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father was then in charge of Fort Hall for the Company. We started up the Columbia ahead of the express for the purpose of visiting Dr. Whitman at the Waiilatpu Mission, as the Doctor and my father were very warm friends. Here we were to separate, I to return to Fort Walla Walla (now Wallula) to join the express, and father to continue across the Blue Mountains to Fort Hall. When Dr. Whitman learned what the plans were for my future, he protested, and urgently urged father to send me to the United States and "make an American "of me. He said this country would certainly belong to the United States in a few years, and I would succeed better here if I was educated in the States and be come an American in thought and feeling. It was upon this urgent solicitation that father decided to send me to New York instead of Scotland, and place me in the same academy, at Fairfield, in which the Doctor himself had been educated. The Doctor even provided funds for my use there by giving me a draft on the Missionary Board which he represented, and taking from my father an equivalent in property needed at the mission. Consequently I accompanied my father to Fort Hall, and from there reached the States under the protection of trapping parties. In due time I reached Fairfield and was enrolled as a student. While there the school was removed to Geneva, N. Y., for the purpose of securing a State appropriation, and nearly all the students accompanied it. I, however, being much attached to a preceptor who had gone to Willoughby, Ohio, followed him, and remained there until my return to Oregon. I was at Willoughby in the spring of 1843, where, about the last of April or first of May, I received a letter from Dr. Whitman, dated at Washington, D. C, which was the first intimation I had received of his presence in the East. The letter was written some three or four weeks prior to the date upon which it reached me, since the Doctor was unaware of my change of residence. He had addressed it to Fairfield, from there it had been forwarded to Geneva, and again from that place to Willoughby The substance of the letter was that he had come back upon urgent business; that he would come to see me if he could find time to do so, but that he had agreed to join the emigrants at Independence early in May, and must visit New York and Boston before doing so; that the mission was progressing finely, and a large number of emigrants were going that year. Later the same year I left school and returned home with the Montreal Express.
When the great freshet in the Willamette about New Year's day, 1853, swept away the old Abernethy store building at Oregon City, I lost my trunk, books, papers, etc., among which was this letter from Dr. Whitman. I would give a good deal if I had it now, but it is gone. It would be convincing evidence of his presence in Washington at that time, and so far as my word is to be relied upon, it is such evidence now.
