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Rh chants trading furs along the north Pacific coast. Other Boston ships also traded along these shores. Even before the Astoria enterprise, three brothers named Winship, residents of Boston, and others, formed a company for settlement and trade on the Columbia, and Nathaniel Winship sailed upon this enterprise in 1809 in the "Albatross." This ship entered the Columbia in 1810, and ascended the river to Oak Point (on the Oregon side) nearly north of the village of Marshland.

Here Winship planted a garden and began the building of a fort or trading station; but the June rise of the Columbia, swept away the foundation, destroyed the garden, and caused Winship to abandon his efforts. These New England ventures doubtless inspired Astor's expedition of the following year.

Hall J. Kelley, a Bostonian, became an active advocate for the occupation of Oregon. For many 'years he wrote extensively in New England publications upon the subject and in 1829 he organized, in Boston, the "American Society for Settlement of the Oregon Territory." This society sent to congress in 183 1, a memorial urging that troops be sent to Oregon for the protection of its proposed settlement, and setting forth reasons for immediate occupation. Congress paid no heed to the memorial, but Kelley was still undismayed. He did much more to awaken interest in the settlement of Oregon, and through Kelley's efforts Wyeth, a Bostonian also, undertook an enterprise of settlement for trading purposes in 1831, and came to Oregon in 1832 and established a trading station on Sauvies island near the mouth of the Multnoma (or Willamette), a name which might well have clung to the river, and likewise been given to the city which has grown to such eminence on the banks of the Multnomah. This name this city should bear, and even now the change might be made with advantage.

At the time when Kelley was mots active in his exhortations for the settlement of Oregon, a young Canadian giant came down from Stanstead, a border town of the Vermont line, to study at Wilbraham academy. This was Jason Lee, then twenty-four years old. He had been recently converted and determined upon entering the Methodist ministry. Though born in Canada, Jason Lee was of one of the old New England families, his father, Daniel Lee, having moved to Stanstead in 1800 to join a colony of New Englanders who were settling that township which they believed would be included in American territory when the international boundary was finally settled. Daniel Lee was of Connecticut, and his wife also, John Lee, the English progenitor of the family, was of Colchester, Essex, and came to America in 1634 in the ship "Francis" of Ipswich. He lived in Cambridge and was one of the company of Rev. Thomas Hooker which settled and founded the city of Hartford. Subsequently he was one of the eightyfour proprietors who bought a tract of land comprising two hundred and fifty square miles from the Tunxis Indian tribe, and on this territory are located, besides the town of Farmington, the original settlement, the cities and towns of Bristol, Southington,. Berlin, New Britain and Kensington. Some direct descendants of John Lee still live on lands received in the original apportionment over two hundred and fifty years ago. John Lee was a soldier in the expedition against the Pequots in 1637. He lies in the cemetery at Farmington. His descendants were soldiers in the French and Indians wars, and fought at Concord, Lexington, Long Island, Valley Forge and Bennington. Colonel Noah Lee equipped a regiment and fought with Ethan Allen. Captain Nathan Hale, Washington's scout, was a descendant of Tabitha, youngest daughter of John Lee, and Rev. Edward Everett Hale is of the same lineage. Such were the ancestors of Jason Lee.

This young student was six feet, three inches in height, and of corresponding Herculean proportions. His complexion was ruddy, his eyes gray-blue; an