Margaret Jewett Smith

Margaret Jewett Smith Bailey (1812?–1882) was an American pioneer, missionary, and author from Oregon.

Bailey, using the pen name Ruth Rover, wrote one of the earliest literary works published in Oregon, The Grains, or, Passages in the Life of Ruth Rover, with Occasional Pictures of Oregon, Natural and Moral. According to historian Edwin Bingham in the foreword to the 1986 edition, Grains is "part autobiography, part religious testimonial, part history and travelogue", but "by stretching the definition, The Grains may be called a novel, the first novel written and published on the Pacific coast."

Margaret Jewett Smith was born in Saugus, Massachusetts in about 1812. She converted to Methodism when she was 17 at a camp meeting. She attended the Methodist Episcopal Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham over the objections of her family, especially her father, who wished for her to care for him in his old age and who threatened to disown her. She hoped she could become a missionary teacher among the Native Americans.

Smith came to the Oregon Country to join the Methodist Mission in September 1837 with the Reverend David Leslie, his wife Mary, their children, and the Reverend H. K. W. Perkins. Smith, who worked as a teacher, was the only unmarried white woman at the mission, thus the mission authorities pressured her to marry. She was courted by William H. Willson and was engaged to him for a time, but she refused to marry him after learning he had also written to another woman, Chloe Clark, asking her to come to Oregon to become his wife. Smith insisted on waiting to marry Willson until it was known if the other woman was coming to Oregon. Willson became impatient and asked Smith to falsely confess that they had fornicated so that they would be allowed to marry immediately. Smith refused, but Willson told the other members of the mission that they had sinned together. Smith, unable to prove her innocence, left the mission.

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