Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/91

Rh times, visiting also the Umpqua and Rogue river valleys. He visited and preached to the churches, assisted in the organization of others, held meetings, kept before the denomination higher standards of efficiency and was everywhere an influence for good. His was in very truth "the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight."

Of his work during the time he made his home in Oregon City, he has given a fuller account than of any other period of his life. Let us leave to him the details of both it and of the Oregon City College.

On Jan. 20, 1854, at her home near the site for the Oregon City College, Mrs. Fisher died at the age of forty-eight years. Her illness was short and her family unprepared for so great a calamity. She left five children. The oldest was married; the four at home were aged respectively nineteen, fourteen, ten and six. She had lost two daughters: one, at Quincy, Ill., in 1838; the other, at Muscatine, Ia., in 1842.

Mrs. Fisher had been a missionary's wife for twenty-two years. She had the same missionary spirit as her husband and was constantly encouraging him in his work. With sweetness and fortitude she bore every privation. If her own heart was ever dismayed, her family seldom knew it and she took fresh courage from her beautiful faith in God and the blessedness of their work. Her children have often said that they never heard an unkind word from her lips.

She knew how to make the most of everything. On scraps that many would have thrown away she could get up an attractive meal. If her home was sometimes a rough log cabin, it was a clean one and a most pleasant place to be.

Her death was the cause of a revival, in which about twenty-five were converted, most of them uniting with the Baptist church in Oregon City. Among the number were three of her own children and three from the family of Hezekiah Johnson.