And so time passed, passed as it does for one who is fifteen, or thereabout, without responsibility and without care.

     Father had prospered beyond most of his neighbors and Mother was contented and happy.  We were living in our new house on the bluff.  It was big, built of sawed lumber and painted white with green trimmings.  Our veranda overlooked a lower level where the big farm spread out before us.  Beyond that, lay the river with its cottonwoods and its willows and its beauty.  Only Jasper and I were at home then.  The others had all married and had gone to make homes of their own.

     About this time a couple of scotch Mechanics came to our house.  Father and son they were.  In early times mechanics were not allowed to leave Great Britain.  They hoped to keep their industries to themselves.  Interests in Boston were to start a "Glass house" (factory) but there was no one in America who understood it.  In the early part of the last century a man was sent to Scotland to hire men who understood the glass business, and smuggle them to America.  It was rather a delicate piece of business for a price was set upon the hand of any man, who tried to hire them.

     Rather generous inducements were held out and nine or ten mechanics succeeded in reaching America and a glass house was established in Boston.  I think about 1820.  One of these mechanics was a Scotsman by the name of James Kirkwood.  His Family joined him later and he was there for a number of years, but finally his wife died and he and three of his sons came west.

     They were with the Emigration of 1846.  When they reached Fort Hall, they separated and Joseph, the eldest son, came to Oregon and married my cousin, Lucy Ann.  The Father and two of his sons went on into California.  They arrived there just in time to join John C. Fremont's army and serve under him through the Mexican War.

     When peace had been declared, they went to Sonoma and put up a small foundry and machine shop.  Their first castings were a set of lathe heads cast from copper cannon balls.  They were very good castings too, I know that for a fact, for they are still in use.  They were at Sonoma when word came that Marshall had discovered gold.  They left the fire smouldering in the furnace and went at once.

     While they were in the mines, they met a man, who said: "My brother-in-law's name is Kirkwood."  They were interested for they had heard nothing of Joseph since they had separated at Fort Hall.  A few questions and they knew that the stranger was talking about the son and brother, whom they had lost.  That was how they happened to find him again.  The West was small in those days.

     As soon as the old Scotsman found that Joseph was in Oregon, nothing would do but they must go at once.  He was a mechanic and not a gold-digger anyway.  So he and one son took passage on an old sailing vessel for the Colombia River.  The youngest son refused to leave the mines, so they left him there.  It was the last that they ever saw or heard of him, though they tried for years to find some trace of him.  His name was Henry.

     The old sailing vessel upon which they took passage was wrecked in a fearful storm.  The rudder was torn away and to save themselves from going on the rocks near the mouth of the Colombia, the Captain cut away the mast.  The rigging held and the dragging mast helped swing them out to sea again.  Then they drifted, helpless, along the coast toward the North and were finally washed upon a sand beach on Vancouver Island, British Colombia.

     They hired an Indian to bring them up the Puget sound in a canoe.  Then they walked to the Willamette Valley.  The district that they came though is now the State of Washington.  At that time there ware almost no white settlements anywhere.  They saw but one white man on the entire journey.

     From the Falls they followed the river and finally reached the Ferry.  As Jasper was setting them over, they asked if he had heard of Joseph Kirkwood and where they could find him.  So they were brought to our house.

     The Father spoke such broad Scotch that we were "hard put" to understand a single word that he said.  The son was over six feet tall, with hair as black as a raven's wing and fine, direct, honest blue eyes, they stayed all night with us and Father took them in the morning to a bit of a log cabin on the high hill where Joseph and cousin Lucy Ann lived.  The young man's name was John.  He was looked upon with favor by most every mother and  father in our country, if they had marriageable daughters, for he was known to have Seven Thousand dollars worth of gold dust and besides that, he soon took up a donation land claim and built a house on it.  The daughters looked on him with favor because he was so very handsome.

     Our boys liked John because he was pleasant and quiet.  I think, perhaps, the main reason that I liked him was because he liked me.

     One cold, stormy day in 1852, the day after Christmas it was, I put on my green Calico dress and John and I were married and went to live in the little house between the two big oaks on the prairie.

     That same day Jasper was married to Mary Ring.  That was the reason that I was married in a calico dress.  I had other dresses that Father had brought from California, very nice ones they were two, but Mary Ring had only a simple little calico, so I wore mine and John said it was the most beautiful dress that he had ever seen.

     I was only a child, not quite fifteen and John was twenty-four.  For sixty-two years we lived on the same farm where we began our married life.

     A wee chap came to me a year or so ago and looked at me where I sat in my chair, looked at me for a long time.  I thought perhaps he had come on some errand and asked.  "No", he said, "I just came to look at you.  Teacher told us that we must remember that we had seen you for you were the last of the very first people, who came to Oregon."

     That was not quite correct.  There were trappers and traders and missionaries and even a few pioneers, who came before 1843, but history tells you all that.  Neither was I at that time, quite the last.

     Mr. Hembree was living then.  Like myself, he was very old.  I had seen him a few days before, when I had gone to town.  "He tottered as he walked with his cane."  I noticed there were crumbs on his vest.  They worried me.  Nancy would have brushed them off.  His wife was Nancy Beagle, Nancy and I were playmates on the plains and friends through the many years, she had not been gone a great while, but Mr. Hembree had crumbs on his waistcoat.  He is gone, with all the rest.  I seem to be "The last leaf on the tree".

     And so I sit here and tell these stories.  I have seen them, each to his own place, the thousand pioneers that I came with, Father, Mother, my sisters, the boys and all the rest.  I am quite alone.  For me the trail of the setting sun has proven a one way road, for I have lived my life almost within sound of the surf.  I am an old, old woman.

Thank you very kindly.
Good Night [I hope you have a sound card!]