William Thompson Newby, born March 25, 1820, in McMinnville, Warren County, Tennessee. He married Sarah Jane McGary in Dade County, Missouri, on October 11, 1841, and they joined the great migration of 1843 on the Oregon Trail. They settled on land in Yamhill County, on what is now the site of McMinnville, Oregon. He was an assessor in 1848 for the Provisional Government, and ran a grist mill and store in the 1850s. They had nine children. He died October 22, 1884, in McMinnville.