Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/921

Rh in that office. Mrs. Wilson is still alive and a member of the advisory board for this history. Mr. Clark gave nearly all of his donation land claim to aid the academy and college. Rev. George H. Atkinson, the first Congregational home missionary to Oregon, took an active interest in the school, and fixed its character permanently as a Congregational institution. In 1853 Dr. Atkinson secured the services of Rev. Sidney Harper Marsh to take charge of the school. Prof. Marsh was well adapted to the work; entered upon this duty with great energy and perseveringly pushed the work of the college for twenty-six years. Whatever Pacific University is in the world of science and literature is owing to the life work of Sidney Harper Marsh. The first graduate of this college, 1863, was Harvey W. Scott, who was for half a century the editor-in-chief of the Daily and Weekly Oregonian, and by many persons considered the ablest editorial writer in the United States. The college has twenty-seven professors and teachers, affording every facility for instruction in the liberal arts, sciences and practical and professional teaching. William Nelson Perrin is president of the faculty, 1912.

. To the Rev. Ezra Fisher is due the honor of suggesting the first Baptist educational work in Oregon. His work was the organization on paper of the Oregon City College at Oregon City in 1849. Mr. Fisher's college was eclipsed by the gold mining rush to California in that year; and the good man was afterwards engaged in keeping a respectable hotel at Salem in 1864. The first Baptist school incorporated in Oregon after Fisher's effort was the "Corvallis Institute" incorporated in 1856. It also ended with the Act of Incorporation. In 1857 the Legislature chartered the "West Union Institute" in Washington County, with David Lenox, E. 11. Lenox, Henry Sewell, Wm. Mauzey, John S. White and George Chandler as Trustees. This school would have been located about fifteen miles from the city of Portland. At the same session of the Legislature a charter was granted to the Baptist college at McMinnville, a school already founded by the Christian (Campbellites) and turned over to the Baptists with all its property and franchises, six acres of ground and a school building, as a free gift, upon the condition that the Baptists should maintain in operation a collegiate school. Here is found the origin of McMinnville and its college. In 1852-3 W. T. Newby, whose likeness appears on another page, cut a water ditch from Baker creek (a branch of Yamhill river) to Cozine creek, upon his own land, and erected a flouring mill. In 1854, Sebastian C. Adams, whose farm was four miles north, took a grist of wheat to Newby's mill, and in the course of conversation remarked to Newby the favorable location his place afforded for a townsite. Whereupon Newby replied that if Mr. Adams would start the town he (Newby) would give him a block of lots and select his own location, from which point the survey should start. Adams accepted the proposition and in the spring of 1855 hauled lumber to the ground for a house to be erected 200 yards from the Newby mill, and when completed Adams made the house his home. Immediately afterwards Adams, who was a teacher, begun to agitate the starting of a select school as a nucleus for a settlement; and as he and most of the settlers in that vicinity were members of the Christian church, the school became a Christian or Campbellite institution. Dr. James McBride, Adams and Newby worked up the scheme, and Newby gave six acres of land for a home for the school; laid out the town and named it McMinnville after his native town in Tennessee, and Adams be-