(OREGON) Thing Joseph Letter from an early explorer heading

Sale 2253 - Lot 234

Price Realized: $ 1,080

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500

"ALL MOST MADE UP MY MIND TO TURN BACK A CROST THE MOUNTAINS." (OREGON.) Thing, Joseph. Letter from an early explorer heading home from Fort William. Autograph Letter Signed to William Tucker & Sons, merchants of Boston. One page, 10 x 8 inches; two short tears without loss of text; docketing on verso. Mouth of the Columbia River, 12 February 1838

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Joseph Thing had been second in command on Nathaniel J. Wyeth's overland fur-trading expedition from Boston to the Pacific Coast, which founded Fort William in modern-day Portland in 1834. Thing had apparently secured a berth home on the Hudson Bay Company's ship Nereide, but its captain David Home and four of his men drowned in the Columbia, delaying his departure. This letter announces Thing's imminent departure under new captain William Brotchie: "I am detained here mutch longer then it was intended by the agent of the H.B. Co. or my wishes in consequence of the deth of Capt Home who commanded this ship and was drown on the 26 of last month. . . . This has been a tardy trip, one delay after an other. It seams as if we shall never git clear of this port. I am quite out of patients & all most made up my mind to turn back a crost the mountains."