Often referred to as the first "dark horse" President, James K. Polk was the last of the Jacksonians to sit in the White House, and the last strong President until the Civil War. He was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, in 1795. Studious and industrious, Polk was graduated with honors in 1818 from the University of North Carolina. As a young lawyer he entered politics, served in the Tennessee legislature, and became a friend of Andrew Jackson .

Joseph Lane (December 14, 1801 - April 19, 1881) was an American general during the Mexican-American War and a United States Senator from Oregon.

Ezra Meeker (December 29, 1830-December 3, 1928) was an early pioneer who traveled the Oregon Trail by ox cart as a young man. Beginning in his 70s he worked tirelessly to memorialize the trail, repeatedly retracing the trip of his youth. Meeker was born in Huntsville, Ohio, to Jacob and Phoebe Meeker; his family relocated to Indiana in 1840. Married in 1851, in 1852, with his wife and his newborn son Marian, …

Philip Foster was one of the first settlers in Oregon, United States. The farmstead he established in Eagle Creek in 1847 became the first outpost of civilization after 2,000 miles of travel for pioneers heading west along the Oregon Trail. Approximately 10,000 emigrants are believed to have passed through. The farm was designated a National Historic Site in 1980. Foster was a shrewd businessman from Argyle, Maine. In the early 1800s he, like many others, headed west, …

Joseph Lafayette "Joe" Meek (1810-1875) was born in Washington County, Virginia, United States, near the Cumberland Gap. At the age of 18 he joined William Sublette and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and roamed the Rocky Mountains for over a decade before settling in what was to become the state of Oregon in the Oregon Territory. In Idaho in 1838, he married the daughter of Nez Perce chief Kowesota. Her true name is unknown, but Meek called her "Virginia".

George Abernethy (October 7, 1807 - March 2, 1877) was an Oregon pioneer, notable entrepreneur, and first governor of Oregon under the provisional government.

Asa Lawrence Lovejoy (born 1808 in Massachusetts, died 1882) was an Oregon pioneer and one of the founders of the city of Portland, Oregon. A lawyer from Boston, Lovejoy first came to the Oregon Territory in 1842, headed back east that winter, and returned in 1843. That year, Lovejoy and traveling companion William Overton split a claim to a 640-acre (1 sq mile) tract along the Willamette River; a site which would later become part of downtown Portland.

James Willis Nesmith (July 23, 1820 - June 17, 1885) was a United States Senator and Representative from Oregon. Born in New Brunswick, Canada while his parents were on a visit from their home in Washington County, Maine, he moved with his father to Claremont, New Hampshire about 1828. He received a limited schooling, moved to Ohio in 1838 and Oregon in 1843, studied law, and was admitted to the bar but never practiced extensively.

La Fayette Grover was a Democratic politician from the U.S. state of Oregon. He served as a Congressman, Senator, and Governor.

John Floyd was a Virginia politician and soldier. He represented Virginia in the United States House of Representatives and later served as Governor of Virginia. During his career in the House of Representatives, Floyd was an advocate of settling the Oregon Territory, unsuccessfully arguing on its behalf from 1820 until he left Congress in 1829. The area would not become a territory of the United States until 1848.

John Wesley Davis was a prominent U.S. politician during the 1840s. He served as the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1845 to 1847, and served a total of eight years in the United States Congress as a Democrat from Indiana. He served as the U.S. Commissioner to China 1848–1850. He was appointed to the office of Governor of the Oregon Territory from 1853-1854 by President Franklin Pierce.

John Pollard Gaines (September 22, 1795 - December 9, 1857) was a U.S. military and political figure. He was a Whig member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Kentucky from 1847 to 1849, and he served as Governor of the Oregon Territory from 1850 to 1853, stepping down after a turbulent term in office.

Delazon Smith (1816 - 1860) was a Democratic Party politician who briefly represented the state of Oregon in the U.S. Senate in 1859; he served for less than one month (February 14 to March 3), making his term among the shortest on record in the Senate. Smith was born in New Berlin, New York on October 5 1816; he graduated from Oberlin College in 1837, began the study of law soon after and was quickly admitted to the bar.

George Henry Williams (March 23, 1823-April 4, 1910) was an American judge and statesman. Born in New Lebanon, New York, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1844. He moved to Iowa and worked as a lawyer in Fort Madison, Iowa Territory. In 1847, he was elected Judge of the First Judicial District of Iowa. He was a presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1852. He was named Chief Justice of Oregon Territory in 1853 and served until 1857.

Samuel Royal Thurston (April 17, 1815 - April 6, 1851) was an American pioneer, lawyer and politician. He was the first delegate from the Oregon Territory to the United States Congress and was instrumental in the passage of the Donation Land Claim Act.

William Gilpin was a 19th century U.S. explorer, politician, land speculator, and futurist writer about the American West. He served as military officer in the United States Army during several wars, accompanied John C. Frémont on his second expedition through the West, and was instrumental in the formation of the government of the Oregon Territory.

Nathaniel Ford (c. 1795 - January 9 1870) was an American politician and Oregon pioneer during the time of the Oregon Territory. He also lost a civil case that freed his slaves that he had brought across the Oregon Trail from Missouri.

Francis William Pettygrove (born 1812 in Maine, died 1887 in Port Townsend, Washington), commonly known as William Pettygrove, was a pioneer and one of the founders of the cities of Portland, Oregon and Port Townsend, Washington.

Benjamin Stark (b. June 26 1820 in New Orleans, Louisiana - d. October 10, 1898 in New London, Connecticut) was a one-time Democratic senator from Oregon from 1861 to 1862. Benjamin Stark was born in New Orleans and graduated from Union School (New London, Connecticut) and Hebron Academy. From 1835 to 1848 he studied law in New York City. He engaged in mercantile pursuits in New York, San Francisco and finally Portland, Oregon.

Benjamin Franklin Harding (1823-1899) was a Democratic senator from Oregon. He was born near Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania on January 4, 1823 and passed the bar in 1847, setting up practice in Joliet, Illinois. In 1850 he clerked form the Oregon territorial legislature, moving up to a representative and then speaker of it. He was a United States district attorney in 1853 and secretary of the Oregon territory 1854 to 1859.

Orville C. Pratt was the 2nd Associate Justice on the Oregon Supreme Court serving from 1848 to 1852. He wrote the lone dissenting opinion in the controversy over the Oregon Territory’s capital between Oregon City and Salem.

Reuben Patrick Boise (June 6 1819 - April 10 1907) was a judge and politician in the Oregon Territory and the early days of the state of Oregon.

Ranald MacDonald (3 February, 1824 - August 24, 1894) was the first man to teach the English language in Japan, including educating Einosuke Moriyama, one of the chief interpreters to handle the negotiations between Commodore Perry and the Tokugawa Shogunate.

James McBride, (February 9 1802-December 18 1875) born near present-day Nashville, Tennessee, was one of the founders of the Republican Party in Oregon.

Doctor Ralph Wilcox, was the first teacher and practicing doctor in Portland, Oregon, United States. He also served in the Provisional Government of Oregon, was a legislator during both the territorial period and when Oregon became a state, and a judge of Twality County during the provisional government.

William P. Bryant was the first Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court. President James K. Polk appointed Bryant, of Indiana, once the Oregon Territory was established in 1848.

Addison Crandall Gibbs (1825-1886) was an American politician. He was a Republican governor of Oregon from 1862 until 1866, and previously served in the Oregon Territory's legislative body and later the state legislature.

Ramsay Crooks (2 January 1787 - 6 June 1859) immigrated to Canada from Scotland in 1803 and he worked in a trading post on the Great Lakes. With Robert McClellan he organized an overland trip to Astoria in the Oregon Territory for John Jacob Astor in 1809 through 1813 as a partner in the Pacific Fur Company. He became general manager of the American Fur Company in 1817 and was president of the company from 1834-1859.

Sir Joseph William Trutch, K.C.M.G. (18 January 1826 - 4 March 1904) was an English-born Canadian engineer, surveyor and politician. Born in Ashcott, England, Trutch's early childhood was spent largely in Jamaica, although his family returned to England in 1834, where he attended grammar school in Devon. Following an apprenticeship to civil engineer Sir John Rennie, he travelled to California after hearing news of the California Gold Rush of 1848 - 1849.

Frederick West Lander (December 17, 1821 - March 2, 1862) was a transcontinental United States explorer, general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and a prolific poet. Lander was born in Salem, Massachusetts, the son of Edward and Eliza West Lander. He was educated at the Norwich Military Academy in Vermont and took up the profession of civil engineering.

John Nobili, born Giovanni Pietro Antonio Nobili, (28 April, 1812 - March 1, 1856) was an Italian priest of the Society of Jesus. He was a missionary in the Oregon Territory and later founded Santa Clara College. Born in Rome in 1812, Nobili entered the Society of Jesus in 1828 and taught humanities in Jesuit colleges in Italy, notably the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1843.

Andrew Jackson Smith (April 28, 1815 - January 30, 1897) was a U.S. Army general during the American Civil War, rising to the command of a corps. He was most noted for routing Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest's force at the Battle of Tupelo, Mississippi, on July 14, 1864. It was the worst defeat ever suffered by the vaunted Forrest. Smith was born in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1838, …

Riley Evans Stratton was the 11th Associate Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court serving from 1859 until 1866. He was one of the first group of justices elected to the court along with Aaron E. Wait and Paine Page Prim as previous members of the court were appointed during Oregon’s territorial period.

Dabney Herndon Maury (May 21, 1822 - January 11, 1900) was an officer in the United States Army, instructor at West Point, author of military training books, and a major general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Maury was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, the son of Naval officer John Minor Maury, who died of yellow fever in the West Indies when Dabney was two years old. He was brought up by his uncle, Matthew Fontaine Maury, …

Grace de Laguna (1878-1978) was an American philosopher who taught at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. Grace Mead Andrus, as she was born, was of Connecticut ancestry, her father Wallace R. Andrus, having served in the 17th Connecticut Volunteers in the Civil War; he was later a land agent for the Northern Pacific Railway. Her mother was Annis Mead. She was raised in the Oregon Territory. She attended the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University, …