Jacob Vanderpool

Jacob Vanderpool was an African-American who is the only known person to be expelled from Oregon under their exclusion laws.

Vanderpool, a sailor from the West Indies, came to Oregon in 1850 on board a ship called the Louisiana. Vanderpool came to Oregon to launch a career in business. After being denied a land claim because he was black, Vanderpool opened a saloon, restaurant and boarding home in Oregon City. However, the book Peculiar Paradise states that his businesses were located in Salem, across the street from the offices of the Oregon Statesman. On August 20, 1851, a settler named Theophilus Magruder identified Vanderpool as a "mulatto" and lodged a complaint that Vanderpool was in violation of the second exclusion act, passed on September 21, 1849. This second exclusion law was passed specifically to target African American seamen who may be tempted to jump ship. Vanderpool was removed from the region by a court-appointed official. Only six days elapsed from the time he was accused of violating the exclusion law to his expulsion.

After expulsion There is no formal record of what happened to Vanderpool after he left Oregon, nor are there any pictures of him. It is possible that he moved to San Francisco to work as a hardware packer, since the 1870 Census recorded a fifty-year-old man named Jacob Vanderpool living in that city with a woman named Mary Vanderpool.