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nett, who died in the year 1868; he was married in 1870 to Miss Margaret S. Casteel. He was a member of committees on internal improvements and assessments.
HON. W. A. PERKINS.
The farming element is well represented In the House of Representatives, and it is highly important that it is so. Many subjects affecting the most vital interests of our agricultural prosperity have been grappled with in every session of the legislature, and this great branch of industry should not be imperiled by sending unreliable or incompetent men to represent them. The feuce law, destruction of noxious animals, the taxation of cul- tivated land and growing crops, the construction and maintenance of coun- ty roads, are questions that the farming population cannot ignore or ne- glect. They have shown that they appreciate the importance of these ques- tions, and the necessity of properly attending to them by sending to the State Capitol men who are capable of grappling with the issues involved, and honest and worthy sons of the soil. Among the many good and true representatives of the agricultural element now in the House, although not at present farming, none are more entitled to a prominent place in this volume than Hon. W. A. Perkins, one of the representatives from Douglas. He was bom in east Tennessee in the year IS'So, went with his parents to Indiana in 1844, and during his youth received the common school advan- tages, and afterwards, by hard work and persistent efibrt, he succeeded in obtaining a first-class English education. While in Indiana he followed the profession of school teaching, and did some farming. In 1858 he went to Missouri, and, shortly afterwards, went to Kansas. He came to Oregon in 1875, and took xxp his residence in Oakland, Douglas county, where he has since continued to live. He taught school there for about two years, and afterwards became engaged in general merchandising, and was em- ployed as telegraph operator at Drain station. At the present time he is the agent at Roseburg for the California and Oregon Railway Company. He was married to Miss R. J. McReynolds in 1853. Mr. Perkins has taken a strong interest in the great questions of woman suffrage and temperance, and used all his personal exertions and his influence in their earnest advo- cacy. Mr. Perkins was elected and served as Justice of the Peace a number of terms in the States of Iowa, Kansas and Oregon.
HON. WM. H. H. DUFUR.
Dean Swift, that grand old cynic, spoke many a splendid truth, but none more pertinent than his aphorism that " it is an incontroverted truth that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them." The subject of this biography will never make an ill figure. He is a representative of the young men of Oregon, and, at the age of twenty-eight, represents in our legislative halls one of the very finest constituencies in the State, in Wasco county, where he was elected almost without opposition. Mr. Dufur is the youngest son of Hon. A. J. Dnfur, who has been repeatedly honored by his felhjw Democrats, and by
