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318 REVEREND EZRA FISHER

ance with vice and luxury will soon work the ruin of this fair portion of our great nation. We are looking for some half dozen female teachers sent out by the Board of National Popular Educational Society. 211 We hope that the Society will not be made a tool to sustain Congregationalism through all our new states and territories. From the nature of the case it must be a mighty engine and, unless well guarded, will be employed to serve the interests of those sects who manage its affairs. A fair proportion of the teachers sent out to the West by that Society should be Baptists, or the deficiency should be met by direct denominational action on our part, or the molding of the minds of the next generation in the mighty West is given over into Pedo-baptist hands, or, what is far worse, into the hands of the Romans.

We have not yet contracted the printing of the minutes of our Association, but voted to print 300 copies, together with an abstract of the minutes of 1848, all of which will about fill eight octavo pages. Our printer here will charge us $75 for 150 copies. I have prepared them for the press and I do not know but we shall send to you for printing. We presume the work can be done for $12 at most in New Y. The Associa- tion voted unanimously to request the Board of the American Baptist Home Mission Society to appoint Elder Vincent Snelling as their missionary to labor one year within the bounds of the Willamette Baptist Association at a salary of $200. 2 " Done by order of the Association. Ezra Fisher, Clerk. Yours respectfully,

EZRA FISHER.

Oregon City, Oregon, July 10, 1850. Dear Br. Hill:

The steamer Carolina is in with the mail at Portland. I do not know how soon she will go out, but probably in two or three

211 This refers doubtless to the five young women who came out to teach in 1851. They were escorted by Thurston, the Oregon delegate to Congress, who died on the way out. Bancroft, Hist, of Ore. II: 136. (They were sent by the National Board of Education. Gov. William Slade. president, at the solicitation of Dr. G. H. Atkinson. George H. Himes.)

212 Rev. Vincent Snelling was appointed Aug. i, 1850, by the Home Mission Society, for the term of one year. Mattoon, Bap. An. of Or*. 1:44.