a polished orator, and an honorable man. His most enduring monument is found in the record of his career as a jurist, and it is to be regretted that death overtook him as he was entering upon a career of wider usefulness.
Mr. Nesmith was elected to fill the vacancy thus caused, serving until March 3, 1875. George A. LaDow was elected in 1874, as the eleventh representative to congress from Oregon, but died before taking his seat.
Lafayette Lane was elected to succeed Mr. LaDow, and held the office until March 3, 1877. Mr. Lane was always an ardent democrat. He was born in Indiana November 12, 1842, and died at Roseburg, Oregon, November 24, 1896. He came to manhood in the stormy days of the civil war, was a student in college at Washington, where his father, Gen. Joseph Lane, was first a delegate and next a senator in congress. He was trained for public life under the skillful eye of his father, and early imbibed his strong feelings and sympathies for his Southern kinsmen and party associates. He was elected to the legislature in 1874 as a member of the house from Umatilla County, and at the special session, convened December 5, 1865, to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, joined with James D. Fay and two other members of the house in a vigorous protest against the proclamation of the governor convening the session, and the sitting of the house in pursuance thereof. Governor Grover appointed him and Matthew P. Deady to compile the laws of Oregon in 1872, and they gave us the code entitled "General Laws of Oregon, 1843-1872, compiled and annotated by Matthew P. Deady and Lafayette Lane," and which continued in general and sole use as a code until the code of 1887, compiled and annoted by William Lair Hill, and published in 1887 by authority of an act of the legislature approved February 26, 1885. Mr. Lane was a candidate in 1876 for re-election, but was
