326 T. C. Elliott the company method wasi preferred. It may be added that this form of common law marriage, so called, will stand in almost any court of England or the United States, today. The certificate is also interesting because of the autographs it contains — ^that of Dr. John McLoughlin, the "Father of Oregon" ; that of Archibald McDonald, one of the most com- petent and trusted chief traders of the Company, who from 1830 to 1833 commanded at Fort Langley on the Eraser River, and who was for so many years in charge of Fort Colvile on the upper Columbia, the chief fort of the interior; whose annual letters, whether addressed to Edward Ermatinger in Upper Canada or to John MacLeod at Norway House, reveal so much of the personnel and events of the Columbia district ; that of Alex. C. Anderson, another prominent clerk and chieif trader, for many years stationed at Fort Vancouver, and whose manuscripts are in the Bancroft collection at Berkeley; also those of Archibald McKinlay and his wife, who resided near Oregon City and Champoeg from 1846 until Mr. McKinlay, in common with so many others, was ruined financially by the floods of December, i860, and in 1861 or 1862 removed with his family to Lac La Hache in British Columbia. There they resided for more than twenty years ; but their last years were spent at the hospitable home of their own daughter, Sarah (wife of the kind and courteous Mr. A. B. Ferguson), at Savona's Ferry at the end of Lake Kamloops. Their graves are in the little cemetery on the hill across' the Thompson River from Savona's, indistinctly seen from passing trains on the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Sarah Julia Ogden was the favorite daughter of Peter Skene Ogden, named Sarah* after that of his own mother, who was from an aristocratic family of Livingston Manor near New York City, and Julia after that of his wife, who was a woman of no uncommon attainments from the Spokane tribe of Inr dians. Sarah Julia Ogden was bom, according to the family record, on January ist, 1826, so that in June, 1840, she was in
her fifteenth year ; and Archibald McKinlay was fifteen years----
