Oldest Oregon " Century Farm "

Moisan's Claim of 1842 Vintage

When a squawling, red-faced French-Canadian baby was born near Montreal in 1810, it is unlikely his parents hard heard the word - Oregon.

But as it celebrates its first hundred years, the 33d state honors that infant, Thomas Moisan, as one of its founding fathers. Although little-publicized, Moisan was founder of Oregon's oldest  " Century Farm ", a designation created last year by the Oregon Historical society and the state department of agriculture.

His farm north of Salem, near Banks, is first on a list that commemorates beginners of the state's oldest - and still second-largest industry, agriculture.

THOUGH his parents probably knew little of Oregon at his birth, Thomas Moisan was born on the eve of the state's greatest era of exploration and development. The only one of 10 children from an old and respected family of Quebec merchants and tradespeople to journey to the United States, his shoulders were destined to rub with those of contemporaries more commonly credited with winning this portion of the Far West.

NEWS OF THIS land was mainly reports of a fabulous fur trade that would eventually lure Moisan, as it did hundreds of his French-Canadian compatriots.

When Moisan was a lad of 8, the British and Americans agreed to joint occupancy of Oregon. A quarter of a century later, Thomas Moisan helped erase this situation by participating in the vote for provincial government at Champoeg in 1843. In between were the events that led to his founding of the state's oldest Century Farm.

Through a family or business connection, Moisan made his way in 1838 to New Orleans where he joined the American Fur Co., that indomitable band of trappers who spawned so many of Oregon's progeny. In the next two years he crossed the " Great Stony " (Rocky) mountains and went to work for McLoughlin at Fort Vancouver. He worked for the Hudson's Bay Co. A short time however, before deciding to stake a claim of his own.

Today that claim is still occupied, and being productively farmed by his grand-children. And living in the 103-year-old, two-story frame home he erected for his bride is a granddaughter, Mrs Albena Moisan Lanius.

FADED documents date the Moisan claim from 1842, making it the oldest of Oregon's Century Farms. But surrounding each of the more than 200 in the state are remnants of the rich heritage left by their founders through participation in early-day government, agricultural development and foundations of life as we know it today. Their names are visible on street signs, cornerstones of the oldest buildings, in titles of businesses and fixed to geographic locations.

In Moisan's time single men could claim 320 acres of the Oregon Country free. Married men could have 640 acres.

Unless they brought wives with them, many of Thomas Moisan's contemporaries were hard-pressed to find spouses with whom to share the larger land holding. This was not the case, however, with the founder of the Moisan farm, whose breeding and education set home apart from many as member of frontier aristocracy.

In  1842 he wed 18-year-old Henrietta, daughter of Andreas Longtain, one of the most famed of the French-Canadian trappers who hard been in the Oregon country since Moisan's birth. Henrietta was born in Fort Vancouver shortly after its initial settlement. Her father, like the younger Moisan, had despaired of trapping and tuned to the land. His claim adjoined that of Robert Newell on the banks of the Willamette and is today the site of Champoeg state park.

Even if he had wanted young Moisan would have had a hard time dodging politics of the time, what with a father-in-law who played host to the most rabid Americans of the period.

MOISAN and his bride are linked to Oregon's beginnings in other respects as well. A witness at their Catholic wedding at St.Paul was Francis Rivet, one to two members of the Lewis & Clark expedition who stayed in Oregon in 1806 when all the others turned east. At Henrietta's baptism a sponsor was Jean Baptiste Dubruille, an Astor " over-lander ", who had been in the Oregon country since 1812.

Descendants say Moisan's wife brought her dolls along when she moved into the crude log hut he erected on his claim and it was her husband who taught her to read and write.

But meager beginning are misleading. Moisan had picked his 640 acres for his ability to produce grain and graze. He reaped as many as 80 bushels of wheat to the acre and was known as the " Cattle King " of the area. Correspondence available today testifies to his extensive business, but at the same time he was considered something of  a benefactor to other settlers, loaning them seed for their first crops instead of attempting to make a profit off his new neighbors.

HIS PROGRESSIVE ways earned home the tile of " American " long before he officially adopted citizenship because he utilized four-wheeled wagons instead of the two-wheeled ox-carts of his fellow French-Canadians. He was widely known as a gentleman and in 1856 the construction of the home now occupied by Mrs. Lanius made Thomas Moisan something of a local squire.

Supported by a sturdy brick foundation, its wooden beams and planks were had-hewn in two years by artisans of  the time. The present house is only a fraction of its original bulk. Wooden pillars still support wide porches stretching the length of both stories across its front and atop the dwelling is a cupola-study from which its owner could watch his herds and the periodic approach to the overland stage as it rumbled between Portland and Salem.

AS YOU TOUR Moisan's house you feel the regard this pioneer had for the civilization he had left in Montreal. Pretentious for its time, the house has no fireplaces. He abhorred the fact his bride had to cook over an open fire in their first home of logs chinked with straw and clay. He had not only stoves, but an indoor bathroom ! A voracious reader, his remaining correspondence is studded with receipts for subscriptions to periodicals and newspapers from the East.

Though but one of thousands who settled the West, Moisan helps dispel the ageless caricature of untidy, uncouth and unshaven Western pioneers.

By Jack Zimmerman, Journal Staff Writer
Oregon Journal, Sunday, Feb 8, 1959