Henderson Luelling and Seth Lewelling. 103 



HENDERSON LUELLING AND SETH LEWELLING, 

 PIONEERS OF HORTICULTURE IN OREGON. 



Henderson Luelling and Ills brother. Seth, were the worthy descendants of 

 honorable ancestors of the best type of American pioneers. Their father, Meshic 

 Lewelling, was of Welsh ancestry. Tlieir mother's maiden name w;is Brookshire, 

 and she was either a native of England or of English descent. 



Both were "Friends," or Quakers, as the members of that denomination are 

 commonly called. Meshic Lewelling was, during the period of time in wliich his 

 sons, Henderson and Seth, were born, a resident of Randolph County, North 

 Carolina. He wa.s a physician, a plantation owner, a nurseryman and fruitgrower, 

 and a slaveholder. He was one, however, of that noble band of southern prac- 

 tical abolitionists who showed tlieir belief by their works in the early part of the 

 Nineteenth Century: left their pleasant liomes in tlie well-developed communi- 

 ties in North and South Carolina, and other southern states, and transported 

 themselves, their families, household effects, and negroes hundreds of miles over 

 execrable mountain roads or trails to Ohio or Indiana in order that from them- 

 selves and tlieir children might be lifted the burden of wrong-doing Inseparable 

 from slave-holding, and that those who had been their slaves might be free in 

 free states. Thus did Meshic Lewelling move from his home in Kandolph County, 

 North Carolina, in 1S25 with his family, and with those who were in North Car- 

 olina his slaves to the free state of Indiana, where he established a new home 

 at Greensboro, near Newcastle. There he not only practiced his profession, but, 

 as was the custom with pioneer ministers and doctors, also engaged in farming, 

 and made a specialty of fruit-raising. 



Henderson Luelling, the second sou of Dr. Lewelling. was born April 23, 1S09, 

 and was 16 years old when the family crossed from North Carolina to Indiana. 

 On December .30, 1830, he married Miss Elizabeth Pressness. who had also come 

 from North Carolina to Indiana, and was also a member of the denomination of 

 Friends. In 1836, in copartnership with his brother, John, he was engaged in 

 the nursery business in the vicinity of Newcastle, Indiana. In l,s.".7 lie and John 

 decided to move to Iowa, and in 1838, Henderson, John, and their older brother, 

 William, all secured land near Salem, Henry County, Iowa. At this place was 

 born William's son, Lorenzo D. Lewelling, who was a few years ago governor of 

 the state of Kansas. Henderson and John carried on at Salem the nursery busi- 

 ness begun in Indiana, until 1841, when Henderson became sole proprietor of the 

 nursery. In 1845 the pioneering tendency caused Henderson to look to Oregon a.? 

 his future home, and the inspiration camo to him to transport by wagon a nursery 

 stock to this distant land, then becoming the mecca of the cream of American 

 pioneers. It was a bold conception characteristic of the imaginative foresight of 

 the broad-minded pioneer. At the time when Henderson Luelling formed his re- 

 solve there were less than 5.000 white people in all the Oregon country. Those 

 who had come across the plains reached their journey's end almost destitute of 

 the property with which they started. The son of Dr. Meshic Lewelling was not 

 the man to be discouraged by prospective obstacles and hardships. He proceeded 

 with his preparations for the journey. He made two boxes, which, together, just 

 fitted into an ordinary wagon box. These boxes were filled with carefully-prepared 

 soil, and in this soil he planted about TOO grafted or budded trees, shrubs, and 

 vines, including a large number of standard varieties of apples and pears, and a 



