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304 REVEREND EZRA FISHE*

Art. 5th. This Society shall hold its annual meetings at the time and place of the annual meetings of the Willam- ette Baptist Association.

Art. 6th. It shall be the duty of the President to call special meetings of this Society at the request of any two members of the Board.

Art. 7th. The officers of this Society shall be empowered to regulate their own meetings and to make their own by- laws, not inconsistent with this Constitution.

Art. 8th. This Constitution may be altered or amended at any annual meeting of the Society by a vote of two- thirds the members present.

In view of the improbability of securing the property where the locating committee had fixed for the site of an institution and in view of the manifest providences of God, the Education Society convened Feb. 3d. Elder H. Johnson called to the chair. Moderator prayed. On motion it was voted to reconsider so much of the proceedings of the So- ciety as it related to the location of an institution of learning in the center of the Willamette Valley.

After hearing proposals from the brethren who had pur- chased the Barlow claim in reference to this object, it was unanimously voted to locate the Baptist institution on the forty acres of the above named claim immediately adjoining the city plat of Oregon City. 1 " The site will command an excellent view of the river below the town and the lower part of the city. Providence has seemed to close up almost

199 The tract is now known on official maps as the Ezra Fisher Donation Land Claim, and adjoins the Oregon City Claim on the east. No college buildings were ever erected there. The building,* as recorded later in these letters, was put up in Oregon City.

This Baptist institution was only one of a number of Christian denominational institutions which were projected in these days when the state had as yet failed to provide adequately for public instruction. Some of these institutions died early; others, as at Monmouth and Corvallis, were merged into state institutions. A few survive as Christian academies and colleges.

Among those which perished were the Clackamas "female seminary" at Oregon City, a college at Eugene, and academies at Sheridan and Santiam. Among the surviving schools are Willamette University, Pacific University, Albany College, and McMinnville College. To this last was turned over the remnant of the property of that Oregon City college, whose early history is given in these letters.