Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/48

 38 AUSTIN MIRES take some appreciative interest in the new institution of learn- ing. And though the people were rated poor in worldly ef- fects, their children were sent to the Umpqua Academy in its earliest days from miles away. It is no exaggeration to say that a majority of the young men, and many of the young women, attending the school, whose parents resided any con- siderable distance away from Wilbur, "bached," as that mode of living was termed ; this being the only way in which it was possible for them to meet the necessary expense to attend school at all. In the early days there were no church buildings in the coun- try, with regular services. On occasion a preacher came along and held "meeting/' as it was called, in the log school house or other available structure. And again camp meetings were appointed here and there at appropriate places, where the peo- ple came and put up tents and brought a few household effects, such as stoves, cooking utensils, bedding, etc., and there camped for days together, worshipping in their own simple way, and visiting and interchanging views upon current questions in the intervals. When these occurrences came about the people liv- ing in the country donned their best clothes, called their Sun- day or meeting clothes, and the father yoked his patient oxen and hitched them to the old immigrant wagon (horses were used in some instances by those who had them), and when the family were all loaded in, drove to meeting, sometimes sev- eral miles distant. After the services were over, it was the custom for one or more families to accompany some neighbor home and there take dinner and visit the remainder of the day. And the preachers who conducted these meetings, as well as those who held forth at the camp meetings in those days, all had their headquarters at Wilbur, either residing there or directed from that place. So that Wilbur was the center from which radiated all religious and educational activity in Umpqua valley at the very first, and Umpqua Academy was the main spring, so to speak, of it all. The first preacher I now remember of ever seeing was T. F. Royal (Fletcher Royal, as he was better known among the old