Dr. John McLoughlin, the Father of OregonHolman, Frederick V.
History
Dr. John McLoughlin, the Father of Oregon
Holman, Frederick V.
McLoughlin, John, 1784-1857; Oregon Territory -- History
intriguer, until he was unjustly deprived of the greater part of his
land claim. Thus, after a sorrowful experience of man's ingratitude to
man, he died an honored American citizen."
J. Quinn Thornton was one of the early Oregon pioneers. He came to
Oregon with the immigration of 1846. At the meeting of the Oregon
Pioneer Association in 1875, he furnished to that Association a history
of the Provisional Government of Oregon. In this history, speaking of
Dr. John McLoughlin, Thornton said:[75] "The late Dr. John McLoughlin
resided at Fort Vancouver, and he was Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay
Company west of the Rocky Mountains. He was a great man, upon whom God
had stamped a grandeur of character which few men possess and a nobility
which the patent of no earthly sovereign can confer.... As a Christian,
he was a devout Roman Catholic, yet, nevertheless, catholic in the
largest sense of that word.... He was a man of great goodness of heart,
too wise to do a really foolish thing, too noble and magnanimous to
condescend to meanness, and too forgiving to cherish resentments. The
writer, during the last years of Dr. McLoughlin's life, being his
professional adviser, had an opportunity such as no other man had, save
his confessor, of learning and studying him; and as a result of the
impressions, which daily intercourse of either a social or business
nature made upon the writer's mind, he hesitates not to say, that old,
white-headed John McLoughlin, when compared with other persons who have
figured in the early history of Oregon, is in sublimity of character, a
Mount Hood towering above the foot hills into the regions of eternal
snow and sunshine."
Col. J. K. Kelly was Lieutenant-Colonel of the First Regiment of Oregon
Mounted Volunteers in the Yakima Indian War of 1855. He was afterwards a
United States Senator from Oregon, and Chief Justice of the Oregon State
Supreme Court. In his address to the Oregon Pioneer Association in 1882,
speaking of Dr. McLoughlin, Col. Kelly said:[76] "Just and generous as
that law [Oregon Donation Land Law] was to the people of Oregon, yet
there was one blot upon it. I refer to the provisions contained in the
11th section of the act by which the donation claim of Dr. John
McLoughlin, known as the Oregon City claim, was taken from him and
placed at the disposal of the Legislative Assembly to be sold and the
proceeds applied to the endowment of an university. It was an act of
injustice to one of the best friends and greatest benefactors which the
early immigrants ever had. I do not propose to speak of the many
estimable and noble qualities of Dr. McLoughlin here. They have been
dwelt upon by others who have heretofore addressed the Pioneer
Association, and especially by Mr. Rees in 1879. I concur in everything
he said in praise of Dr. McLoughlin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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