can have the next jackpot.' Frequently Rev. Wilbur would come out of a saloon with a double handful of money in his hat, and not all of it was silver by any means, for times were flush in '49, and there were lots of $5 and $10 Beaver gold pieces in circu- lation ,as well as fifty dollar gold slugs." There are not many pioneers who crossed the plains to Oregon in 1845 left. Among the interesting survivors of this immigration is Sam Tetherow of Dallas, whose