As to the motive for coming to the Willamette Valley at that early date I hardly know how to answer, unless it was love of adventure, as the question of sovereignty had not been settled between the United States and England when I came here. True, the United States senate had been discussing the matter of giving each settler in Oregon six hundred and forty acres of land, and we rather expected that would be done, but we had no real assurance that such would be the case.
Among the early county officers of Linn County, after its organization under the Territorial Government, quite a number were living on the Calapooia, Alexander Kirk being elected county judge, N. D. Jack assessor, John A. Dunlap representative, and William McCaw clerk in 1849, and in 1850 several men who were elected to county officers went to the mines and failed to qualify, among them the county treasurer, and at a special election I was elected to that office and received and disbursed the first taxes ever collected in Linn County.
In 1851 I was elected assessor and was the second man to assess the county. In 1856 I served as second lieutenant in the Rogue-river war. In 1862 was elected sheriff for two years.
Yours truly,
T. A. RIGGS.
DOCUMENTS.
A letter of M. M. McCarver to Hon. A. C. Dodge, Delegate to Congress from Iowa, written immediately on the arrival of the immigration of 1843.
[Explanation: This document was copied from the Ohio Statesman, which had taken it from the Iowa Gazette, where it was originally printed.]
(Reprinted from the Ohio Statesman of September 11, 1844.)