”Such was the condition of affairs in the spring of 1840. The Lausanne not arriving as early as was expected, Daniel Lee, who had been waiting a few days at the Willamette Mission, grew impatient, for his betrothed was among the passengers, and he hastened forward to meet the ship at its anchorage. Solomon Smith accompanied him with his Clatsop wife, who wished to return to her own people as a missionary, having experienced a change of heart; and on the 16th of May they started on their trip, and held religious services with the Indians wherever they found it convenient to land. They had just encamped on the 21st of May at Chinook, when a vessel was seen coming up the channel under Cape Disappointment, and anchoring in Baker Bay. Lee lost no time in going on board, and in meeting his uncle and the great reinforcement. Miss Maria T. Ware was the one above all others whom he sought; for to her he had been engaged for some time, and on the 11th of June following they were married.

Jason Lee, impatient over the necessary delay, and anxious as to the accommodation of so large a company, took a canoe and went in advance to the Mission. When there he handed over the ship’s list of passengers, headed by the name of Mr and Mrs Jason Lee, that he might notify his old companions that he had returned with another wife. He made no remark on the subject, and nothing was said to him. Deeply stirred had been the sympathies of his old associates as they thought of his return to his desolate home; and now the revulsion of feeling was so great that the supremacy of Jason Lee in their hearts was thenceforth a thing of the past.”

Reference Data:

History of Oregon, by Hubert Howe Bancroft and Frances Fuller Victor, 1886, pages 182-3