THOMAS FARNHAM

1804 (age 44)

For some years prior to 1839 he had been living at Peoria, engaged in the practise of law. During the fall of 1838 Rev. Jason Lee, superintendent of the Oregon Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, went East and on his way gave a number of lectures on Oregon. He had with him two Indian boys, one of whom became ill and was left at Peoria where Lee gave a lecture. In consequence of the new personal information about the Far West nineteen young men of that place and its vicinity decided to make a trip across the continent in the spring. Farnham was one of these, and was chosen captain. They outfitted at Independence, Missouri, and, on May 13, took the Santa Fe trail up that river to Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas. Most of them afterwards crossed over to Fort St. Vrain on the South Platte and wintered with a party of trappers on Green River. Some deserted to Santa Fe. Only four men went with Farnham, who pushed his way across the Colorado Mountains to Fort Hall, thence down the Snake River Valley to the Walla Walla, and Fort Vancouver. He visited the Whitman Mission, also the settlers on the Willamette, for whom he seems to have written a petition directed to the government of the United States requesting that Oregon be taken under its protection. It was signed by the American settlers generally and was carried back to the United States by Farnham who sailed to the Sandwich Islands on one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s vessels, thence securing transportation to Monterey in California. Fie claims to have been instrumental in liberating from prison certain Americans and Englishmen who had been implicated in a local revolution. Dropping down to San Bias in Mexico, he crossed to the Gulf of Mexico and ascended the Mississippi to Peoria during the summer of 1840. For a time thereafter he lived in New York, where he brought out his most important book: Travels In the Great Western Prairies, the Anahuac and Rocky Mountains and in the Oregon Territory (Poughkeepsie, 1841; London, 1843). He later settled near Alton, but finally removed to San Francisco, in 1846 or 1847, where he practised law during the brief remaining period of his life. Farnham’s Travels in the Great Western Prairies, which was reprinted by Thwaites in Early Western Travels, is valuable for its description but is unreliable so far as the author’s expression of personal opinions goes. FI. H. Bancroft, wdth some asperity, pronounced his other book on California, Life and Adventures in California (1846), “in all those parts resting on his own observations worthless trash, and in all that relates to the California people a tissue of falsehood”.

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Works

book

An 1839 wagon train journal: Travels in the great Western prairies, the Anahuac and Rocky Mountains, and in the Oregon Territory

Farnham'S Travels in the Great Western Prairies, Etc

(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

Travels in the Great Western Prairies: The Anahuac and Rocky Mountains, and in the Oregon Territory, Volumes I & II

(Thomas Jefferson Farnham (1804–1848) was an explorer and ...)

Mexico: its geography, its people, and its institutions: with a map, containing the result of the latest explorations of Fremont, Wilkes, and others

(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

The Early Days of California: Embracing What I Saw and Heard There, with Scenes in the Pacific

(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

Life, Adventure, and Travel in California (Abridged)

(Explorer Thomas Farnham's classic work on early Californi...)

History of the Oregon Territory

(HARD COVER; NO DUST JACKET AS ISSUED)

THOMAS JEFFERSON FARNHAM

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lawyer traveler writer

Background

Thomas Jefferson Farnham is commonly reported to have been born in Vermont, but the obituary printed in a San Francisco newspaper shortly after his death at that place says he was a native of the state of Maine.

Career

Achievements

He was a fluent and entertaining writer and, having accomplished a transcontinental journey by a route which in some portions was new, he made a contribution to Far West geography which is his sole title to recognition.