elible mark on the civilization of
Oregon, and the other, Mary Olney Brown, on that of Washington
territory. What ideas were revolving in these young minds in that
long journey of 3,000 miles, six months in duration, it would be
difficult to imagine, but the love of liberty had been infused in
their dreams somewhere, either in their eastern homes from the
tragic scenes of the anti-slavery conflict, or on that perilous
march amidst those eternal solitudes by day and the solemn
stillness of the far-off stars in the gathering darkness. That this
long communion with great nature left its impress on their young
hearts and sanctified their lives to the best interests of humanity
at large, is clearly seen in the deeply interesting accounts they
give of their endeavors to mould the governments of their
respective territories on republican principles. Writing of herself
and her labors, Mrs. Duniway says:

I was born in Pleasant Grove, Tazewell county, Illinois, October
22, 1834, of the traditional "poor but respectable parentage"
which has honored the advent of many a more illustrious worker
than myself. Brought up on a farm and familiar from my earliest
years with the avocations of rural life, spending the early
spring-times in the maple-sugar camp, the later weeks in
gardening and gathering stove-wood, the summers in picking and
spinning wool, and the autumns in drying apples, I found little
opportunity, and that only in winter, for books or play. My
father was a generous-hearted, impulsive, talented, but
uneducated man; my mother was a conscientious, self-sacrificing,
intelligent, but uneducated woman. Both were devotedly religious,
and both believed implicitly that self-abnegation was the crowing
glory of womanhood. Before I was seventeen I was employed as a
district school teacher, received a first-class certificate and
taught with success, though how I became possessed of the
necessary qualifications I to this day know not. I never did,
could, or would study when at school.

In the spring of 1852 my father decided to emigrate to Oregon. My
invalid mother expostulated in vain; she and nine of us children
were stowed away in ox-wagons, where for six months we made our
home, cooking food and washing dishes around camp-fires, sleeping
at night in the wagons, and crossing many streams upon
wagon-beds, rigge