David Thomas Lenox

David Thomas Lenox (December 8, 1802 – October 18, 1874) was an American pioneer who settled in the Oregon Country where he organized the first Baptist Church west of the Rocky Mountains. A native of New York, he lived in Illinois and Missouri before he was captain of the first wagon train over the Oregon Trail to what became the state of Oregon. His parents were English of the Scotch Methodist faith. He became an orphan at an early age, and had a limited education in the local schools. Lenox was already waiting to start for the Willamette Valley, but after the speech he signed up to travel with Burnett to Oregon. Burnett was selected as the captain of the wagon train at the beginning, but after one day he resigned and Lenox was elected as the new captain. Whitman arrived after his winter trip from his mission in the Oregon Country to Washington, D.C., and joined the group after they had started out. After a brief residence, he settled a donation land claim nearby and farmed the land. Lenox donated the land for both the church and adjoining cemetery. The church is located where his original cabin was located. That winter the cabin held the thirteen members of the Lenox clan, six members of the Fisher family, and a widow and her three children. He served on the first board of directors of the district along with Caleb Wilkins and James W. Chambers. The school never held classes, and instead was transferred to a school in McMinnville run by Sebastian C. Adams and became the forerunner of Linfield College. He finished sixth in the voting, with David Hill, Morton M. McCarver, and J. W. Smith elected to the House of Representatives instead of Lenox. A Democrat, he served in that position, the only judge in what had become Washington County.

Later life Lenox moved to the Eastern Oregon city of Weston in 1870 where he purchased a farm. David Thomas Lenox died on October 18, 1874, near Weston at the age of 71. After his death he was buried on the farm, with the location of the gravesite at the Kees (or Blue Mountain) Cemetery later lost, but then rediscovered in 1924. In 1924, the Baptists of Oregon dedicated a monument in his honor at his gravesite. This group then moved his remains and their plaque in 1960 to the West Union Baptist Church Cemetery where his wife was buried.