the contemplated improvements, employed many mechanics. Thus out of the industry of this handful of energetic Americans sprang up Oregon City in the winter of 1842–3. There were thirty buildings in the spring of 1843, where before the immigration there had been but three or four.[1] From this it would seem that most of the men with families, and some without, settled at Oregon City.[2]
But there were others among the immigrants who could not be prevented from leaving Oregon by proffers of well-paid labor or other consideration. Why, it is difficult to say. They had had as yet no opportunity of estimating the resources of the country or the advantages which might accrue to them by settling in it. Possibly Hastings was responsible for it. He and White had been at enmity throughout the overland journey, and as the latter carried a govern-
- ↑ Moss' Pioneer Times, MS., 29.
- ↑ Medorum Crawford went to Salem, and taught the Mission school during its last session, after which he returned to Oregon City and entered upon the business of transporting goods around the Falls with ox-teams for the greater convenience of the settlers above the portage. He was born in the state of New York, being 21 years of age when he came to Oregon. He married in 1843 Miss Adeline Brown, who came in the same company. Mrs Crawford died in June 1879, leaving 6 children. Crawford's Missionaries, MS., 4. This manuscript was dictated from memory. It agrees in the main with other accounts of the emigration of 1842, and refers to many Oregon matters. Sidney W. Moss assisted in building the original Oregon Institute on Wallace's prairie. He was born in Bourbon County, Indiana, March 17, 1810, was a stone-mason by trade, and finally took up his residence at Oregon City. He appears, from his Pictures of Pioneer Times, to have been a man of strong biases, giving his opinions incautiously, though in the main his statements were correct. He was of a literary turn, and was interested in founding the first association for mutual improvement in Oregon in the autumn of 1843, called the Falls Debating Society. Moss says that while on the way to Oregon, and during the winter of 1842, he wrote a story called the Prairie Flower, which he gave for publication to Overton Johnston, an emigrant from Indiana, who returned to the States in 1843; and that it fell into the hands of Emerson Bennett, who polished it, and published it as his own, securing considerable fame thereby, as it was the first of a series of those sketches of border life which afterward became popular. Bennett subsequently wrote a sequel, Leni Leoti. Moss' Pioneer Times, Oregon City, 1878, is a valuable manuscript treating ably of a great variety of historial topics, chiefly relating to Oregon City. David Weston, a blacksmith associated with Hubbard, with born in Indiana, July 4, 1820. He became a worthy citizen of the young commonwealth, serving though the Cayuse war. He died Dec. 19, 1875. Salem Farmer, Jan. 1876. Manning settled on a farm near the old Mission, where he lived 7 years, but went to California in 1849. Sonoma Co. Hist., 612. Crocker was drowned in the Willamette in February 1843, as mentioned in a previous chapter.
