Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/918

602 increased rapidly. In the summer they put me up a boarding-house. I now had thirty boarders of both sexes, and of all ages, from four years old to twenty-one. I managed them and did all my work except washing. That was done by the scholars. In the spring of '49 we called for trustees. Had eight appointed. They voted me the whole charge of the boarding-house free of rent and I was to provide for myself. The price of board was established at $2 per week. Whatever I made over my expenses was my own. In '51 I had forty in my family at $2.50 per week; mixed with my own hands, 3,423 pounds of flour in less than five months. Mr. Clark made over to the trustees a quarter section of land for a town plot. A large and handsome building is on the site we selected at the first starting. It has been under town incorporation for two years, and at the last session of the legislature a charter was granted for a University to be called Pacific University, with a limitation of $50,000.00. The president and professor are already here from Vermont. The teacher and his lady for the academy are from New York. I have endeavored to give general outlines of what I have done. You must be judges whether I have been doing good or evil. I have labored for myself and the rising generation, but I have not quit hard work, and live at my ease, independent as to worldly concerns. I own a nicely furnished white frame house on a lot in town, within a short distance of the public buildings. That I rent for $100 per year. -I have eight other town lots, without buildings, worth $150 each. I have eight cows and a number of young cattle. The cows I rent out for their milk and one-half of their increase. I have rising $1,000 cash due me; $400 of it I have donated to the University; besides $100 I gave to the academy three years ago. This much I have been able to accumulate by my own industry, independent of my children, since I drew 6-¼ cents from the finger of my glove."

On this statement the partisans of Mrs. Brown found her claim to the honor of starting a college. Give Mr. Clark all the credit he is entitled to; and still the story goes back to the proposition of the devoted Christian woman to take the orphan children and be a mother to them, feed, educate and care for them if anybody would help her. She was fortunate in making the proposition to the right man; a man who never counted dollars, self-interest or personal convenience against any proposition to do good to his fellow man.

Other facts throw light on this question. The idea of starting this school was proposed by Mrs. Brown in 1847. Prior to that time Mr. Clark had in 1842, co-operated with the Methodists in selecting the site for the Oregon Institute at Salem; taught children of settlers on Tualatin Plains in 1842; had acted as chaplain to the provisional legislature in 1843; taught in the Clackamas Seminary at Oregon City (Methodist) in 1851, leaving Mrs. Brown to hold the Forest Grove post, Mrs. Clark assisting as teacher. A life like picture of Mrs. Brown is given on another page. Just as Jason Lee's Indian school was the germ of Willamette University, in like degree was Mrs. Brown's orphan school the germ of Pacific University.

Rev. Cushing Eells was the first principal of Tualatin Academy, assisted by Mrs. Eells. After that he had for an assistant Miss Elizabeth Millar, sent to Oregon by the National Board of Popular Education, Governor William Slade, of Vermont, president, through the efforts of Rev. Geo. H. Atkinson. Miss Millar married Joseph G. Wilson of Salem, who became the first circuit and supreme judge in eastern Oregon, and afterwards a member of Congress, dying