Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/310



302 REVEREND EZRA FISHER

school house, with two apartments, on the contemplated site, although lumber is from $100 to $150 per thousand feet and carpenter's and joiners' labor is from $8 to $12 per day. Cannot some friends furnish us with a bell weighing from 100 to 400 pounds ? You may learn by the bearer of this that a large company is forming, or rather is formed, to build up a town immediately adjoining Cape Disappointment with steam mill, steam boat, 19 ? etc. This is adjoining the point which the government will first fortify on the north side of the Columbia at the entrance from the ocean. The enterprise will probably succeed, not however to the prejudice of As- toria. I am pained in spirit every moment I think of that point (at the mouth of the Columbia) being left destitute of a Baptist minister. Your Board cannot be too forcibly re- minded of the importance of early occupying that part of the field. The N. Y. of Oregon must spring up in that vi- cinity very soon. The first steamer which comes into the Columbia to run between this city and the mouth of the Co- lumbia will stop the shipping at Astoria. We have a small church at Clatsop Plains, not quite extinct, which would receive a minister and do what they can for his sup- port. If we had a man at the mouth of the river now, a block 200 feet square and located in the most favorable part of this new town, called Lancaster, would be donated for church purposes. Elder Snelling is in California and I learn that he has made arrangements to move his family to that territory. 198 He has not labored under the commission you sent me. We feel that we must have a missionary or two more for the Willamette Valley. One is needed at Salem on the east side of the river and one on the opposite side of the river with the Rickreal Church or the YamHill Church.

Yours affectionately,

EZRA FISHER. Received May 8, 1850.

197 This was later known as Pacific City, then Unity, and then Ilwaco. G. H. Himes.

198 Snelling died in California in 1855. Mattoon, Bap. An. of Ore. 1:44.