of information; to Mrs. Ann Eliza Fisher Latourette for her constant interest; to the executors of Mrs. Henderson's will, Mr. L. E. Latourette and Mr. R. W. Fisher; and to the editor of the Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society for their kindness in offering its pages to the initial publication of the larger part of the letters.
THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR
Ezra Fisher was a native of New England. He was a descendant of Anthony Fisher, who came from Syleham County, Suffolk, England, in 1637, and settled at Dedham, Mass. Here at the beginning of the Revolution lived Ezra Fisher's grandparents, Benjamin and Sara (Everett) Fisher. Five of their sons answered the call to arms of April 19, 1775. Six of them served later in the war, the eldest dying of camp fever at Ticonderoga.
The youngest, Aaron, was in Captain Asa Fairbank's company at the Lexington alarm, it is said, when but seventeen years of age. He afterward served in the regiments of Col. Ephraim Wheelock, of Col. Carleton and of Col. Rufus Putnam, most of the time with rank of sergeant. During the war he was married to Miss Betty Moore and, at its close, they removed from Dedham and settled on a farm near Wendell, Mass. Here it was that Ezra Fisher was born, January 6, 1800.
His environment was that of the average New England boy at the beginning of the last century. In the home of his parents were few luxuries and much hard work, but there was a fireside where God was worshipped, the Bible read, religion and education discussed and a vital interest taken in the affairs of the State so lately formed. Like other boys of his day, he was privileged to learn, from the generation who had desperately struggled for them, how the civil liberties of that state were won. Unlike most boys of his time, he learned from Baptist parents the meaning of religious liberty. They themselves had been forced to contribute to
