Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/88

80 or cake. The only apples or oranges the children had seen in Oregon were a few presented to them by a sea captain at Astoria.

In the spring of 1848, Ezra Fisher helped to build a log house to serve for school and church purposes and on March 18, 1848, organized the Clatsop Plains Baptist Church. At this time he was the only minister in the county, its population was gradually increasing and at his two stations were two Sunday schools with forty-two scholars, ten teachers and one hundred and twenty library books.

In June, he made another trip to the Valley, this time to aid in the organization of the first Baptist association in Oregon, and to awaken an interest in starting a denominational school. At West Union the Willamette Baptist Association was organized, June 23, 1848, Elder Fisher being elected moderator and David Lenox clerk. Thereafter, throughout his life, Ezra Fisher was greatly interested in all the work of this Association, was its moderator many times, preached to it and served it in numberless ways. In connection with it was a Ministers' Conference which he helped to organize and of which he was repeatedly elected moderator. He later assisted in the organization of the Corvallis Association, and of the General Association, in both of which he took an active part.

At the close of the West Union Meeting, he made an extended tour of the Valley, preaching and looking over the field with the thought of a suitable location for a school constantly before him. He travelled on foot sixty-five miles above Oregon City, crossed the Willamette near Salem and visited the Yamhill church, returned through the Chehalem and Tualatin valleys and arrived at Oregon City on the twentieth of July. Leaving Oregon City on the twenty-fourth, he reached home the twenty-eighth.

About this time came the California gold excitement.

In the spring of 1849, none of his church on Clatsop Plains was left but members of his own family. Amid the general