From 1906: Fenton

Jason Lee's first wife, Pittman, was a woman confident in her own purpose. Like many missionaries of every age, she was convinced that devotion to the field God calls one to is the only and most fullfilling place (since a spouse would be engaged in the same consuming ministry) where one might possibly enter into marriage.

She left for Oregon with a small second wave of missionaries sent in 1836 to aid Jason Lee in Salem. Did she possibly become aware even as she left, that by engaging into that work he began, she would also engage her life with his?

From "Jason Lee's Prophetic Vision," the eulogy of Hon. W. D. Fenton[1]:

And here I may be permitted to pay a word of tribute to the woman who gave her life as a sacrifice to the work of Jason Lee. By the courtesy of Miss Anna Pittman, a niece of Anna Maria Pittman, the first wife of Jason Lee, I have been permitted to read several autograph letters written by Mrs. Lee before she was married and while she was preparing to come to Oregon. In her last letter of date June 9, 1836, written from New York to her brother, George W. Pittman..., she says:

I have taken my pen in hand to address you for the last time. The time is drawing nigh when I must bid a long farewell to all I love. I quit the scene of my youth, the land of my birth, and in a far and distant land among strangers I expect to dwell. Soon the rolling billows of the tempestuous ocean, and the towering mountain's rugged steep, will intervene between us, and perhaps we see each other's faces no more. As the hour approaches for my departure, I still remain firm and undaunted; I have nothing to fear, God has promised to be with me even to the end of the world. Dear brother, farewell, may Heaven bless you, and oh remember your sister who goes not to seek the honours and pleasures of the world, but lays her life a willing sacrifice upon the altar of God.

This letter written in a bold and firm hand and signed Anna Maria Pittman breathes the spirit of the martyr. In a postscript to the letter she says:

In the ship Hamilton we leave Boston the 1st of July. The mission family will be in this city the 20th of June when a farewell missionary meeting will be held. We will leave sometime that week. The number is nine, five are females, three are married.

She came and paid the sacrifice with her life. She was married to Jason Lee on the 16th day of July, 1837, not far from where Salem now stands. She died on the 26th of June, 1838, and is buried in the old mission cemetery. In that sacred spot where we are about to re-inter all that is mortal of Jason Lee lies buried the wife of his youth and the infant son for whose birth her life was a sacrifice, the first white child born in the state of Oregon, the first white woman married, and as Mr. Gill has so well said, "The first to die in the Oregon Country." Upon her tombstone you will read today at Mission Cemetery, Salem, these words: "Beneath this sod, the first ever broken in Oregon for the reception of white mother and child, lie the remains of Anna Maria Pittman Lee." This man and this woman together will sleep at last. The work which they did has outlived them. She in her sphere, and he in his performed well their part. Jason Lee was by birth, education and training a devout enthusiast and loyal patriot and the prophet of a new state. His life illustrates again the truth of the statement that to achieve success there must be a single purpose, and energies must not be wasted or dissipated in attempting to do well more than one thing.

There is always room for a man of force and he makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers and the best heads among these take the best places. A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds.

This photo is from the centennial celebration in Salem, Oregon, in July, nineteen-hundred and forty. Oliver Huston portrays Reverend Jason Lee and Mrs. O. K. Paulus portrays his wife, Anna Maria Pittman. Source: Salem, Oregon Public Library Historic Photograph Collections

1. Lee, Jason. "Memorial Services at Re-internment of Remains of Rev. Jason Lee." Salem: Salem Public Library, 1906; pp.16-17.

Religion and Politics

He was relieved of his post by the Methodist church because of his involvement in politics. In this and the last post we can begin to construct an understanding of the double-mindedness Jason Lee held shortly after starting a mission in Oregon among the Natives.

According to W. D. Fenton, President of the Oregon Historical Society, Lee held the one mission officially and the other in secret:

While his first and dominating purpose was the work of the mission, he saw at once the possibilities of government and its close relation to the cause in which he was ostensibly and directly engaged. He prepared a petition and forwarded the same to Congress, and Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, requested further information from him. Lee had returned to New England, and on January 17, 1839, wrote from Middletown, Conn., that there were in Oregon, belonging to the Methodist mission, 25 persons of all ages and both sexes who would shortly be reinforced by 45 others, making 70. ....

The memorial drawn up before Lee left Oregon was presented to the Senate by Linn of Missouri, on January 28, 1839, and on December 11, 1838, Linn, as you will recall, had introduced a bill in the Senate for the occupation of the Columbia, or Oregon River, and to organize a territory north of 42 degrees and west of the Rocky Mountains to be called Oregon Territory. This measure also provided for the establishment of a port of entry, and the extension of the revenue laws of the United States over the country. Senator Linn followed this formal action on his part by a speech on the 22nd of February, 1839, supporting a bill to provide for the protection of of citizens of the United States then in the Territory of Oregon or trading on the Columbia River. It is a matter of history that Jason Lee was the unseen hand behind this first active effort at Washington, and he was regarded in a special sense as the non-commissioned representative of the Government of the United States.

At this time an appropriation of considerable money from the secret service fund of the United States was made for the charter of the ship Lausanne. This was known only to Jason Lee, and was not revealed or disclosed until the boundary question was settled between the United States and Great Britain by the Ashburton treaty of June 15, 1846. [1]

He died retaining this secret to his death, which only history and time revealed.

Sixty-one years passed and the recount of his alleged infidelity to the Christian mission did not keep by those who spoke of him. He was seen instead as a hero for both purposes. How would we think of this kind of missionary by today's standards?


1. Lee, Jason. "Memorial Services at Re-internment of Remains of Rev. Jason Lee." Salem: Salem Public Library, 1906; pg. 12.

From 1906: Moreland

The eulogy of Hon. J.C. Moreland[1]:

In accordance with the directions of the Oregon Pioneer Society expressed at its meeting a year ago, we have met here in this city that he founded to pay tribute to the memory of Oregon's first and greatest American pioneer, Jason Lee. He came solely as a missionary to the Indians. He soon saw the possibilities and the vast resources and the great value of this country. He was a strong patriot, ardently attached to the flag of the nation which his father had fought so long to free from allegiance to the British crown.

He soon saw that when the final settlement of the ownership of this country between this nation and Great Britain then held under treaty of joint occupation should come, that ownership would largely be determined by the citizenship of its settlers.

The work that he did to colonize the country with American citizens under the trying difficulties of the situation proved of incalculable value. In arousing the authorities in Washington to the value of the Oregon country his work and the information that he gave contributed in a large measure to the final happy result.

Jason Lee was a remarkable man -- of great determination and wonderful foresight, but like others of the great benefactors of his race, he was not understood in his time. Through ignorance of the situation, his church dismissed him from the control of its affairs here, most unjustly and cruelly. But he could safely trust his appeal to that unerring tribunal -- truth and time.

His vindication has come -- the church has acknowledged its mistake, and today his bones will be laid in final sepulture in the cemetery he selected 70 years ago, with all the honors that the church can bestow; and all people in this great Oregon country pay homage to his memory.

In the time that tried men's souls he was true and faithful and the impartial verdict of history will be that of all those who lie buried in this fair land 'none had greater glory though there be many dead and much glory.'

1. Lee, Jason. "Memorial Services at Re-internment of Remains of Rev. Jason Lee." Salem: Salem Public Library, 1906; pg. 9.

From 1906: Boise

Taken from the address "Earliest of the Pioneers"[1] given by the Hon. Reuben P. Boise:

"He died at his work for Oregon in another distant State and was buried there, far away from the fields of his labors, and now, when the members of this church, which he founded, who with grateful hearts revere his sacred memory, have returned his remains to this scene of his active life, we with reverent hands commit his ashes to final sepulture beneath the green sod of Oregon in the beautiful cemetery which bears his name, to rest beside his family and coworkers in the mission, where the spreading oak casts its grateful shade and the snow-capped mountains look down in wild and solemn grandeur."

Source: Salem (Oregon) Public Library Historic Photograph Collections

The above photograph is taken in the 1890s at 960 Broadway St., Salem. Reuben Boise is seen here with his second wife on the left and one of his daughters on the right. They stand in front of the former home of Jason Lee, the first house built in Salem. Several years after Jason Lee passed away the house became the homestead of a successful farm just north of modern downtown Salem. In 1870 Boise purchased it, but over time he sold the land into plots and divided it into subdivisions. He was still living there when he died in 1907. Reuben Boise was, among many achievements, one of the compilers of the first book of laws governing the territory of Oregon[2].


1. Lee, Jason. "Memorial Services at Re-internment of Remains of Rev. Jason Lee." Salem: Salem Public Library, 1906; pg. 38.

2. Judicial History of Oregon

Coming Home

All the missionaries who did not abandon Oregon were buried in Oregon. All, but one.

In 1906, Rev. Jason Lee was finally reunited with his family and fellow missionaries. The previous year, a Mrs. Smith French proposed the idea to move his remains from Canada to the Lee Mission Cemetery.[1]

A committee of six oversaw the task, one of which was Lee's son-in-law, Mr. Francis H. Grubbs. Grubbs had never known his father-in-law personally. What's more, his wife, Jason Lee's daughter, was only three years old when news was first sent that her father had died on the other side of the North American continent.

She never knew her father personally -- and had died a quarter of a century prior to his coming home.

From right to left: Jason Lee, Francis Grubbs, Lucy Lee Grubbs, and her mother Lucy Thompson Lee

Jason Lee's son-in-law and daughter

The day of his re-internment, June 15th, was impressive. On State St. at the Methodist Church Lee founded, there were services at ten, one, and eight o'clock; and the re-internment service itself was in the cemetery, at three-thirty.[1] There were 20 addresses in all given by prominent individuals from three states. A collection was put together by Grubbs of the day's words in the form of a book. In the beginning of the book he writes a short introduction, and then on page eight there is a beautifully-written article that claims no authorship. I assume it was also written by Grubbs. From that piece:

Echoes from the Past
...
The eulogies upon this occasion followed history closely; but the glamour of romance is over the simple facts of the life of this early missionary. Far and far away are the echoes from the endeavor of those times. They tell of the human experiences of a devoted band of men and women in a beautiful wilderness; of the vicissitudes of life and death as they come everywhere and to all; of the disappointments that belong to the common lot wherever that lot is cast and of the triumph of faith and hope and love over all obstacles.

1. Lee, Jason. "Memorial Services at Re-internment of Remains of Rev. Jason Lee." Salem: Salem Public Library, 1906; pg. 8.

The way it used to be

In the first photograph you can see the original grave markers for Rev. Jason Lee and his first wife, Anna Maria Pittman. Its date is unknown, with Lee's in the foreground and Pittman's off to the right.

This photograph of Lee's marker (above) was taken April 26, 1940. Below is a photograph of Pittman's, and its date is also unknown.

(Source: Salem (Oregon) Public Library Historic Photograph Collections)

In 1974, vandals destroyed these stones, and they were replaced with flat-to-the-ground markers.

Lee's and Pittman's, as they are today:



Both epitaphs were simplified when they were replaced. Perhaps the customary Christian invocations had become obsolete in one-hundred and thirty years?

The original of Jason Lee's epitaph read:

SACRED, To the memory of the REV JASON LEE, An itinerant minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, member of the New England Conference, and the first missionary to the Indians beyond the Rocky Mountains. He was born in Stanstead, L. C., June 27, 1803, CONVERTED in 1826 under the labors of the Wesleyan Methodists, preaching in Stanstead and the adjoining towns till 1833, when he was called to engage in the OREGON MISSION. To this GODLIKE ENTERPRISE he devoted all his talents, in labors abundant he laid all on the missionary altar, counting not his life dear that the Red-men might be saved. In this work, he crossed the Rocky Mountains first in 1834, and again in 1838. July 16th, 1837, he married Anna Maria Pittman of New York, who died in Oregon June 26th, 1838. His second wife Lucy Thompson of Barre, Vt., died in Oregon March, 1842. He sustained these painful bereavements with great Christian fortitude and submission. In May, 1844, he returned a second time to the States, and in August impaired health compelled him to desist from his labors and find an asylum among kind relatives in his native town where he died in peace, March 12, 1845. Aged: 41 years, 3 months, and 18 days. Job XIV, 14 "If a man die shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time willI wait till my change come." Job XIX, 25 "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand in the latter day upon the earth." Job XIV, 15 "Thou shalt call and I will answer; thou wilt have a desire to the work of thy hands."

Anna Maria Pittman's read:

BENEATH THIS SOD the first ever broken in Oregon for the reception of a white mother and child, lie the remains of ANNA MARIA PITTMAN wife of REV. JASON LEE, with her infant son. She sailed from New York, July 1836, landed in Oregon June 1837, was married July 16, and died June 26, 1838, aged 35 years, in the full enjoyment of that love which constrained her to leave all for CHRIST and heathen souls. ----- Lo! we have left all, and followed thee; What shall we have therefore? Matt. 19, 27

The Cemetery

What better way to start his story than to begin at the place where it all ended: the Lee Mission Cemetery.


My first visit was at night, just a few days ago. In the dark I could tell that the memorial area for Salem's pioneers, called "Diamond Square," had become dilapitated. Many of the headstones were missing, broken, and faded, and the iron railings falling apart.

During the second visit in the daytime I was met by a latina man, who noticed me taking pictures of the sign at the entrance. He came out of his house which stands directly across from the entrance and declared himself the gatekeeper. He told me that he purchased his home from the original owner who had it constructed in 1941. At that time he was handed down the owner's volunteer job of gatekeeper. Every morning and every night, he and his predecessor have opened and shut the iron gates. The man then proceeded to ask my belief in the paranormal.



I said I was open to the idea. He said in all the times he has visited it, he has sensed and seen inexplicable things, things which made him a believer. What's more, many people over the years have come and knocked on his door for help when they too were too scared by something they experienced while on the grounds. He said, "One night a woman asked me to drive her home from her trip to pay respects to her deceased husband. I asked her, 'Where's your car?' and she said, 'It's in the cemetery.' She was much too scared to go back for it. And so I did." That was just one of many examples, he said. And the worst spot, he said, was the southeast corner.



I thanked him and said goodbye. His story cooled the exploratory jets in me, just a smigeon. It was an odd beginning to my investigations, which at this point will now turn to written record.

The next few posts will be covering the occasion of Lee's re-internment in June of 1906.

An Occasion to Write

While finishing undergraduate classes in 2000 for a B.S. in geography at Oregon State University, I took a class called "Reconstructing Historical Landscapes." The project I chose was to investigate the area of Lancaster Drive, on the east side of Salem. Because I assumed information that specific to be scarce, I chose to do an entire history, starting with the history of occupation of Native Americans.

My mind and senses quickly became immersed in imagining all that had passed away. I used the traditional methods of reconstruction: written histories and news publications, autobiographical journals and correspondence, comparison of aerial photography, historical maps and artists' rendering of the city; oral tradition (meaning interviews of those who remembered its former state), home and building architecture trends to date the age of a neighborhood, land-use and vegetation markers, and, archaeological findings.

The project was a success; I presented it in powerpoint to the class and got an A. But once it was finished and time passed, I saw the particular legacy of one man's work, everywhere around me. Reverend Jason Lee's hand was all over the city; "Jason Lee Manor" apartments were there along Center Street. Willamette University, just east of downtown Salem, had itself been founded by him. The Mission Mill Museum, in the heart of Salem, preserves the permanent structure of his residence in the Valley. An entire state park called "Willamette Mission" was memorializing the place of his first attempt to evangelize the Native Americans, ten miles north. Lee's Indian Manual Training School lies just north of where Lancaster Drive ends. Even the great and beautiful Methodist church on State Street, near the University, was the church Jason Lee founded (though the structure had been updated to its current glory after he passed away).

A picture I took after a storm the previous night; the engraved image of Rev. Jason Lee upon his tombstone

In September of 2007 Salem Riverfront Park hosted a mass-evangelism effort. Over a single weekend more than one hundred churches in the city and the outlying region came together to attract city-dwellers to come, hear, and receive the gospel of Jesus Christ. The name of this unparalleled event: Salem Riverfest. During that time in anticipation of the festival I pondered on the spiritual legacy begun by Jason Lee. I remembered not spending hardly any time at all reading the writings of Jason Lee and his first wife, Anna Maria Pittman, which at first glance seemed full of faith in God and with hearts bent solely on sharing the gospel with the Native Americans.

I knew then that it was time to go back and uncover the tale of their lives, notwithstanding their faith. How did they impact the Native community? Did the missionaries truly desire to serve God by coming here and engaging them? If they were indeed serving God by conscience, how can you and I in the 21st century come to grips with the tragedy of their impact? Their work, indeed--simply their intrusion in the Valley--quickened the spread of disease which took nearly all their lives. Jason Lee came for evangelism's sake. But before he left Independence, MO, he helped set U.S. law to encourage American settlement of the Oregon Territory. The story of invasion and persecution of Native Americans is one that has been told many times. So goes along with it the story of suffering caused by many peoples in history, sent out to foreign lands in the name of Christ, to save the world by their proclamation.

I do not expect the story of his mission to be entirely endearing. There may be some rather disappointing findings to report along the way. Nevertheless, the purpose is set for uncovering the whole tale, in all its variety.

Setting out on a Mission

What makes a good story?

How about one with faith in God, politics, romance, adventure and misfortune, and a collision of two cultures? This story has all of those, but, how much more a posessing story because it is also true? Jason Lee's mission to the Native Americans who lived south of the Columbia River began full of hope. Midstream he discovered himself making an unpopular evolution into colonizer, and, his story ended in a tragic and obscure death on the other side of the continent. Just a decade from the day he set out, two wives, two children and the deaths of countless Natives later, he must have thought on his death bed that what he had begun had failed. Quite the contrary; for he founded the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest: Salem. Your author's mission? To reconstruct the story of Reverend Jason Lee.