entrepreneur explorer inventor
Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth was born on January 29, 1802, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Jacob Wyeth and Elizabeth Jarvis, and a nephew of John Wyeth. His father, a descendant of Nicholas Wyeth, who settled in Cambridge in 1645, represented a prominent colonial family, was a graduate of Harvard and owner of Fresh Pond Hotel.
He first began working as working as an ice harvester, during which time, he invented a number of tools that increased productivity. A few years later, another Massachusetts man began to tout the benefits of Oregon country and Wyeth was convinced that he could become wealthy in the Oregon fur industry. In 1831, Hall Jackson Kelley sought to undertake an expedition to the west with Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth, assembling a party of several hundred men.
However, when numerous delays forced the abandonment of the plan, Wyeth went West without Kelley. He and several other men boarded a ship in March of 1832, bound for Brownsville, Texas. From there, they made their way to Missouri and proceeded along what would later become known as the Oregon Trail. In the summer, they made their way to the mountain man rendezvous, where Wyeth got caught up in the Battle of Pierre’s Hole, Idaho. The party arrived at Fort Vancouver, Washington in October. After spending several months there, he returned to the east and in 1834, outfitted a second expedition with plans for establishing fur-trading posts, a salmon fishery, a colony, and other developments. On their journey west, he and others Fort Hall, Idaho in July, 1834, and later built Fort William in present-day Washington. Trapping and trading for the next two years, he finally had to admit that the stiff competition of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which dominated the northwest, was too much for him to be profitable. Discouraged, he returned to the East in 1836. Although his expeditions westward failed, his business dealings in Massachusetts did very well. Though he never returned to the west, he continued to support the occupation of Oregon by American settlers. Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth died on August 31, 1856.
(Excerpt from Indian Tribes of the South Pass of the Rocky...)
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Nathaniel J. Wyeth was a man of action, gifted with tremendous energy, determination and leadership.
On January 29, 1824, Nathaniel J. Wyeth married his cousin, Elizabeth Jarvis Stone.
Hall Jackson Kelley was an American settler and writer from New England, known for his strong advocacy for settlement by the United States of the Oregon Country in the 1820s and 1830s.
