were Knitzing Pritchett of Pennsylvania, secretary; William P. Bryant of Indiana, chief justice; James Turney of Illinois and Peter H. Burnett of Oregon, associate justices; Isaac W. R. Bromley of New York, United States attorney; Joseph L. Meek, marshal; and John Adair of Kentucky, collector for the district of Oregon.[1] Of these, Turney declined, and O. C. Pratt was given the position. Burnett declining, William Strong of Ohio was named in his place. Bromley also declined, and Amory Holbrook was appointed in his stead.
Meek, now United States marshal,[2] received his commission and that of Governor Lane on the 20th
- ↑ New Orleans Picayune, Aug. 28, 1848; Honolulu Polynesian, Feb. 3, 1849; Oregon Facts, 8; Evans, in Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans., 1877, 27; S. F. Alta, Jan. 4, 1849; S. F. California Star and Californian, Dec. 16, 1848; Or. Spectator, Feb. 8, 1849; S. I. Friend, Nov. 1, 1849; Am. Almanac, 1849, 313; Niles Reg., lxxiv. 97, 338; Victor's River of the West, 483.
- ↑ In the New York Tribune of Sept. 1849, a correspondent says of Meek that he was so illiterate as to be able 'to do little more than write his name, although President Polk, with a full knowledge of the fact, appointed him,' etc.; and states that he was an 'old trapper who had been 72 years in the mountains! 'The Or. Spectator of Jan. 26, 1850, remarked upon this, that at that rate, as Meek had been 10 years in the Willamette Valley, and was probably 20 years old when he went to the mountains, he must be of the venerable age of 102 years—he was 40—and took occasion to say that notwithstanding his want of book learning, he had been peculiarly prompt and faithful in every office with which he had been intrusted. This was a decided change from the tone of Abernethey's private letters, written after Meek's appointment as messenger, in which he took frequent occasion to ridicule the choice of the legislature. Or. Archives, MS., 108.
tongue, which never deserted him, made him early a man of mark, and he was elected captain of the local militia, which at that time, when the late war with England and the frequent Indian wars kept alive the military spirit, was considered as a position of honor and trust. At this evidence of the esteem of his fellows, young Lane became ambitious to acquit himself in all respects creditably, and began to acquire that book knowledge which from the circumstances of his boyhood had been denied him, studying while his neighbors were sleeping. He also labored to acquire property, and made his first venture in business by buying a flat-boat and transporting freight on the Ohio River. Money came in, and when he was still young he was elected to the legislature of Indiana, first in the house and then in the senate. When the Mexican war broke out the military spirit of Captain Lane was tired. He enlisted as a private in the 2d Indiana regiment of volunteers, to take his chances of promotion to the captaincy of a company. When the regiment assembled, captains being plenty, Lane was chosen colonel; and the other two regiments from his state being equally anxious to be commanded by him, the president made him their general. For two years previous to his appointment to the governorship of Oregon he was winning laurels on the battle-fields of Mexico; and to the history of that republic this portion of his biography belongs. Notes from a magazine of May 1858, in Lane's Autobiography, MS., 67–85.
