Thomas Jefferson Shadden
A rare, early photograph of my great great great, great grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Shadden, who is buried on the family farm in Canby, Oregon, just outside Portland.
When I delved into the world of genealogy (which gets very complex very quickly, when you learn just how many sets of grandparents you have not too many generations ago), I found that I must have many long, lost cousins who can also trace their heritage back to one of the the most prominent early white settlers in the western United States. A few things have been written about him. I had never heard of him my whole life and didn't know he existed until November of 2002 when one of those long, lost cousins, Nathan Haines--a devoted genealogist--contacted me and informed me of my heritage.
It's hard to imagine what it must have been like for somebody to bring their wife and kids out west to California in 1842, when the west was full of danger--Indians, Mexicans in contest with the US Government, wild animals, and just the hardship of travel. What kind of man must he have been? A malcontent who needed to get away from civilization? An adventurer? A missionary? An entrepeneur out to make his fortune? A crazy man who should have been locked up?
At any rate, a lot has been written about him. Here is one older version of his biography.