They designed to sustain themselves independently of the orders of any board, but failed to find any field for their labors, and after remaining a year at the missions in the interior, settled on the Tualatin plains. Littlejohn returned to the States in 1845, but Clark and Smith subsequently became leading citizens in the country.[1] With this party also arrived the first family of avowed emigrants that came to Oregon or the Pacific coast. It consisted of Joel P. Walker, wife, and five children, all of whom went to California in 1841,[2] and Herman Ehrenberg, who had led, and continued to lead, an adventurous life in several parts of the continent. He went to the Hawaiian Islands soon after reaching the Columbia River.[3]
- ↑ Centennial history of Tualatin Academy and Pacific University, in Portland Oregonian, Feb. 12, 1876.
- ↑ Walker had expected to meet a company of forty persons ready for Oregon, but was disappointed. According to his Narrative, MS., it was the promise of land held out in Linn's bill which caused the movement. His history belongs properly to California, but since he set out for Oregon, he may be claimed as its first regular overland immigrant with a family. He, like the missionaries, had two wagons. The fur company had thirty carts. The wagons came as far as Fort Hall only. Walker was born in Goochland County, Virginia, in 1797, and like all the western men, kept moving toward the border, first to Tennessee, then to Missouri. When only seventeen he enlisted under Jackson to fight Indians in Alabama, and subsequently in the Seminole war in Florida. In 1822, with Stephen Cooper, he engaged in trade with the Mexicans at Santa Fé, and thus began what afterward became such an important branch of commerce. Finally he settled in Sonoma County, California. There is a manuscript Narrative by him, in which he says little of Oregon, except that his daughter Louisa who was born at Salem, January 14, 1841, was the first child of American parentage born in that territory, a statement which is erroneous.
- ↑ Herman Ehrenberg emigrated to the United States from Germany at an early age. He was at New Orleans when the Texan war broke out, and was one of the few of the New Orleans Grays who survived the defeat of Fannin and the barbarous massacre of prisoners after the battle of Goliad. After the war ended he returned to Germany, and induced a large emigration of his countrymen to Texas. In 1840 he was in St Louis, and determined to cross the continent with a party forming for that purpose. From Oregon he went to the Hawaiian Islands, and after wandering for a few years in Polynesia, went to California and joined Frémont in his efforts to free that country from Mexican rule. The Gadsden purchase next attracted his restless nature, and in 1857 he settled near Tubac, and engaged in silver-mining in the Santa
River, he turned back to Oregon, and going to the Willamette Valley, began working for the Mission at Salem. Here his mental affliction grew worse, until finally he determined to work a miracle to convince the world of his inspiration, and nailing one of his hands to the wall above the fireplace in his shop, so roasted himself in the fire that he died within three days. Lee and Frost's Or., 211; McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., ser. 2; Astoria Marine Gazette, June 13, 1866; Gray's Hist. Or., 185; Simpson's Nar., i. 161.
