James Nesmith was born in what is now the Canadian province of New Brunswick (which was a British colony at the time) while his parents were on a visit from their home in Washington County, Maine, on July 23, 1820.[1] Of Scottish and Irish heritage, his father was William Morrison Nesmith and his mother the former Harriet Miller.[2] About 1828, James and his father moved to Claremont, New Hampshire, where he received a limited education.[1] In 1838, Nesmith moved to Ohio, followed by Iowa in 1842 where he waited to immigrate to Oregon Country.[2] Nesmith planned on traveling the Oregon Trail with Elijah White in 1842, but was late to arrive and instead left the next spring with Marcus Whitman after working as a carpenter in the interim at Fort Scott in Kansas.[2]
Oregon
The James Nesmith House near Rickreall
In 1843, Nesmith arrived in Oregon where he studied law and was admitted to the bar before being selected to serve as Supreme Judge of the Provisional Government of Oregon in 1845.[2][3] He finished his term in 1846 and moved to Polk County where he took a land claim, began farming, and married Pauline Goff on June 21, with whom he would have seven children.[2] In 1847, he was elected to the Provisional Legislature of Oregon from Polk County, and served briefly in the 1848 session before resigning.[2][4]
James W. Nesmith
Nesmith next served as a captain during the Cayuse War against Native Americans in Eastern Oregon from 1847 to 1848.[2] When news of the California Gold Rush reached the Willamette Valley in 1848, he traveled south to the gold fields, remaining until 1849.[2] In 1849, he returned to Polk County where he purchased a flour mill on Rickreall Creek near the county seat of Dallas.[2] There Nesmith engaged in agricultural pursuits in the community that was for a time named after him, as well as stock raising.[1]
As Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Nesmith was aggressive against American Indians on Oregon's south coast, and once stated to Commissioner of Indian Affairs George Manypenny that the extermination of the Chetco people "would occasion no regrets at this office."[5]
After returning to Rickreall, he served as road supervisor of Polk County in 1868.[1] Nesmith was elected to the Forty-third Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of his cousin, Joseph G. Wilson, and served from December 1, 1873, to March 3, 1875.[1] He did not seek re-nomination in 1874 to the Forty-fourth Congress and returned to farming in Polk County.[2]
Later years and family
In addition to his cousin Joseph Wilson, Nesmith's grandson, Clifton Nesmith McArthur, was also a United States Representative from Oregon.[2]Levi Ankeny, Senator for Washington, was his son-in-law.[3] James Willis Nesmith died in Rickreall, Oregon, on June 17, 1885, at the age of 64 and was interred in Polk County on the south bank of Rickreall Creek.[1]
^Whaley, Gray (2010). Oregon and the collapse of Illahee: U.S. empire and the transformation of an indigenous world, 1792-1859. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN9780807833674.
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