10 Facts About James Nesmith

James Willis Nesmith was an American politician and lawyer from Oregon.

James Nesmith was born in what is the Canadian province of New Brunswick while his parents were on a visit from their home in Washington County, Maine, on July 23,1820.

In 1838, James Nesmith moved to Ohio, followed by Iowa in 1842 where he waited to immigrate to Oregon Country.

James Nesmith planned on traveling the Oregon Trail with Elijah White in 1842, but was late to arrive and instead left the next spring with Marcus Whitman after working as a carpenter in the interim at Fort Scott in Kansas.

In 1843, James Nesmith arrived in Oregon where he studied law and was admitted to the bar before being selected to serve as Supreme Judge of the Provisional Government of Oregon in 1845.

James Nesmith finished his term in 1846 and moved to Polk County where he took a land claim, began farming, and married Pauline Goff on June 21, with whom he would have seven children.

James Nesmith next served as a captain during the Cayuse War against Native Americans in Eastern Oregon from 1847 to 1848.

James Nesmith again was a captain in the militia forces during the Rogue River War in 1853 and the Yakima Indian War in 1855.

James Nesmith did not seek re-nomination in 1874 to the Forty-fourth Congress and returned to farming in Polk County.

James Willis Nesmith died in Rickreall, Oregon, on June 17,1885, at the age of 64 and was interred in Polk County on the south bank of Rickreall Creek.