Note 146 — JOURNAL OF TRAVELS OVER THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS (continued 3)
Reading edition
These were members of the immigration of 1844, of which Cornelius Gilliam was chosen leader. He had served in both the Black Hawk and Seminole wars, and had been sheriff and member of the legislature in Missouri. His command of the emigrant train did not last through the entire trip, the party breaking into smaller companies, two of which were commanded by William Shaw and Nathaniel Ford. Gilliam was colonel of the regiment raised to avenge the Whitman massacre, and was killed by the accidental discharge of a gun.
William Shaw was born (1795) near Raleigh, North Carolina. When a boy he emigrated to Tennessee and took part in Jackson's campaign before New Orleans (1814-15). About 1819 he removed to Missouri, where he married a sister of Colonel Gilliam. He was captain in the Cayuse War of 1848, and member of the territorial legislature from Marion County, ten miles above Salem, where he made his permanent home.
Nathaniel Ford was a native of Virginia (1795), but was reared in Kentucky, and after coming out to Oregon settled in Polk County, where he died in 1870.—Ed.