Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/483



CORRESPONDENCE 475

the Umpqua at Winchester, and I learn by a letter that he will soon constitute a church at that place. He should be reappointed to labor at Winchester and other parts of the Umpqua Valley. I am unable to say what will be necessary to enable him to give himself to the ministry. He will be able to give you the necessary information. I think he will not be able to sustain himself on less than $500 or $600. Br. Read is a devoted, studious, thinking, exemplary man and wishes ardently to give himself wholly to the ministry. Br. Chandler has moved onto a claim twelve miles south from Oregon City. 291 This he did with a view of securing his family the means of sustenance. We do not blame him for making the move, but regret that our best men must take their families on to farms because they cannot be sus- tained in the towns. We expect he will preach to the church at Oregon City this year. We have at this time not a single minister located in a town as pastor, unless Winchester may be called a town. It seems that we must have a minister sustained at Oregon City, Portland and Salem, each, if it is possible. We need to have the example given to our churches of an efficient, devoted ministry, and this influence should go out from our towns. Yet in our towns we have few members, and they are not able like our landholders. We can find no self-denying man who will leave a flourishing church in N. York or N. England and move to our new towns in Oregon without seeing a prospect of having his family sustained. Till some provisions are made adequate to the support of the ministry, if they are induced 1 to move to Oregon with a prospect of sustaining the cause in a rising town, they will not long stay where want stares them in the face while they see that their wants may be easily met by laboring three or four days in a week with their hands in the country. At this time wheat is worth from $3.00 to $4.00 per bushel, flour $14.00 to $15.00 per hundred pounds;

291 This claim, known on government maps as the G. C. Chandler Donation Land Claim, is in Township 4 South, Range 2 East, of the Willamette Meridian, and is on Milk Creek, about three miles southeast of Mulino, Clackamas County.