Oregon’s first sheriff and marshal, Colonel Joseph LaFayette Meek, should be remembered, not so much as a witty adventurer, a part much overplayed by writers, but as one of the very most important—at times the most important—political leaders in this northwest society. True, distance and lack of formal education limited his contribution, especially to national developments. The fact that his mother was a member of the important Walker family, that his uncle Joseph married Jane Buchanan and that his cousin Sarah Childress married James K. Polk might otherwise have opened doors leading to distinction for a man of great natural ability and winning personality. There were twelve, or by one account, fifteen children in Meek’s Virginia family, too many for one man to educate in a day when schooling was neither universal nor free. Joseph L. Meek chose to go west. From his brother Hiram’s home at Lexington, Missouri, he enlisted in the fur trade in 1829 and continued that wild career for eleven years. Decline of the fur trade forced him to move to Oregon in 1840, driving one of the first wagons ever to reach the present Oregon-Washington area. The record summarized in the most definitive Meek biography, _No Man Like Joe_, reveals not only a man with important ancestral ties which he proudly and affectionately maintained, but the fond, doting parent which he always was. Unlike many less responsible trappers, he did not unfeelingly desert his Indian wife and his children, but he took them along with him into the far west. Adjustment to family life in Oregon was somewhat difficult for mountain people. It was 1842 before Joe had a field of wheat of his own. Besides, his heavy involvement in public affairs interfered with successful farming. Nevertheless, as shown by a letter written to brother Hiram and republished so widely as to reach London, he was a prosperous farmer by 1845. His north Tualatin plains estate, consisting of 642.7 acres of combined prairie and timber land of excellent quality, later became Donation Land Claim no. 61, notification 122, Twp. 1 north, range 2 west. Here, in the autumn of 1845, Joe hauled lumber from Oregon City by ox team and built the first frame house in Twality County. The old log cabin was made available to Uncle Ben Cornelius, his wife and nine children.