[1]GEORGE WOOD EBBERT
I was born in Bracken County, Kentucky, June 23, 1810, where I resided until early in the year of 1829, when I started for the Rocky Mountains in the employ of William Sublette to engage in the fur trade for the American Fur Company, in whose employ I remained six years. I then joined the Hudson's Bay Company and trapped for that company three years. In the fall of 1838 I came to the Mission kept by the Rev. Mr. Spalding at Lapwai; remained there through that winter, working at blacksmithing, a trade that I had learned in Kentucky. In the spring of 1839 I started for the Willamette Valley, arriving there on the 20th of May the same year, and settled at Champoeg for one year. I then moved to the Tualatin Plains, twelve miles west of Portland, where I now reside, in the fall of 1841.
In January, 1848, in company with the late Jos. L. Meek, Nathaniel Bowman, David Young, John Owens, James Stead, Samuel Miller, Jacob Leabo, Dennis Burriss, and a Mr. Jones, started for the States with dispatches for help from the parent Government. Had an escort of volunteers under Captain Lawrence Hall, sent out by General Cornelius Gilliam's orders to accompany us to the foot of the Blue Mountains, as the Indians were very bad, we being then in the midst of the Cayuse war. Nothing of interest occurred on the trip except one fight with the Indians, in which the volunteers were victorious after a fight of eight hours. At this place some of the soldiers went out on a foraging expedition and captured some
- ↑ On December 16, 1847, James W. Nesmith, a member of the legislature of the Provisional Government of Oregon, introduced a bill appropriating one thousand dollars to defray the expenses of J. L. Meek, as special messenger to Washington City. This was read the first and second times and referred to the committee of the whole. The bill was amended by striking out "one thousand" and inserting "five hundred," and then passed. Meek then resigned his seat in the legislature, and began making arrangements for the trip, starting early in January, 1848, as stated by Mr. Ebbert. Of the number named only three went to Washington, viz., Meek, Leabo and Ebbert. This sketch of that trip, secured directly from Mr. Ebbert, in January, 1877, is now printed for the first time. His home was a few miles north of Hillsboro, where he died Oct. 1, 1890, and was buried in the rural cemetery adjacent to the West Union Baptist Church.—George H. Himes, Curator and Assistant Secretary.
