young or middle-aged, long remained unmarried. This mutual dependence of the sexes was favorable to the morals and the growth of the colony; and rich and poor alike had their houses well filled with children.
But what of the diseases which made such havoc during the early missionary occupation? Strangely enough they had disappeared as the natives died or were removed to a distance from the white race. Not withstanding the crowded state of the settlers every winter after the arrival of another immigration, and notwithstanding insufficient food and clothing in many instances, there was little sickness and few deaths. Dr White, after six years of practice, pronounced the country to be the healthiest and the climate one of the most salubrious in the world.[1] As to the temperature, it seems to have varied with the different seasons and years. Daniel Lee tells of plucking a strawberry-blossom on Christmas-day 1840, and the
- ↑ Ten Years in Or., 220.
2, Sidney Smith to Miss Miranda Bayley; Aug. 16, Jehu Davis to Miss Margarette Jane Moreland; Sept. 1, H. H. Hyde to Miss Henrietta Holman; Oct. 26, Henry Buxton to Miss Rosannah Woolly; Nov. 19, William P. Dougherty to Miss Mary Jane Chambers; Nov. 24, John P. Brooks to Miss Mary Ann Thomas. 1847—Jan. 21, W. H. Rees to Miss Amanda M. F. Hall; Jan. 25, Francis Topair to Miss Angelique Tontaine; Feb. 9, Peter H. Hatch to Miss S. C. Locey (Mrs Charlotte Sophia Hatch, who came to Oregon with her husband by sea in 1843, died June 30, 1846); April 18, Absalom F. Hedges to Miss Elizabeth Jane Barlow; April 21, Joseph B. Rogers to Miss Letitia Flett; Henry Knowland to Mrs Sarah Knowland; April 22, N. K. Sitton to Miss Priscilla A. Rogers; June 15, Jeremiah Rowland to Mrs Mary Ann Sappington; July 8, John Minto to Miss Martha Ann Morrison; Aug. 12, T. P. Powers to Mrs Mary M. Newton—this was the Mrs Newton whose husband was murdered by an Indian in the Umpqua Valley in 1846; Oct. 14, W. J. Herren to Miss Eveline Hall; Oct. 24, D. H. Good to Miss Mary E. Dunbar; Oct. 29, Owen M. Mills to Miss Priscilla Blair; Dec. 28, Charles Putnam to Miss Rozelle Applegate. 1848—Jan. 5, Caleb Rodgers to Miss Mary Jane Courtney; Jan. 20, M. M. McCarver to Mrs Julia Ann Buckalew; Jan. 27, George M. Baker to Miss Nancy Duncan; Jan. 30, George Sigler to Miss Lovina Dunlap; Feb. 19, R. V. Short to Miss Mary Geer; March 18, Moses K. Kellogg to Mrs Elizabeth Sturges; April 16, John Jewett to Mrs Harriet Kimball—Mrs Kimball was the widow of one of the victims of the Waiilatpu massacre; May 4, John R. Jackson to Mrs Matilda N. Coonse; May 22, John H. Bosworth to Miss Susan B. Looney; June 28, Andrew Smith to Mrs Sarah Elizabeth Palmer; July 2, Edward N. White to Miss Catherine Jane Burkhart; July 28, William Meek to Miss Mary Luelling; Dec. 10, C. Davis to Miss Sarah Ann Johnson; Dec. 26, William Logan to Miss Issa Chrisman. The absence of any marriage notice for the 4 months from the last of July to the 10th of December may be accounted for by the rush of the unmarried men to the gold-mines about this time.
