Hall J. Kelley
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Hall Jackson Kelley (February 28, 1790-January 17, 1874) was an American settler and writer known for his strong advocacy for U.S. settlement of the Oregon Country in the 1830s.
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Biography
Early years
He was born Northwood, New Hampshire. He graduated from Middlebury in 1813 and worked as school principal in Boston from 1818-1823. He later worked as a railroad surveyor in Maine. He also helped design a project for a canal (unbuilt) from Boston to the Connecticut River, as well a railroad between Veracruz, Veracruz, and Mexico City.
Starting in 1817 Kelley became interested in U.S. settlement of the area west of the rocky Mountains. In 1829 he persuaded the Massachusetts Legislature to charter a society to promote U.S. settlement along the Columbia River. At the time, the Oregon Country was under joint administration of the U.S. and Great Kingdom pursuant to the Anglo-American Convention of 1818. Effectively the area was under control of the Hudson's Bay Company, which actively discouraged U.S. settlement.
He undertook writings designed to encourage U.S. settlers to move into Oregon Country. In 1830 he published a Geographical Memoir of Oregon, which contained the first map of that territory that ever was compiled, as well as settlement guide for prospective emigrants. Kelley's writings were influential in inspiring Benjamin Bonneville to undertake his 1832 expedition to the West.
Expedition to Oregon
In 1831 he sought to undertake an expedition to the west with Nathaniel Wyeth, assembling a party of several hundred men. Delays forced the last-minute abandonment of the plan, however, and Wyeth went West without Kelley. In 1833, Kelley set out with a smaller party for the West, travelling first to New Orleans, where his party disbanded at great personal expense to Kelley. Hoping to salvage his expedition, he sailed south to Veracruz, and after many hardships he assembled a party of U.S. citizens in Mexico who had settled in Monterey. The party crossed Mexico to California, where Kelley, along with Joseph Gale, joined the party trader Ewing Young who was moving into the Oregon Country backed by the missionary Jason Lee.
Kelley travelled northward by horse train with the Young party in 1834. On the trip north, Kelley fell ill with malaria among the Coquille (tribe) tribe in the Umpqua River valley near present-day Roseburg, Oregon. He was rescued by a Michel LaFramboise, a Hudson's Bay Company employee at Fort Umpqua near present-day Tyee. Kelley wrote of the experience:
- "Captain (LaFramboise) engaged an Indian chief to take me in a canoe, forty or fifty miles down the Umpqua. At first the chief declined, saying, that the upper part of the river was not navigable. Finally, in view of a bountiful reward, he consented to try... At the landing, the faithful Indian received of my property, a fine horse, saddle and bridle, a salmon knife and a scarlet velvet sash, and was satisfied."
In Oregon Kelley and his party found themselves unwelcome by John McLoughlin, district chief of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver. By the time he arrived in the northwest, Kelley had fallen ill and become discouraged with the expedition. He temporarily took refuge at Fort Vancouver before returning to Boston in the spring of 1835, broken and in poor health.
Kelley continued to write newspaper articles and memoirs based on his trip encouraging settlement of Oregon. On February 16, 1839 parts of memoirs of his Oregon trip were presented to the United States Congress in a report on the region. Kelley's report was bound with finely engraved map, showing the "Territory of Oregon" that was "compiled in United States Bureau of Topographical Engineers from the latest authorities under the direction of Col. J. J. Abert by Washi. Hood, 1838."
Later years
He spent his later years in Palmer, Massachusetts. In 1868 he wrote A History of the Settlement of Oregon and of the Interior of Upper California, and of Persecutions and Afflictions of Forty Years' Continuance endured by the Author. He died in Palmer 1874.
During the early 1830s Kelley led a campaign to rename the Cascade Range to the "President's Range", with each mamjor peak named after a former President of the United States. Kelley intended Mount Hood to be named "Mount Adams" in honor of John Adams. A mapmaker mistakenly placed the Mount Adams name north of Mt. Hood by about 40 miles (64 km), east of Mt. St. Helens. By sheer coincidence, a mountain existed at that location with no official name and became known as Mount Adams, despite the failure of Kelley's plan to rename the entire range.
External links
- Cow Creek Indians: Account of Kelley on the Umpqua River (http://www.cowcreek.com/govt/media/s07_history/art35.html)