MEEKER, EZP, A: 1830-1928.
While Ezra Meeker was latest to publish and least significant as a writer among the Indianians who wrote books promoting the settlement of the West Coastal country, he alone is linked with the Twentieth century and he took far more than a casual part in the development of the West. As late as 1910 or 1915 he was still campaigning, at his own expense, through the Middle West and East for trans-continental highways, for historical markings for the old Oregon Trail and for the greater glory of the Pacific Northwest. Since he lived until Dec. 3, 1928, he saw the highways, the historical markings and the consciousness of the importance of the great Northwest for which he had campaigned as accomplished facts–a boon seldom granted to crusaders.
Ezra Meeker was born in Butler County, O., on Dec. 29, 1830. His father, Jacob Redding Meeker, was a farmer and miller by trade; his mother was the former Phoebe Baker. In 1837 the family moved to Covington, Ind., stayed there for a few years, spent some time in Waveland and finally settled on a farm they had purchased near Plainfield, on the National Road.
By this time Ezra was twelve or fourteen years old, had had the conventional amount of schooling (he is known to have attended subscription schools in both Covington and Waveland) and he now took over the operation of the farm while his father followed his trade nearby.
page: 215[View Page 215]According to his own account in The Ox-Team; or the Old Oregon Trail, he had contracted the prevailing western fever early but his inclination was toward the Northwest, rather than the gold regions, and, besides, he had another project on his mind– the courting of Eliza Jane Sumner, a neighbor. Eliza finally accepted him, agreed to go to Oregon and they were married in May, 1851. In October they set out in Ezra's wagon (he was extremely proud of it, and of the quality of his oxen) loaded with Eliza's dowry, for Iowa .
They wintered in Iowa, Eliza had her first baby in due time, and in the spring they joined an emigrant train forming at Council Bluffs. The Meekers' preparations were most careful–Meeker stresses the plans they made, and the comfortable traveling as compared with that of some of the less provident of the party– and on Oct. I they arrived at Portland.
According to W. J. G. in the Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XII:
"… Early the following year, in company with his brother Oliver, he journeyed to the north of the Columbia in search of a site for a home. He settled on McNeil's Island, in Puget Sound, later removing to the site of Puyallup, where he built the first cabin. For the greater part of fifty-three years he remained in this region as a farmer and hop-grower, though he spent four winters in London and made several prospecting trips to the Yukon.
"Well versed in the history of the Pacific Northwest and deeply impressed with the significance of the emigration movement, he resolved, in his seventy-fifth year, to devote the rest of his life to the commemorative marking of the Oregon Trail. On Jan. 29, 1906, with an ox-team drawing a covered wagon, he started from Puyallup, following such parts of the Trail as were still open, painting inscriptions on various landmarks and urging the citizens of the various settlements to set up inscribed stones and monuments. From the end of the Trail he continued on a tour of the East, everywhere attracting great attention. In 1910 he repeated this performance; in 1915 he traveled over a considerable part of the Trail in an automobile, and in 1924, at the age of ninety-three, he followed its course for 1300 miles in an airplane. Two years later he founded the Oregon Trail Memorial Association, Inc., with headquarters in New York City . From the Atlantic Coast, in the summer of 1928, he started in an automobile to follow the Trail again; but on the way he was taken ill, and after remaining for a time in a Detroit hospital, was conveyed to Seattle, where, two months later, he died.
"Below medium height, of somewhat slender build, his head and face framed in a luxuriant shock of hair and bushy beard, Meeker became, in his later years, a familiar figure throughout a great part of the country. He also became widely known as an author … During his last years he was engaged on a revision of his autobiographical writings, but the work was not finished. Despite his loose and disconnected style and his carelessness with dates and incidents, his work will remain valuable as a picture of the migration and settlement period …"
From W. J. G., Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XII; Meeker–The Ox-Team; or the Old Oregon Trail; and from Ms. Notes of Elizabeth May Banta.
- Washington Territory West of the Cascade Mountains.
Olympia, Wash., 1870.
- Pioneer Reminiscences of Puget Sound.
Seattle, Wash., 1905.
- The Ox-Team; or the Old Oregon Trail, 1852-1896.
Indianapolis, 1906.
(Reprinted at other places and on other dates.)
- Ventures and Adventures of Ezra Meeker, or Sixty Years of
Frontier Life. Seattle, Wash., 1909.
- Personal Experiences on the Oregon Trail Sixty Years
Ago. St. Louis, 1912.
(Reissue of the Ox-Team.)
- Story of the Lost Trail to Oregon. Seattle,
Wash., 1915.
- The Busy Life of Eighty-Five Years of Ezra Meeker; Ventures
and Adventures, Sixty-Three Years of Pioneer Life in the Old Oregon Country;
an Account of the Author's Trip Across the Plains with an Ox-eam,
1852; Return Trip, 1906-7; His Cruise on Puget Sound, 1853; Trip Through the
Natchess Pass, 1854; Over the Chilcoot Pass, Flat-Boating on the Yukon,
1898. Seattle, 1916.
(A revision of Ventures and Adventures.)
- Seventy Years of Progress in Washington.
Seattle, 1921.
- Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail.
Yonkers-on-Hudson, N. Y., 1922. (A revision of The Ox-Team.)
- Kate Mulhall, a Romance of the Oregon Trail; Drawings by
Margaret Landers Sanford, Rudolf A. Kausch and Oscar W. Lyons, Map of the
Oregon Trail and Photographs. New York, 1926.
