Note 9 — OREGON EXPEDITION

Hall J. Kelley may properly be called the father of the Oregon emigration movement. Born in New Hampshire in 1790, he left home at the age of sixteen and engaged in teaching at Hallowell, Maine. In 1814 he was graduated from Middlebury College, and the following year removed to Boston, where he was occupied as teacher and philanthropist, assisting in founding the Boston Young Men's Education Society, the Penitent Female Refuge Society, and the first Sunday School in New England. He was also a surveyor and engineer, and in 1828 invested his entire patrimony in a canal project at Three Rivers (later, Palmer), Massachusetts, whither he removed in 1829. This enterprise proved a failure, and his investment a total loss. For many years he had been interested in the Oregon country, and soon after the publication of Biddle's version of the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition (1814), Kelley began an agitation for the American occupation of the district. He tried to interest Congress, and the first Oregon bills (1820) bear the impress of his thought—see F. F. Victor, "Hall J. Kelley," in Oregon Historical Quarterly, ii, pp. 381-400. Finding his frequent petitions of no avail, he formed a company in 1829 (incorporated in 1831) known as the "American Society for encouraging the settlement of Oregon territory." The winter of 1831-32 was spent in preparation for an emigration movement. Wyeth was a member of this organization, and at first proposed to accompany Kelley; but finding the latter's plans impracticable, organized his own party. Kelley set out in the spring of 1832 with a small company, who all abandoned him at New Orleans. Proceeding alone to Vera Cruz, his goods were confiscated by the Mexican government; but although now penniless, he worked his way through to California. There, in the spring of 1834, he met Ewing Young (see our volume xx, p. 23, note 2), whom he persuaded to accompany him overland to Oregon. Kelley was ill, but was treated with slight respect by the British authorities at Fort Vancouver, and lived without the fort during the winter, exploring the country in the intervals of his fever. In the following spring (1835) he shipped for Hawaii, and returned to Boston, determined, notwithstanding his misfortunes, to further Oregon emigration—see report to Congress, House Reports, 26 Cong., 3 sess., i, 101. Kelley's health became undermined by the hardships which he had endured, his eyesight was impaired, and he passed his latter years in Palmer, Massachusetts, in poverty and obscurity, dying there in 1874.—Ed.