John P. Gaines

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. He was the owner of Margaret Garner, whose enslavement and sexual assault is the basis for Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved.

Biography

Early life

Gaines was born September 22, 1795, in Augusta County, Virginia, to Abner Gaines and Elizabeth Matthews. His grandfathers and great-grandfather served during the American Revolutionary War. He received an education and studied law, and volunteered in the War of 1812. In 1819, Gaines married Elizabeth Kincaid from Kentucky He was a lawyer practicing in Boone County, Kentucky, and served as a state legislator in Kentucky during the 1820s and 1830s.

Military Gaines volunteered and was appointed the rank of Major during the Mexican–American War in 1846. During the war in 1847 he was General Winfield Scott's aide-de-camp. He traveled to Oregon with Territorial Secretary Edward D. Hamilton aboard the sloop Falmouth. This commission was created because the Donation Land Act in 1850 allowed citizens to settle up to and the government wanted the lands west of the Cascades for settlement and to move the tribes to Eastern Oregon.

Slave owner In 1825 Gaines purchased a plantation called Maplewood in Kentucky. Around a dozen enslaved persons worked this plantation, including the mother of Margaret Garner, who was born in 1833. Aged five or six, Margaret was put to work in Gaines' house, where her duties involved looking after his children.

In 1849 Gaines left Kentucky to become governor of the Oregon Territory, and therefore sold Maplewood and its enslaved residents to his younger brother Archibald Gaines. In 1856 Margaret, her husband and four children escaped to Cincinnati, but a posse quickly tracked them down. As they were surrounded, Margaret tried to kill herself and her children (successfully killing her two-year-old daughter), rather than be returned to slavery. Garner's life inspired Toni Morrison's novel Beloved.

Later life

Gaines ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1855, but lost to Lane. Governor Gaines' appointment to the governorship indirectly lead to the death of several of his family, including his daughters Harriet and Florella, who died in 1850. In 1851 his wife Elizabeth went for a ride on the Clatsop plains and was thrown from her horse, which had become frightened by a wagon. Mrs. Gaines was crushed beneath the wagon's wheels and died from the injuries she sustained. After this tragedy his remaining children were sent back to relatives in the East.

About 15 months after his wife's death, Gaines remarried, joining in matrimony with Margaret B. Wands, one of five schoolteachers recently sent to the state.

John P. Gaines died December 9, 1857, and is interred in the Old Pioneer Cemetery at Salem, Oregon.

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