Ezra Meeker

Ezra Meeker Manning ( born December 29, 1830 in Butler County ( Ohio), † December 3, 1928 in Seattle ) was an American pioneer, who traveled as a young man on the Oregon Trail from Iowa to the Pacific, based in Washington and grew hops. He has been called " hop king" ( " Hop King of the World") known and was the first mayor of Puyallup (Washington). He saw through monuments and books that the Oregon Trail, he often traveled in old age, was memorable.

Life

Meeker was the son of the miller and farmer Jacob Meeker and his wife Phoebe. The family moved to Indiana when he was a boy. In 1851 he married Eliza Jane Sumner. The following year, the couple traveled to the first son of the Oregon Territory, which could be colonized country. They stopped briefly near Portland and then traveled northwards to the region on Puget Sound in Washington, where they settled in 1862 and cultivated from 1865 hops. The cultivation was new in the American West, the soil and the temperate climate proved to be suitable. 1877 Meeker founded by his estate a city, which he called Puyallup after a Native American word for " bountiful people ", and became its postmaster, and later their first mayor. He donated land and money available for the construction of parks, a theater and a hotel. In 1880 he wrote his first book, Hop Culture in the United States ( " hop-growing in the United States " ), and was then known as Hop King of the World ( "Hop King of the World "). He became the richest man in the area and built a large house in 1887. 1891 destroyed hop aphids his harvest, and thus a large part of its assets. He tried different things, including food trade to the Klondike hoping to benefit from the Klondike Gold Rush.

Meeker feared that the historical significance of the Oregon Trail would forget plowed up by farmers and displaced from the streets and buildings growing settlements. He was determined to keep the memory of historic monuments of granite at way stations. From 1906 to 1908 he repeated this purpose the journey of his youth in bullock carts. He used equipment as at the time of his first journey, striving to arouse attention and public interest for his concern in the population and in the press. Since there was no functional wagon in Puyallup, he had to assemble one from parts of three cars. Two oxen pulled the wagon 13,000 km wide, one all the way, while the other broke down on the way and had to be replaced. On 20 February 1906 he was in Tenino, Washington, built the first stone monument. He had a helper and cook who accompanied him three years on the. On the way he led his chariots and his animals before, selling postcards and books and gave lectures. His trek led to New York. In Washington, DC, he met Theodore Roosevelt in 1907.

In the last two decades of his life, he traveled several times on the trail, from 1910 to 1912 in a covered wagon in 1924 with the aircraft. He wrote several books on the subject. After his death at the age of 97 years his concerns of groups such as the Oregon -California Trails Association was continued.

Publications

• Hop Culture in the United States ( 1880)
• Pioneer Reminiscences of Puget Sound, the Tragedy of Leschi (1905 )
• Ox Team; or, The Old Oregon Trail, 1852-1906 (1906 )
• Ventures and Adventures of Ezra Meeker (1908 )
• Uncle Ezra 's Pioneer Short Stories for Children (undated, ca 1915)
• The Busy Life of Eighty -Five Years of Ezra Meeker (1915 )
• Seventy Years of Progress in Washington ( 1921)
• Ox- Team Days on the Oregon Trail ( 1922)
• Kate Mulhall, a Romance of the Oregon Trail ( 1926)

Bibliography

• David Dary: The Oregon Trail: An American Saga. Alfred A. Knopf, New York City 2004, ISBN 978-0-375-41399-5.
• Howard R. Driggs, Ezra Meeker: Covered Wagon Centennial and Ox- Team Days, Oregon Trail Memorial, The World Book Company, Yonkers, NY, 1932.