Later Life in The Oregon Territory
After resigning from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1846, McLoughlin moved his family back south to Oregon City in the Willamette Valley. The Oregon Treaty had been ratified by that time, and the region, now known as the Oregon Territory, was part of the United States. The valley was the destination of choice for settlers streaming in over the Oregon Trail. At his Oregon City store he sold food and farming tools to settlers. In 1847, McLoughlin was given the Knighthood of St. Gregory, bestowed on him by Pope Gregory XVI. He became a U.S. citizen in 1849. McLoughlin's opponents succeeded in inserting a clause forfeiting his land claim in the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 by Samuel R. Thurston. Although it was never enforced, it embittered the elderly McLoughlin. He served as mayor of Oregon City in 1851, winning 44 of 66 votes. He died of natural causes in 1857. His grave is now located beside his home overlooking downtown Oregon City.
Read more about this topic: John McLoughlin
Famous quotes containing the words life, oregon and/or territory:
“she bit the towel and called on God
and I saw her life stretch out . . .
I saw her torn in childbirth,
and I saw her, at that moment,
in her own death and I knew that she
knew.”
—Anne Sexton (19281974)
“When Paul Bunyans loggers roofed an Oregon bunkhouse with shakes, fog was so thick that they shingled forty feet into space before discovering they had passed the last rafter.”
—State of Oregon, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“We found ourselves always torn between the mothers in our heads and the women we needed to become simply to stay alive.With one foot in the past and another in the future, we hobbled through first love, motherhood, marriage, divorce, careers, menopause, widowhoodnever knowing what or who we were supposed to be, staking out new emotional territory at every turnlike pioneers.”
—Erica Jong (20th century)