ABSTRACT
The Smillie family was related to the Stewart family, and they lived together in Eugene, Lane County, Oregon (see the Jannet Stewart letters from 1861, in Volume 4, and the corresponding headnote). They had left Scotland and were now making adjustments in a part of the United States that had only recently been ceded by Britain, under the pressure of the Polk administration (see the introduction to Volume 2). The first is written from Wayne, Ohio, to their brother and sister in Scotland, before their trek west. It records their observations about the availability of various forms of employment, prices and farming opportunities. They make no mention of their upcoming move. The second is written to friends in Scotland after their arrival in Eugene. It describes their dramatic journey there, during which they nearly died of thirst and starvation, as others had done a couple of years earlier. Some members of their party did indeed perish on the way: They had to bury ‘little Stewart’, and had to bury him deep, so the wolves would not dig up his body and eat it.
