A. T. Smith Diary transcript 1842

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A transcription of a 1842 diary in which Alvin Thompson Smith writes about topics such as working on the building of his first home on the Tualatin Plains; tending to cattle and pigs and other farmwork; chores of his daily life; reading and attending prayer meetings and church; Congregational Minister Harvey L. Clark (or Clarke), P.B. Littlejohn, missionary John Smith Griffin, and a business dispute between the men; visiting the Willamette River and Vancouver, and his interactions with "Indians" (including a passage describing how he "hunted Indians that had stolen wheat").

Born in Connecticut in 1802, Alvin Thompson Smith, along with his wife Abigail Raymond, was amongst the first Euro-Americans to settle in the area on the Tualatin Plains that became Forest Grove, Oregon in the early 1840s. In his life, Smith was a missionary, a postmaster, a notable participant in the Champoeg Meetings, the builder of a 1856 house in Forest Grove that is today recognized by the National Register of Historic Places as the Alvin T. Smith House, and a contributor to an orphanage that became Tualatin Academy and later developed into Pacific University. Smith died in 1888 at the age of 85. This is one part of a collection of transcriptions of Alvin T. Smith's diaries from the years 1840-1853. The transcriptions, which are likely not identical to the diaries themselves and perhaps summarize some entries, were likely typewritten in the 1970s. The diaries are notable for their near daily entries. The original diaries are held by the Oregon Historical Society (Mss 8).