Samuel Thurston
American pioneer (1815-1851)
Samuel Royal Thurston (April 15, 1816 – April 9, 1851) was an American pioneer, lawyer and politician. He was the first delegate from the Oregon Territory to the United States Congress and was instrumental in the passage of the Donation Land Claim Act.
Biography
Early years
Thurston was born in Monmouth, Maine, and grew up in Peru, Maine; his father died when he was young. After attending Dartmouth College, he graduated in 1843 from Bowdoin College in Maine, graduating with honors. He then studied law under Robert Dunlap. Thurston met Elizabeth McLench in college and married her after graduating. The couple moved to Burlington, Iowa in 1845.
Thurston came to the Oregon Country in 1847 as an emigrant over the Oregon Trail. In Oregon he settled in Hillsboro, where he practiced law. Then in 1848 he was elected to the Provisional Legislature from Tuality District where he served with fellow Hillsboro resident David Hill.
“Samuel Thurston” enters the record as american pioneer (1815-1851). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Samuel, Thurston and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2218900. VIAF identifies the subject as 46623196. The Library of Congress control number is nr92006251. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1816, 1851, 1843 and 1845.
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This entry incorporates text from “Samuel Thurston” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.