Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/234

172 middle west the same year were the source of that interest in Oregon which started the mighty stream of pioneer immigration to the Willamette valley First and foremost of the builders of Oregon was Jason Lee.

Before the "Lausanne" sailed, Jason Lee married Miss Lucy Thomson of Barre, Vt., who accompanied him to Oregon with the "Lausanne" party. March 20, 1842, she died at the mission, leaving an infant daughter. This child, upon Lee's return to the east in 1844, was left in the care of Rev. Gustavus Hines. She was an early graduate of Willamette university, and became the wife of Professor Francis H. Grubbs, to whom I am much indebted for information here recorded.

Later in 1843 Jason Lee determined to go again to New York to set before the missionary board the affairs of the Oregon mission. He was aware that the board was not satisfied with the work in Oregon. The disappointment was due to their lack of knowledge of conditions there, and to the results of the work aomng the Indians, particularly. In the most favorable circumstances a letter sent from Oregon in 1840 would not be answered until the end of the following year. The information of the board was always a year behind the tact. I he board was hoping for the conversion of thousands of Indians, and quite unaware of the splendid work the mission was doing among the whites as well as at several of the Indian stations. It was to inform them of these matters that Lee left Oregon February 3, 1844, on the British barque "Columbia" which sailed from Vancouver for London in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company.

At Honolulu Lee received information that his successor had been appointed and was on his way to Oregon. After consideration of this unexpected phase of affairs he determined to go on his intended journey. He went from Honolulu to Mazatlan crossed Mexico to Vera Cruz, barely escaping imprisonment on account of the ill feeling due to the Texas intrigues, III his letters and papers being seized.

From Vera Cruz by sail to New Orleans, then by steamboat to Pittsburg, and by stage to the Atlantic sea-board. July 1st he appeared before the missionary board and made a plea of such convincing power that that body expressed Its renewed confidence in him and his wise administration; but his successor was at sea, irreclaimable, and arrived in Oregon about the time Jason Lee arrived m New Orleans.

Again Lee visited Washington, called upon President Tyler, and was assured by him that the "Oregon Bill" would probably pass congress at the coming session. He spent two weeks at Washington at this time, but a presidential election was near at hand, and was the principal affair of the time It was then in view of the approaching settlement of the claims to the Oregon country that the "fifty-four, forty or fight" slogan was ringing through the country.

After finishing his business in New York, Jason Lee went to his old home in Stanstead. He expected to return to the west, after some months of rest and renewal of old acquaintance in his native place. On his way thither he visited Wilbraham academy, where his student years were passed.

It seems strange indeed that a man of Lee's heroic frame, inured to hardship for ten years m all the climates of our country, should have met death mutes prime, at his early home, among his dearest relatives and boyhood friends. He preached to them his last sermon in November, 1844 even then feeble and emaciated, but yet filled with zeal and fire.

As late as February, 1845, he wrote to his friend, Rev. G. Hines, in Oregon: "Unless some favorable change in my malady occurs soon, it is my deliberate conviction that it will prove fatal. Should such a change take place I advise you to be looking out for me, coming around Cape Horn, or threading