Background
Joseph Lafayette "Joe" Meek was born on February 9, 1810 in Washington County, Virginia. In after years he spoke of his father as a slaveholding planter and claimed relationship to President Polk.
law enforcement official politician trapper
Joseph Lafayette "Joe" Meek was born on February 9, 1810 in Washington County, Virginia. In after years he spoke of his father as a slaveholding planter and claimed relationship to President Polk.
As a boy Meek was headstrong and lazy, refusing either to work or to learn, and at sixteen he could not read; but he had an inexhaustible fund of animal spirits, and he loved field sports.
At eighteen, a strong and athletic youth, Meek started for the West. He reached St. Louis in the fall, and on March 17, 1829, set out with W. L. Sublette's expedition for the mountains. For eleven years, at various times in company with Bridger, Carson, Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette, and other noted mountain men, he was employed as a trapper, and in his many wanderings, he traversed almost every part of the West. In 1840 he and his friend Robert Newell convinced that the trapping era was over, journeyed to Oregon and settled as farmers on the Tualatin plains on the Willamette, where later the town of Hillsboro grew up. On the completion of the provisional government, July 5, he was made sheriff of the territory, and in 1846 and again in 1847 elected to the legislature. After the Whitman massacre, he was elected a special messenger to Washington to ask for protection for the colony. Setting out on January 4, 1848, he reached Washington in May. Congress, on the last day of the session, August 14, passed the Oregon bill, and Polk on the same day appointed General Joseph Lane, governor, and Meek, United States marshal. One of the acts of his marshalship was the hanging of the five chiefs convicted of the Whitman murders. He lost his office when the Pierce administration came in, and though he served as a major in the Indian war of 1855-56 his remaining days were mostly spent as an indifferent farmer on his Hillsboro tract, where he died.
A pioneer involved in the fur trade before settling in the Tualatin Valley, Meek would play a prominent role at the Champoeg Meetings of 1843 where he was elected as a sheriff. Later he served in the Provisional Legislature of Oregon before being selected as the United States Marshal for the Oregon Territory.
Meek was an active spirit in the Americanization movement and a dominating influence in the Champoeg convention of May 2, 1843.
Meek was six feet two in height, well-formed, with a round, jovial, and well-bearded face and twinkling dark eyes. His voice was melodious and well modulated. As a story-teller, he had few equals, though in his speech he never overcame the backwoods dialect of his youth. He was a natural leader, and with a better education and something less in his make-up of the wag and the showman he might have attained high office. Though adventurous and brave to the degree of foolhardiness, he was best known as a wag and practical joker, whose bubbling humor never left him even in times of extreme peril.
Fond of notoriety, he had loudly announced himself on the way as "envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary from the Republic of Oregon to the Court of the United States, " and though "ragged, dirty and lousy" on his arrival, acted his role with a spectacular impressiveness. He was warmly welcomed and by popular voice was dubbed "Colonel" a title that ever afterward clung to him.
Meek was thrice married, each time to an Indian woman.
13 June 1774 - 1833
Died on 4 July 1821.
4 July 1807 - 8 January 1889
24 January 1804 - 1870
28 April 1800 - 9 October 1881
1821 - 5 March 1900
1838 - 12 December 1847
25 December 1852 - 18 July 1919
28 March 1850 - 17 March 1878
25 October 1845 - 22 December 1860
3 May 1844 - 16 October 1928
27 August 1861 - 23 July 1876
6 October 1855 - 24 October 1920
11 September 1847 - 31 July 1858
17 February 1860 - 30 June 1860
3 February 1842 - 13 May 1858
7 December 1838 - 13 May 1896
30 October 1857 - 19 February 1943
