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Show Fifty Famous Frontiersmen By ELMO SCOTT WATSON Tho Pioneer Photographer rpviORY summer for the last few years a gruy-hulred New Yorker has been settlirg out on a romantic Journey. He Is William II. Jackson, past four score years In age, who has been back tracking on the path of hlr youth, the historic Oregon trulL Among the thousands who passe4 over that trail, Jackson Is unique. For he was the pioneer photographer of that "highway of a westward-farlnf nation," the first man to traverse It with the crude photographic material of 05 years ago, to make a plctorlai record of the country through which it ran In Its primitive state and to make hundreds of photographs of Indians, among them chiefs and warriors who became famous by their deeds on the warpath and In the council lodge. Born in New York In 1843 Jackson became an Itinerant artist, a map-maker map-maker In the Union army during the Civil war, a village photographer afterwards, aft-erwards, then a fortune-seeker In the trans-Mlsslsslppl West. In 1800-07 he was a "bullwhacker" for a freighters' outfit hauling supplies from Nebraska City on the Missouri to the valley of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Next he and his brother set up as photographers In the booming frontier town of Omaha, but when the Union Pacific began building west, Jackson left his brother to run the studio, and started out to record what was happening hap-pening In what was then the real "Wild West." To get pictures he took the chance of losing his scalp, but he got the pictures ! So successful was he that Dr. C. V. Hayden, head of the United States geological survey, offered him a Job as photographer for the expedition which started out In 1870 to survey the old Oregon Mormon trail and the old Overland Stage route. For the next ten years he accompanied other surveying expeditions and It was on these expeditions that he took the pictures pic-tures of scenes in the West, Indians, frontier posts, etc., which have become such a priceless heritage to posterity. In 1S71 he made the first photographs photo-graphs of the marvels of the Yellowstone Yellow-stone country and his pictures, as well as the discoveries of and the specimens speci-mens collected by the Hayden expedition, expe-dition, of which he was a member, played an Important part In the creation cre-ation of the Yellowstone National park In 1S72. In recent years Mr. Jackson has been research secretary of tho Oregon Trail Memorial association, In which role he Is completing the work started when he was not only a frontiersman fron-tiersman himself but the pictorial historian his-torian of the frontier. The First Forty-Niner ONE spring day In the year 1S43 a horseman came galloping through the streets of San Francisco, sprang from his weary horse and rushed through the plaza, hatless and travel-stained, travel-stained, waving aloft a little bottle filled with some shining particles and shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American river !" Thus It was that Sam Brannan, frontiersman and adventurer, won the title of "the first Forty-Niner." For he was the first to bring to San Francisco Fran-cisco authentic news of the discovery of gold by James W. Marshall near Sutter's Fort But this was not the only historic 'first" In the career of Sam Brannan. Back In the late thirties and early forties for-ties he had been a Journeyman printer, a free lance writer, an editor and "a natural-born promoter." Also he was a full-fledged elder in the Church of the Latter Day Saints until the Mormon Mor-mon leaders a little later had occasion, and very good reason, to expel him. In July, 1S46, he brought to California Califor-nia a colony of some 300 Mormons, the first American colonists to reach Yerba Euena, the little Spanish settlement on San Francisco bay. Immediately he began on the series of his historic "firsts" he preached the first English sermon ever heard there, he solemnized solemn-ized the first American marriage on California soil, he set up the first flour mill and gave the settlement its first newspaper, the California Star. After he was expelled from the Mormon Mor-mon church, he became the first California Cali-fornia promoter by getting out a special spe-cial edition of his Star and sending 2,000 copies of the paper overland to the Mississippi valley and the eastern states, extolling the virtues of the country to prospective settlers. Then came the discovery of gold and Brannan's role as "the first Forty-NIn-er." His sensational announcement of the gold discovery depopulated San Francisco within a few days and resulted re-sulted In Sutter's little kingdom of "New Helvetia" being overrun by a swarm of goldseekers. In the wild era that followed, Brannan Bran-nan prospered. He was gambler and banker, merchant and hotel owner, importer im-porter and exporter, gold digger and real estate speculator, shipowner and smuggler. As San Francisco grew he loomed larger and larger on Its horizon, hori-zon, and at last was ruling It like a Chinese mandarin. Then misfortune overtook him. His later career was one of "ups and downs" but he never remained entirely down, and when he died in ISSD at the age of seventy, he was fairly prosperous, in contrast to the poverty which had overtaken those other two early Forty-Niners. Johann August Sutter, the former "king of New Helvetia" and James W. Marshall. . 1933. Western Newspaper Union. |