Ezra Morgan Meeker was an American pioneer who traveled the Oregon Trail by ox-drawn wagon as a young man, migrating from Iowa to the Pacific Coast.
115 Facts About Ezra Meeker
2.
Ezra Meeker's family relocated to Indiana when he was a boy.
3.
Ezra Meeker married Eliza Jane Sumner in 1851; the following year the couple, with their newborn son and Ezra's brother, set out for the Oregon Territory, where land could be claimed and settled on.
4.
Ezra Meeker later tried his hand at a number of ventures, and made four largely unsuccessful trips to the Klondike, taking groceries and hoping to profit from the gold rush.
5.
Ezra Meeker became convinced that the Oregon Trail was being forgotten, and he determined to bring it publicity so it could be marked and monuments erected.
6.
Ezra Meeker's trek reached New York City, and in Washington, DC, he met President Theodore Roosevelt.
7.
On his return to Washington state, Ezra Meeker became ill again and died there on December 3,1928, at the age of 97.
8.
Ezra Meeker wrote several books; his work has continued through the activities of such groups as the Oregon-California Trails Association.
9.
Ezra Morgan Meeker was born in Butler County, Ohio, near Huntsville, on December 29,1830, to Jacob and Phoebe Meeker.
10.
Ezra Meeker was the fourth of the six children Jacob and Phoebe had while together, with older brothers John, Manning and Oliver, and a younger sister Hannah and brother Clark.
11.
Ezra Meeker had little formal education; he later estimated a total of six months.
12.
Ezra Meeker obtained work as printer's devil at the Indianapolis Journal, where his duties involved delivering the newspaper to subscribers, among them local pastor Henry Ward Beecher.
13.
Ezra Meeker married his childhood sweetheart, Eliza Jane Sumner, in May 1851.
14.
Ezra and Eliza Jane Meeker vacillated on the decision, and it was not until early April 1852, more than a month after the birth of their son Marion, that they decided to travel the Oregon Trail.
15.
Buck outfitted the wagon, Ezra Meeker selected the animals, and with his wife carefully prepared food supplies.
16.
The wagons of Ezra Meeker's grouping traveled together by informal agreement; there was no wagon master in overall charge.
17.
Ezra Meeker recounted that, as he stood on the far side of the Missouri, he felt as if he had left the United States.
18.
Disease was an ever-present risk; at the present site of Kearney, Nebraska, Oliver Ezra Meeker was stricken with illness.
19.
Ezra Meeker remembered meeting one wagon train, slowly moving east against the flow of traffic.
20.
Ezra Meeker found that the final stretch between Fort Boise and The Dalles was the most difficult.
21.
At The Dalles, where river passage was available to Portland, the Ezra Meeker party found a motley crowd of emigrants.
22.
Ezra Meeker had lost 20 pounds and possessed $2.75 in cash.
23.
Ezra Meeker considered his journey over the Oregon Trail to have been the making of him as a man.
24.
Ezra Meeker first made a claim in January 1853 about 40 miles downriver from Portland, on the current site of Kalama, Washington.
25.
Ezra Meeker did not build close to the water, which proved fortunate as there was a major flood on the Columbia soon after he claimed the land.
26.
Ezra Meeker decided to travel north with his brother to scout for lands to claim around the waterway.
27.
Ezra Meeker returned to a cabin in which they installed a glass window that looked over the water to Steilacoom, with a view of Mount Rainier.
28.
The Ezra Meeker claim was later the site of McNeil Island Corrections Center.
29.
Ezra Meeker quickly went to their aid, intending to guide them through the Naches Pass into the Puget Sound area.
30.
Ezra Meeker guided the survivors through the pass and to his claim on McNeil Island.
31.
Jacob Ezra Meeker saw only limited prospects on the island, and the family took claims near Tacoma, where they operated a general store in Steilacoom.
32.
On November 5,1855, Ezra Meeker claimed 325.21 acres of land called Swamp Place, near Fern Hill, southeast of Tacoma.
33.
Ezra Meeker began to improve the land, planting a garden and an orchard.
34.
Ezra Meeker had maintained good relations with the Native Americans, and did not fight in the conflict, though he accompanied one expedition to recover possessions captured by the Indians.
35.
Ezra Meeker sat on the jury in the first trial, which resulted in a hung jury, with Ezra Meeker and another man holding out for acquittal on the grounds that Leschi was a combatant in wartime.
36.
Ezra Meeker described the execution as wrongful, and in later years wrote of the incident.
37.
In 1895, Ezra Meeker chartered a special train to bring whites to Leschi's reburial on tribal land, and in 2004 the Washington State Senate passed a resolution that Leschi had been unjustly treated; a special historical tribunal made up of past and present justices of the Washington Supreme Court exonerated Leschi as both he and the man he was said to have killed were combatants.
38.
On January 5,1861, Oliver Ezra Meeker drowned while returning from a buying trip to San Francisco, when his ship, the Northerner, sank off the California coast.
39.
Ezra Meeker secured the squatter's claim of Jerry Stilly on land in the Puyallup Valley, and moved his wife and children there in 1862.
40.
John Ezra Meeker had come to Washington Territory by ship in 1859 and had settled in the Puyallup Valley.
41.
Ezra Meeker ran for the Washington Territorial Legislature in 1861, but was defeated.
42.
In 1869, Ezra Meeker ran for Pierce County Surveyor; he was defeated by James Gallagher, 138 votes to 116.
43.
Ezra Meeker was a friend of Jacob Meeker, and gave him the roots to grow.
44.
Ezra Meeker built one of the first hop-drying kilns in the valley.
45.
Ezra Meeker took ship for San Francisco, then journeyed east by the new transcontinental railroad, hoping to get the railroads to expand to his region.
46.
Ezra Meeker met with newspaper editor Horace Greeley and with railroad mogul Jay Cooke as part of his promotional blitz.
47.
In 1877, Ezra Meeker filed a plat for a townsite to surround his cabin.
48.
Ezra Meeker named the town Puyallup, using the local Indian words for generous people, according to Meeker.
49.
Ezra Meeker strove to improve life in the region, and donated land and money towards town buildings and parks, a theatre and a hotel while defraying the start-up costs of a wood products factory.
50.
In 1886, Ezra Meeker sought the Republican nomination for territorial delegate to Congress, but was defeated after many ballots at the party convention.
51.
Ezra Meeker became a supporter of women's suffrage, which was the subject of a long-running political battle in Washington Territory, a dispute which lasted well after statehood in 1889.
52.
Ezra Meeker was elected to a second, non-consecutive term for 1892.
53.
Ezra Meeker had advanced money to many growers, who were unable to repay him.
54.
Business after business in which Ezra Meeker had invested failed, such as the Puyallup Electric Light Company.
55.
Ezra Meeker was overextended, and lost much of his fortune, and eventually his lands to foreclosure.
56.
In 1896, gold was discovered both in Alaska and in Canada, and when Ezra Meeker returned from the United Kingdom, he found his sons, Marion and Fred, preparing to leave for Cook Inlet, Alaska.
57.
Nevertheless, the Ezra Meeker family saw the finds as a possible road to financial recovery, and founded a company to buy and sell mining claims, though they knew little about the trade.
58.
Ezra Meeker raised money to travel to New York to speak with his old contacts, where he received more promises than cash.
59.
Ezra Meeker returned to the Yukon twice more, in 1899 and 1900.
60.
Ezra Meeker did not live there after his wife's death in 1909, and the Osbornes sold the house in 1915.
61.
Ezra Meeker spent the years after the Klondike in Puyallup, where he wrote and served as president of the Washington State Historical Society, which he had helped to found in 1891.
62.
Ezra Meeker had been an adventurer, laborer, surveyor, longshoreman, farmer, merchant, community leader, civic builder, richest man in the state, world traveler, miner and writer.
63.
Ezra Meeker had long contemplated the idea of marking the Oregon Trail, over which he had traveled in 1852, with granite monuments.
64.
Ezra Meeker viewed its preservation as an urgent matter because of this slow disappearance.
65.
Ezra Meeker wanted the Trail properly marked, and monuments erected to honor the dead.
66.
Ezra Meeker came up with a scheme to travel along the Trail again by ox-drawn wagon, raising public awareness for his cause.
67.
Ezra Meeker believed that public interest would provide enough money both to build markers and maintain himself along the way.
68.
Ezra Meeker felt that it was likely that once newspapers got wind of his travels, they would give him ample coverage.
69.
Ezra Meeker did not have much money, so he raised it from friends.
70.
Ox-drawn wagons were not a common sight in the Puyallup of 1906; Ezra Meeker was unable to find an authentic complete wagon, and eventually used metal parts from the remains of three different ones.
71.
Ezra Meeker found a pair of oxen; even though one proved unsuitable, the owner insisted on him purchasing both.
72.
The one Ezra Meeker kept, named Twist, was lodged at the stockyards in Tacoma as he sought another.
73.
Ezra Meeker fixed on a herd of steers which had been brought in from Montana.
74.
Ezra Meeker decided on one which was particularly heavy, which he named Dave.
75.
Ezra Meeker was impressed by the way Jim drove James' chickens out of the area where the family grew berries, by moving slowly.
76.
Some of Ezra Meeker's friends tried to talk him out of the trip; one local minister warned against this "impracticable project", stating that it was "cruel to let this aged man start on this journey only to perish by exposure in the mountains".
77.
Ezra Meeker had taken an ox team and wagon to Portland's Lewis and Clark Exposition in 1905; en route he had kept his eyes open for places to set up suitable monuments on the Cowlitz Trail, on which pioneers had journeyed from the Columbia River to Puget Sound.
78.
Ezra Meeker made arrangements with locals in towns along that trail to raise money to build monuments there.
79.
Ezra Meeker gave lectures as a fundraiser, but raised little money.
80.
Ezra Meeker took his team and wagon for daylong shakedown trips, despite the mocking of some who remembered him as Hop King.
81.
The first stop after Olympia for "The Old Oregon Trail Monument Expedition" was Tenino, Washington, where Ezra Meeker went ahead by train on February 20,1906, to make arrangements for the first monument of the trip.
82.
Ezra Meeker still had no driver, and had his wagon pulled to Tenino by horses, with the oxen trailing behind.
83.
Ezra Meeker appealed to a local quarry for a suitable stone, which was carved and was dedicated in Tenino at a ceremony on the 21st.
84.
Ezra Meeker had less success as he journeyed south towards Portland; at none of the remaining Washington stops was a monument erected, and although Meeker placed wooden posts where monuments should go, most of the designated towns did not follow through.
85.
The lack of enthusiasm about Ezra Meeker's mission continued in Portland, where the Unitarian church elders voted against allowing Ezra Meeker the use of the building to give a fundraising lecture, pledging to do nothing to "encourage that old man to go out on the Plains to die".
86.
In Portland, Ezra Meeker lost his remaining helpers.
87.
Ezra Meeker remained with Meeker for the next three years.
88.
Ezra Meeker installed an odometer on his wagon, calling The Dalles "Mile Zero" of his expedition.
89.
Ezra Meeker met with members of civic committees to raise money for a local monument.
90.
Near Pacific Springs, at South Pass in Wyoming, Ezra Meeker had a stone inscribed to mark where the Trail passes through the Continental Divide.
91.
Ezra Meeker hired teams of horses to pull the wagon on a temporary basis, and an attempt with two cows was not successful.
92.
Ezra Meeker was able to temporarily yoke Dave with a cow which proved more suitable.
93.
At the Omaha Stockyards, Ezra Meeker found another ox, which he named Dandy, and broke him in on the way to Indianapolis, near where Ezra Meeker had once lived and 2,600 miles by road from Puyallup.
94.
Ezra Meeker arranged for the printing of a book about his 1852 trip, much of which he wrote during noontime halts on his 1906 trip.
95.
Ezra Meeker often spent several days in a location, so long as sales of postcards and books flourished.
96.
Ezra Meeker wanted to drive the length of Broadway; it took a month to get the legal problems resolved.
97.
Ezra Meeker had arranged with the press for photographers, who took shots of him at the New York Stock Exchange and the sub-Treasury building across Wall Street.
98.
The expedition was offloaded from the train in Portland, and Ezra Meeker proceeded north across Washington State on a slow route, finishing in Seattle on July 18,1908.
99.
Ezra Meeker ran a large pioneer exhibit and restaurant at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle; he later ruefully stated the Exposition had cost him his earnings from the book and card sales during his wagon tour.
100.
Ezra Meeker set out that year on another two-year-long expedition, with the emphasis this time on locating and marking where the Trail had been, rather than on building monuments.
101.
Ezra Meeker journeyed to Texas, but had no success in interesting people in his project there.
102.
Ezra Meeker's tour was ended in 1912 in Denver when a flood struck the city, resulting in damage to his books.
103.
Ezra Meeker had donated his wagon and oxen to a park in Tacoma: when officials there expressed concern about the cost of building a proper pavilion for them, Meeker reclaimed them and set off with them to California.
104.
Ezra Meeker's wagon was exhibited at the Exposition in San Francisco.
105.
In 1916, the 85-year-old Ezra Meeker made another trip, this time by Pathfinder automobile.
106.
Ezra Meeker received a small stipend, and journeyed in the vehicle from Washington, DC to Olympia.
107.
Ezra Meeker saw the use of a motor vehicle as publicizing the need for a transcontinental highway.
108.
Ezra Meeker was successful, and flew with the Army pilot, Oakley G Kelly.
109.
Ezra Meeker got the idea from a group of Idahoans seeking a coin to further their preservation work at Fort Hall; he arranged a merger of efforts.
110.
Ezra Meeker had founded the Old Oregon Trail Association in 1922.
111.
Ezra Meeker was less successful with the later issue, and many remained unsold.
112.
Ezra Meeker was again advocating better roads, and gained the support of Henry Ford, who built him a Model A car with a covered wagon-style top, dubbed the Oxmobile, to be used in another expedition over the Trail to publicize Ezra Meeker's highway proposals.
113.
In October 1928, Ezra Meeker was hospitalized with pneumonia in Detroit.
114.
Ezra Meeker returned to Seattle, where he fell ill again.
115.
Ezra Meeker's body was taken in procession back to Puyallup, where he was interred beside his wife Eliza Jane in Woodbine Cemetery.