McDONOUGH B. REES. – This is a brother of the well-known pioneer, W.H. Rees, of Marion county, and has in his own right earned a wide reputation as a man of unusual force of character and enterprise.
He was born in Ohio in 1831, and came to Oregon in 1854. Much of his life on this coast has been devoted to prospecting and mining. As early as 1855 he was at the Pend d’Oreille mines, and in 1856 returned to the Willamette valley amid great dangers from the Indians. After farming a few years in the Willamette valley, he went to the Salmon river mines. His return to the Willamette was again amid perils, closely following the Jaggers party, which perished in the snow on the John Day hills; and one of their party, a Jew with forty pounds of gold dust, which he would allow no one else to carry, died of fatigue and exposure. His operations in the same mines the next summer were remunerative. In 1863 he was at Placerville, thence to the Upper Clearwater diggings; and in 1866 he brought a band of cattle from the Willamette valley to the Grande Ronde. He continued the business of drover until 1869, and thenceforward has devoted himself exclusively to farming and stock-raising in The Cove, Oregon, where he owns sixteen hundred acres of fine land, and one hundred milch cows, besides other stock. He also has town property.
He was married in 1856 to Miss America Fe Hall, of Marion county. They have five children.
