Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 21.djvu/14



4 HENRY L. BATES

Willamette Valley, having no family cares, but with a warm love for God and humanity in her heart, looked around for something to do for somebody. Soon the opportunity pre- sented itself to take up the work of teaching again. She found some 15 or 20 orphaned children at West Tualatin or what is now Forest Grove, whom she gathered into an orphan school, co-operating with Mr. Clark and taking over the work which he and his wife had already begun. This school was held in the log church which stood on what is now the college campus, and the site of which is marked by a petrified stump. The next year, 1848, the number of homeless children dependent on Mrs. Brown was considerably increased through the exodus of men from Oregon to the newly discovered gold mines in California who left their families, in some instances, almost destitute.

Meanwhile Mr. Clark's larger purpose waited the oppor- tunity and the man. Not long, however, for in 1848 there arrived another of those missionary pioneers who had so much to do in laying the foundations of a Christian civilization on this side of the Great Divide. Dr. George H. Atkinson, the first missionary sent here by the American Home Missionary Society. With his young wife he sailed from Boston in October, 1847, by way of Cape Horn and the Sandwich Islands, reach- ing Oregon City eight months later in June, 1848. Among all the pioneers who came in that early day to Oregon, probably no one had a clearer vision of its possibilities and a more complete knowledge of its almost boundless resources. In process of time he came to be recognized as a foremost author- ity on matters of education in the territory.

He took a leading part in forming the public school system of the state. He taught in the first graded school in Portland. He prepared the educational part of the first message of the Governor to the first Territorial Legislature which gave the first impulse towards organizing the public school system. He was a pioneer in meteorological observations in the Pacific