Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/13

 UMPQUA ACADEMY 3 emies named were under the patronage of the Methodist Epis- copal Church. . Before the Portland school had been incorporated Wilbur had been appointed by Bishop Edward R. Ames as Superin- tendent of the "Umpqua Mission." This was in March, 1853, at Salem, when the M. E. Church of the Northwest was formed into an annual conference and separated from Cali- fornia. Writing of this event, Rev. H. K. Hines says in substance that "Methodism here passed into the third stage the first being purely missionary and the second under a Mis- sion Conference. Now it had reached full autonomy of a con- ference and had taken its place in the records and constitution of the church." Let it be said here that it is no part of the aim of the writer to put into this narrative an undue portion of church history. But it has been said by others and certainly is true that the history of Oregon cannot be written apart from the events in which the Methodist missionaries and pioneers were the principal actors. They, more than the members of any other organization, saved Oregon to the Union. It was under the circumstances attending these times that this stronger organization sent this strong man into a great field for a great work. Willamette University at Salem, the oldest educational in- stitution west of the Rocky Mountains, had been organized for some years and was well calculated as the center of a school system as well as to serve a local need. It was Wil- bur's idea that academies, correlated to Willamette University, should be established at different points that reasonable facili- ties might be thus offered for a liberal education to the pioneer families. How natural to his thought, then, that in this "Umpqua Mission," comprising the entire Umpqua basin, the Umpqua Academy should: be established ! Among the early farmers, stockmen and miners of Southern Oregon, this messenger of the gospel and apostle of education moved freely and found a welcome wherever there was a hungry soul and a task wherever he could plant ambition in a