Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/243

Rh It is not necessary at this time to recount prosy details of his life in the erection of the mission. In May, 1841, the first annual meeting of the Methodist Society was held here, and a committee appointed to select for the manual labor school a site not far from the mission mills on Chemeketa plain. Here a building costing ten thousand dollars was erected, and in this an Indian school was taught for about nine months, beginning in the autumn of 1842.

On the 17th of January, 1842, at the home of Jason Lee, a few men met to establish an educational institution for the benefit of white children, and I. L. Babcock, Gustavus Hines, and David Leslie were appointed a committee to undertake the work. A subsequent meeting was held at the old mission house on French Prairie on February 1, 1842, and it was there decided to name and found an institution of learning. The Oregon Institute thus became the first institution of learning upon the Pacific Coast. Its first board of trustees consisted of Jason Lee, Gustavus Hines, J. L. Parrish, L. H. Judson, David Leslie, George Abernethy, Alanson Beers, Hamilton Campbell, and I. L. Babcock. These men, under the leadership of Jason Lee, were building a commonwealth. They did not despise the day of small beginnings. They did their duty in the light of their opportunities, and although the site of this first American educational institution west of the Rocky Mountains has faded from the memory of all living men, and the timbers that entered into its frail structure have long since passed into dust, the efforts which they made and the example which they have set have left an imperishable impress upon the educational, political, and social institutions of the great Northwest.

It is also to the credit of Jason Lee that he suggested to Senator Linn the donation land law, and that the measure as suggested by him had no clause therein which