$12 a month—a dollar more than the wages of grown men. He worked here during the summers for three years, but during winters attended school, working in term time only for his board. Here he began his first business venture, investing his limited earnings in live stock—colts and horses—and at the age of sixteen found himself possessor of $250 cash and a fine span of horses. This, as he now says, was as good a piece of financiering as he has ever done since.
In 1852 the four boys, the oldest of whom was not yet twenty -one, and the youngest but sixteen, put together their earnings, or its proceeds, and fitted out a fourhorse team for the trip to Oregon. To this adventurous enterprise they were incited by acquaintance with Thomas Mercer, of Princeton, Ill., who had become an enthusiast for Oregon, and although a leading man in the growing community of a great and growing state, gave up all and gathered his family and goods into emigrant wagons, bound for the Pacific shores. He became one of the early pioneers of Seattle, locating a claim in the then deep woods beyond Lake Union, and acquired property which at length became very valuable. He had the great misfortune, however, on the journey to Oregon to lose his wife, who died at the cascades. With Mercer the Warrens effected a business arrangement, selling him their team for $100 per head for the horses, with the option to buy back at the end of the journey at the same price, and paying him $100 each for passage in the train, doing their share of the work, which included guard duty every fourth night.
The company was not fully organized until the Missouri River was reached at Council Bluffs. The train left Princeton about the first of April, and crossed the Mississippi at New Boston, near the mouth of Iowa
