Samuel Thurston

Samuel Royal Thurston ( born April 17, 1815 in Monmouth, Kennebec County, Maine; † April 6, 1851 at sea ) was an American politician. Between 1849 and 1851 he represented the Oregon Territory as a delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Early years

Samuel Thurston attended the Wesleyan Seminary at Readfield and then Dartmouth College in Hanover (New Hampshire). Then he studied until 1843 at Bowdoin College in Brunswick. After a subsequent law degree in 1844 and its recent approval as a lawyer, he began to work in his new job in the same year in Brunswick. In 1845 Thurston moved to Burlington, where he again worked as a lawyer and newspaper Iowa Gazette published.

Political career in Oregon

In 1847, he came over the Oregon Trail to Oregon. He settled first in Hillsboro as a lawyer down. In 1849 he moved to Oregon City. Thurston was a member of the Democratic Party. After the founding of the Oregon Territory in August 1848, he was elected the first delegates of this area in the U.S. House of Representatives. In Washington, he completed between 4 March 1949 and 3 March 1851, a legislature; as a delegate however, he had no vote in Congress. He successfully resisted the land claims of the Hudson's Bay Company, which had a base at Fort Vancouver, and supported in 1850 the passage of the Donation Land Claim Act, received about 2.6 square kilometers of land by every family in Oregon when they're ready was to remain there permanently settle and work the land for at least four years. But Thurston was also a racist. He demanded to prohibit the migration of African Americans to Oregon.

Further CV

Thurston's tenure in Congress ended on March 3, 1851. On the way home he fell ill on board the ship "California" and died. He was first brought into Acapulco on land and temporarily buried there. Later, his body was transferred to Salem and finally buried there.