LETTER PROMOTING OREGON TERRITORY - 1852
"I KNOW MEN HERE WHO SELDOM READ PAPERS IN THE STATES THAT ARE NOW THE REGULAR SUBSCRIBERS OF FOUR TO FIVE INFLUENTIAL PAPERS AND WHO ARE WELL POSTED UP ON POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC NEWS."
(Oregon) Hayden, Benjamin. An important “come to the Oregon Territory” letter written by Benjamin Hayden promoting immigration to the Oregon Territory in 1852. It is addressed to “Gent (lemen) (Messrs Roberts, Word, Higbee and Stavne. Written in ink, 6 pages, and very readable.
The letter was written by Oregon Territory pioneer Benjamin Hayden (1822-1908), who was born in Kentucky, grew up in Illinois, lived in Missouri before joining the California gold rush in 1849. He returned to Missouri to marry Zerelda Gibson and in 1852 went back to Oregon Territory to take out a donation land claim in Polk County, Oregon Territory. He served as the first judge of Polk County. After serving as an officer in the Rogue River Indian War in 1855-1856, Hayden took up the profession of lawyer. His obituary in the Oregonian 10-30-1908, stated that he was one of the most effective trial lawyers in the Willamette Valley and that “His ability as a public speaker made him not only a successful advocate, but won him prominence in politics”. Hayden was elected in 1857 to represent Polk and coastal Tillamock counties in the Oregon Territorial legislature. According to Wikipedia “In 1879, Hayden was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives as a Democrat for a two-year term. Representing Polk County, he was also selected as the speaker of the house for the 1870 legislative session”.
Although the addressees are not positively identified it is likely that Chauncey L. Higbee may be an early Latter Day Saint in Nauvoo who had published the Nauvoo Expositor and, like Hayden, was a lawyer, judge and state legislator.
Overall the letter is a great pitch for the immigration of new settlers to the Oregon Territory during the time when the Donation Land Claim Act offered up to 640 acres of free land to industrious settlers.
The letter in full. (Note: Cincinnati was the early name for what would become Eola in Polk County)
Cincinnati – Polk County OT
Nov. the 25th 1852
Gent
I have delayed my promised letter longer than I intended I have written so little since I left the States that writing is a burdensome task to me And I have but little of interest that will pay me for the trouble of writing or you for that of reading.
My opportunities for procuring information of an interesting character since my arrival, here, have been very limited. I am much pleased with what I have seen of this country far better than I expected to be when I left Illinois. I have traveled over five of the oldest settled and most popular Counties in the Territory. The lands appear to be very fertile and mostly arable peculiarly adapted to the production of small grains of all kinds and vegetables of every description of superior quality. Corn sufficient for all necessary purposes may be produced without difficulty and without irrigation. We have every quality of land from high Mountain table land hill to low valley. The character of the soil varying accordingly. The valleys are finely watered by rivers, mountain streams and numerous springs. The bottom lands are generally covered with pine, fir, cedar, ash and maple, which together with the Cascades, Coast Range and numerous other spurs of mountains that extend into the valley, furnish an inexhaustible supply of timber as well as an unbounded outlet for stock.
The facilities for water power are unequaled and are becoming very generally and profitably applied.
The inhabitants are generally in easy circumstances. They are mostly pioneers from the western states, consequently sociable, liberal and hospitable, but are not proverbial for industry, energy and enterprise for which they were characteristic before their immigration here. The country is in high a state of improvement and has advanced rapidly since the donation made to settlers by Congress. Farmers are beginning to prepare comfortable and handsome dwellings. Towns, cities and villages have sprung into existence as if by magic, unrivaled by any country except California.
The agricultural resources of the country have as yet been but partially developed, other occupations being more profitable, but sufficient has already been done to ensure success and warrant a more general and extensive embarkation in agricultural pursuits.
You will observe that I have been speaking from observation and from what I have learned from a minute examination of the geography of the country and by conversing with persons of long residence and extensive travel here. I am induced to believe that the above remarks would apply to the principal part of the inhabitable portion of the Territory which is extensive.
As a grazing country this is not surpassed by any in the world. The land, mountains, hills and valleys are clothed with luxuriant durable and nutritious grass the whole year and in pastoral elegance excels your finest meadows.
We have a pleasant, mild and salubrious climate not subject to frequent and sudden changes from extreme to extreme that most of the States are consequently not subject to the numerous diseases following those changes. The rainy or winter season closed in upon us about the first of the month. The climate resembles California very much. But it does not rain so immoderately and incessantly here as it does there, nor is the heat so oppressive during summer. The atmosphere is regulated more by the proximity to the coast on one side and perpetual snow on the other than it is by the degrees of latitude north and south. The facilities for inland ____ here are not as great or desirable but that inconvenience is more than repaid by the ready market furnished at every man’s door, by the miners, for all the edibles that can be produced. The country is bountifully supplied with wild game or various kin, viz black and white tailed deer, black and grizzly bear, cranes, geese, ducks, grouse, pheasants, quail, and, last but not least, raccoons, the immortalized of 1840. But they are not so bad after all, being fully as fat and equally as palatable as your opossums in ____ harvest. I have tried both, and far preferable to the wild cats of California which some of your readers pronounced delicious in ‘49 to my own certain knowledge.
From the superior commercial privileges and agricultural advantages, possessed by this Territory, together with its mild and wholesome climate, its fine ___ advantages, its numerous facilities for water power, its inexhaustible source of timber commodiously situated, it is destined within a few years to become one of the most flourishing and populous states in Union. The population is increasing incredibly fast and becoming dense and permanent. General intelligence is intensively diffused among all classes. I know men here who seldom read papers in the states that are now the regular subscribers of four or five influential papers and who are well posted up in political and commercial, foreign and domestic news. The disposition manifested by the inhabitants here to establish and maintain comm schools is unprecedented by any newly settled country. We enjoy liberty here regulated by law and restrained by morality to the true sense of the world. We are not burdened by laws restricted by ____ customs nor trammeled by useless formalities. Every man is his own Chesterfield and aristocracy is in embryo.
The humiliating relation of landlord and tenant does not exist here. It matters not how indifferent the cabin or hut, the occupant can truly call it his own sweet home. By the liberality of Congress, he is lord of the soil and by the blessings of Heaven he inhales free air, pure, fresh and bracing, from the great Southern Ocean as cool and refreshing from the snow caped peaks of the Cascades. If a considerable portion of your inhabitants, and more particularly those of the older states, were inoculated with the spirit of freedom, equality and entire independence that pervades the whole community here, you would see the cabin evacted for the ____ of tenants deserted. You would see the innkeeper without a lackey and the voluptuaries of affluence no longer able to hold the leading strings of their dependents performing manual labor instead of giving impervious commands. You would no longer see freemen or men who fought to be free, waiting in ____ submission the becks and nods of those whom birth, fortune, avarice or accident has placed in more opulent circumstances. But you would see them wending their way to the shores of the Pacific to become gratuitous landholders in common with thousands of their fellow citizens.
Gent, I must conclude. I have already toned your patience far beyond my intention when I began. I would be much pleased to hear from you soon. Yours truly & c. B. Hayden / Benj. Hayden / Messers Roberts Ward / Higbee & Stavne.
Minor foxing, overall in vg cond.