A. T. Smith Diary transcript 1846

Title

Description

A transcription of a 1846 diary in which Alvin Thompson Smith writes about topics such as his daily life living as a settler on the increasingly populated Tualatin Plains; his daily farm chores; his woodwork projects, including building barns for friends and coffins for deceased settlers in the area; his work on local roads and at the mill his religious life; his trips to Willamette Falls, the Cowlets River Clatsop, Cape Lookout, the Hudson's Bay Company, and Vancouver; his interactions with P. B. Littlejohn, a Mr. Geiger, a Mr. New Banks, a Mr. Holmans, Joseph Gale and his wife Eliza, John Flets, I. F. Pomeroy, a Mr. Owensby, John Waymire, a Mr. Fuller, Charles McKay, a Mr. Thompson, a Mr. Dixon, Harvey L. Clark (or Clarke), Lewis C. Cooper, a Mr. Bozorth, Alexander McKay, a Mr. Hampton, a Mr. Sweets, a Mr. Moore, a Mr. Mills, a Mr. Owensbys, a Mr. Wilson, a Mr. Walker, Anderson Smith, Henry and Eliza Spalding at an "Indian village," a Mr. Cranks, a Mr. Stephens, David Flet, David Carles, Caleb A. Smith, W. H. Bennett, Orus Brown, Joshua Dixon, a Mr. Baldras, a Mr. Holmans, a Mr. Naylor, an Emericks Tucker, a Mr. Knighton and a Mr. Catchin; attending meetings at the Oregon Institute (the first American school built in the Willamette Valley, which in turn became Willamette University); attending temperence meetings; and Probate Court.

Born in Connecticut in 1802, Alvin Thompson Smith, along with his wife Abigail Raymond, was amongst the first Euro-Americans to settle in the area on the Tualatin Plains that became Forest Grove, Oregon in the early 1840s. In his life, Smith was a missionary, a postmaster, a notable participant in the Champoeg Meetings, the builder of a 1856 house in Forest Grove that is today recognized by the National Register of Historic Places as the Alvin T. Smith House, and a contributor to an orphanage that became Tualatin Academy and later developed into Pacific University. Smith died in 1888 at the age of 85. This is one part of a collection of transcriptions of Alvin T. Smith's diaries from the years 1840-1853. The transcriptions, which are likely not identical to the diaries themselves and perhaps summarize some entries, were likely typewritten in the 1970s. The diaries are notable for their near daily entries. The original diaries are held by the Oregon Historical Society (Mss 8).