had an extensive farming establishment, and where the town of Gervais now stands. Montoure sold his improvements to Pierre Depuis, who remained on the farm till 1850, when it was sold to Mr Brown. Simon Plumondeau is said by Dunn, in his Oregon Territory, 236, with another Canadian, Fancault, to have been the first Frenchman to settle in the Willamette Valley, by which he may have meant French Prairie. Plumondeau had served as cockswain to General Cass in an expedition to the northwest territory, and was a very skilful and reliable boatman and woodsman, and served several Americans in the Oregon territory, among others Lieutenant Wilkes, in 1841. U.S. Ex. Ex., iv. 338. Among the remnants of Hunt's party in Oregon were Madame Dorion and her son; the woman was still living in the Willamette Valley in 1850.
John B. Wyeth, Oregon, 51, names ten men who in 1832 continued their journey with his brother to the Columbia: G. Sargent, W. Breck, S. Burditt, C. Tibbits, G. Trumbull, J. Woodman Smith, John Ball, Whittier, St Clair, and Abbot. As a matter of fact, there were eleven, the other probably being Solomon H. Smith, who came to Oregon in that year. Robert Campbell of St Louis, originally of the number, does not appear to have reached western Oregon. Abbot, who remained to trap on Salmon River, was, with one of his companions, killed by the Bannack Indians. Townsend's Nar., 225. Gray adds two names, for which I find no authority—Moore and Greely—the former killed by Indians, the latter not accounted for. He makes no mention of John Ball, reputed the first American farmer in the Willamette Valley. Sargent died in 1836, of dissipation. According to Gray, Hist. Or., 191, Whittier was given a passage to the Sandwich Islands by the Hudson's Bay Company, and Trumbull killed himself by overeating at Fort Vancouver.
On the 1st of January, 1833, John Ball was installed as teacher of the half-breed children at Fort Vancouver. From spring till autumn he engaged in farming with Calvin Tibbets in the Willamette Valley. As no American settlers arrived, and disliking the controlling power of the Hudson's Bay Company, he embarked on a whaling vessel for South America. Ultimately he settled at Grand Rapids, Michigan. Mr Tibbets remained in Oregon, and is one of the founders of American settlement in the Willamette Valley. He removed to Clatsop, near the mouth of the Columbia River. Mr Solomon H. Smith succeeded Mr Ball as pedagogue from the 1st of March, remained long enough to fall in love with the Indian wife of the baker, ran away with her and her children, and established a school at the house of Joseph Gervais. Roberts' Recollections, MS., 36; Portland Herald, March 16, 1872; Oregon Spectator Nov. 1, 1849. After the missionaries arrived and began preaching, Smith met with a change of heart, according to Daniel Lee, though he never returned the baker's wife. Lee and Frost's Ten Years in Or., 269. He proved a good citizen of Oregon, finally settling among his wife's relatives at Clatsop, where he became a thriving farmer, and died at an advanced age. In his worldly affairs his Clatsop wife, to whom he was formally married, was of material benefit to him. Tolmie's Puget Sound MS., 2. Of those who accompanied Wyeth in 1834, about twenty reached the lower Columbia; but few of their names have been preserved. We know of James H. O'Neil, Thomas Jefferson Hubbard, Richard McCrary, Paul Richardson, Sansbury, Thornburg,
