Portal:Oregon/Selected biography/17

Dr. John McLoughlin (October 19, 1784 – September 3, 1857) was the Chief Factor of the Columbia Fur District of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver. In 1798, he began 4½ years of medical training and was granted a license to practice medicine in 1803. He was hired as a physician at Fort William, Ontario (now Thunder Bay, Ontario), a fur-gathering post of the North West Company on Lake Superior. In 1814, he became a partner in the company, and in 1816 he was arrested for the murder of Robert Semple, the governor of the Red River Colony, after the Battle of Seven Oaks (1816). McLoughlin was tried on October 30, 1818, and the charges were dismissed. McLoughlin was instrumental in the negotiations leading to the North West Company's 1821 merger with the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), and became Chief Factor of the Columbia District in 1824. McLoughlin was involved with the debate over the future of the Oregon Country. After retiring from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1846, McLoughlin moved his family back south to Oregon City in the Willamette Valley. In 1847, McLoughlin was given the Knighthood of St. Gregory, bestowed on him by Pope Gregory XVI. He became a U.S. citizen in 1849. He served as mayor of Oregon City in 1851, and died of natural causes in 1857. His grave is on a bluff above Willamette Falls. In 1953, the state of Oregon donated a statue of McLoughlin to the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection. The title "Father of Oregon" was officially bestowed on him by the Oregon Legislative Assembly in 1957.