| Hall J. Kelley | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 24, 1790 Orono, Maine |
| Died | January 17, 1874 (aged 83) Massachusetts |
| Occupation | writer |
Hall Jackson Kelley (February 24, 1790 – January 20, 1874) was an American settler and writer known for his strong advocacy for settlement by the United States of the Oregon Country in the 1820s and 1830s. A native of Maine, he was a school teacher and longtime resident of Massachusetts before journeying to what later became the Oregon Territory.
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Hall Kelley was born in Orono, Maine, on February 24, 1790.[1] He left school and began teaching in Hallowell, Maine, at the age of 16.[1] He graduated from Middlebury in Vermont in 1814 with a A.M. degree, and then graduated from Harvard College in 1820.[1] Kelley also 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.
As early as 1815, Kelley became interested in U.S. settlement of the area west of the Rocky Mountains after reading about the Lewis & Clark Expedition and the expedition by Wilson Price Hunt.[1][2] Towards these efforts he attempted to organize a group travel overland to that region in 1828, but the expedition was unable to equip itself.[2] He followed that effort with a failed attempt to colonize the Puget Sound area with an ocean based expedition.[2] Also in 1828, he persuaded the Massachusetts Legislature to charter a society to promote U.S. settlement along the Columbia River.[2] At the time, the Oregon Country was under joint administration of the U.S. and Great Britain 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.[2] This included a memorial to the United States Congress on February 11, 1828, that laid out plans for a city where the Columbia River meets the Willamette River (present day Portland, Oregon) and to name Mount Jefferson and Mount Adams.[3] 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. He also espoused a theory as to the origin of the name Oregon, claiming it came from the Orjon River in Chinese Tartary.[2]
In 1831 he sought to undertake an expedition to the west with Nathaniel Jarvis 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, traveling 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 traveled 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:
Kelley and the party arrived at the Columbia River on October 27, 1834.[3] 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. After recovering from his illness, McLoughlin gave Kelley passage to Hawaii in 1835, and from there he sailed home to Boston.[3]
Kelley continued to write newspaper articles and memoirs based on his trip encouraging settlement of Oregon.[3] 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." He also petitioned the body in 1851 in a failed attempt to be reimbursed for his expenses on the trip.[3]
He spent his later years in Three Rivers, Massachusetts.[3] 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. Hall Jackson Kelley died in Massachusetts on January 20, 1874, at the age of 83,[3] and was buried in Palmer.[1]
Kelley Point and Kelley Point Park, at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers in Portland, Oregon, are named for him. During the early 1830s Kelley led a campaign to rename the Cascade Range to the "Presidents Range", with each major 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 Mount Hood by about 40 miles (64 km), east of Mt. St. Helens. By 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.