Alvin T. Smith

Alvin T. Smith
Portrait of Smith
Probate Judge of Washington County, Oregon
In office 1851
Constituency	Washington County
Magistrate for the Provisional Government of Oregon
In office 1843–1844
Constituency	Twality District
Personal details
Born	November 17, 1802 Branford, Connecticut
Died	January 22, 1888(1888-01-22) (aged 85) Forest Grove, Oregon
Spouse(s)	Abigail Raymond (1840-1858) Jane Averill (1869-1888)
Occupation	carpenter

Alvin Thompson Smith (November 17, 1802 – January 22, 1888) was an American missionary and politician in what became the state of Oregon. A native of Connecticut, he lived in Illinois before moving to the Oregon Country to preach to the Native Americans in the Tualatin Valley. There he served in both the Provisional Government of Oregon and the government of the Oregon Territory, as well as helping to establish Tualatin Academy, later becoming Pacific University. Smith’s former home, the Alvin T. Smith House in Forest Grove, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Alvin Thompson Smith was born in Branford, Connecticut, on November 17, 1802, to Thomas Smith. In the early 1830s he moved to Quincy, Illinois, where he worked as a carpenter and where he married Abigail Raymond (born April 21, 1793) on March 19, 1840. In 1840, he and his new wife crossed the Great Plains on what became the Oregon Trail with P. B. Littlejohn and the Reverend Harvey L. Clark and their wives, along with fur traders. They left in March after Smith had heard a speech about a group of Native Americans who had traveled to St. Louis, Missouri, and asked to learn about Christianity. Clark and Littlejohn invited him to help establish a mission independent of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

The group traveled first to Independence, Missouri, where they were joined by frontiersman Henry Black before heading west. Along the trail they caught up to a fur brigade of the American Fur Company at Hickory Grove and joined the group that included Joel Walker, Pleasant Armstrong, and Robert Moore among others. This larger group continued on to the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous where the Oregon bound missionaries continued on with guidance from Caleb Wilkins and Robert Newell to Fort Hall where they abandoned their wagons and traded their cattle for Mexican cattle to be delivered once in the Willamette Valley. Smith and the group continued on to the Whitman Mission, arriving on August 14, 1840.