Samuel Thurston (delegate)
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Samuel Royal Thurston (April 17, 1815 – April 6, 1851) was an American pioneer, lawyer and politician. He was the first delegate from the Oregon Territory to the United States Congress and was instrumental in the passage of the Donation Land Claim Act.
Biography
Thurston came to the Oregon Country in 1847 as an emigrant over the Oregon Trail. In the struggle for the control of Oregon lands, Thurston was an ally of Jason Lee against John McLoughlin, the chief of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver who had helped thwart settlement in the territory. As Congressional delegate, Thurston authored the Donation Land Claim Act so as to give McLoughlin's HBC claim to the state legislature. Thurston and Lee made false statements about McLoughlin before the United States Supreme Court in an effort to publicly discredit him. The statements resulted in the denial of McLoughlin's land claims to his homstead in Oregon City.
Thurston's major political achievement was in helping pass the Donation Land Claim Act in 1850. The act legimitized existing land claims in the Oregon Territory and granted 640 acres (2.6 km²) to each married couple who would settle and cultivate the land for four years. The act is considered a forerunner of the 1862 Homestead Act.
In 1850 he wrote an address to the Oregon Legislature urging the prohibition of free African-Americans from the Oregon Territory, in which said:
- "[It] is a question of life or death to us in Oregon. The negroes associate with the Indians and intermarry, and, if their free ingress is encouraged or allowed, there would a relationship spring up between them and the different tribes, and a mixed race would ensure inimical to the whites; and the Indians being led on by the negro who is better acquainted with the customs, language, and manners of the whites, than the Indian, these savages would become much more formidable than they otherwise would, and long bloody wars would be the fruits of the comingling of the races. It is the principle of self preservation that justifies the actions of the Oregon legislature."
Along with Joseph Lane, he was instrumental in 1851 in blocking ratification of the Taney Point Treaty concerning the lands of the Clatsop and Nehalem tribes along the Oregon Coast. The lack of ratification resulted in a legal limbo for the tribes which continues to this day.
He died at sea in 1851 while returning from Washington, D.C.. He was originally interred in Acapulco, Mexico but his remains were brought to Oregon two years later by an act of the Oregon Legislature. His body was reburied in the Salem Pioneer Cemetery in Salem. The inscription reads: "Hear rests Oregon's first delegate, a man of genius and learning. A lawyer and statesman. His devotions equaled his wide philanthropy, his public acts are his best eulogium"
Thurston County, Washington (part of the Oregon Territory) was named in honor of him.
External links
- Clatsop-Nehalem Tribes history (http://www.clatsop-nehalem.com/history.html)
| Preceded by: Territory created | Delegate representing Oregon Territory to U.S. Congress 1849-1851 | Succeeded by: Joseph Lane |