Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/86



Illinois, during the winter of 1837-1838. In the spring of 1839, nineteen men took a two-horse wagon and a band of horses as far as Independence, Missouri. Here they transferred their luggage to pack horses and turned their course toward Santa Fe, where there was abundance of grass and many buffalo. By the last of September they reached Green River where they met Joe Meek and other well known trappers. Their suffering was intense as they traveled through deep snows with only dog meat to subsist upon, and nothing but cotton wood boughs for their horses to eat. Of this party only tive reached the Willamette Valley.

First Protestant Church on Pacific Coast With the migration to Oregon there grew a demand for churches and schools, and to meet this demand a Methodist church edifice was begun at Oregon City in 1 842, and completed in 1844. This was the first protestant church on the Pacific coast. However, the chapel of the Oregon Institute of Salem had been used for religious services as early as 1841. Prior to that time the Methodists

held religious meet- first church west of rocky moun ingS in homes, in tains. Built at Oregon city 1841-184»

groves, and in the Mission building, their missionary work having been begun by Rev. Jason Lee in 1834.

Willamette University. The missionaries aboard the "Lausanne" on their voyage from New York to Oregon celebrated the centennial of Methodism (October 25, 1839), by starting a fund with which to establish a school in the