Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/127

 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH SCHOOLS 109 for girls and Bishop Scott Grammar and Divinity School for boys. Before his death, Bishop Scott had purchased three- fourths of the block bounded by Third, Fourth, Madison and Jefferson Streets, and had erected a house and chapel thereon, hoping that the property might some day belong to the church. Bishop Morris readily recognized the value of the location and immediately took measures to secure it. He made an urgent appeal in the church paper, "The Spirit of Missions," and this appeal was answered by Mr. John D. Wolfe and his daughter, Catherine Wolfe, of New York City, by supplying most of the funds neces- sary for the purchase of the lot. It was accordingly pur- chased from the widow of Bishop Scott for $7,000 in 1869 and in 1876 the remainder of the block was purchased, making the total cost $10,000. The rent of the house on this lot was used to establish the "Wolfe Scholarship," which supported a boarding pupil in the Hall. Bishop Morris brought with him as teachers, his three sisters-in- law, the Misses Mary B., Lydia, and Clementina Rodney, who, with three others, made up the teaching staff the first year, 1869-70. Miss Mary B. Rodney was the princi- pal of St. Helen's Hall from its beginning until her death in 1896. Her work is spoken of repeatedly in the highest terms. She was a graduate of and subsequently a teacher in St. Mary's Hall in Burlington, N. J. In 1879 she re- ceived a flattering offer from that school to take full control of it, but declined and remained in Portland. The school was a success from the start. It opened September 6, 1869, with fifty pupils and the number in- creased later in the year to seventy-five. By the end of the year it had reached 130 and the attendance for the next twenty years varied from that number up to 190. The teaching staff was increased to ten the second year and later increased to fourteen or fifteen. The old Bishop Scott dwelling and chapel were used as a nucleus about which the school was built. The first year, 1869, a dormitory building was erected at a cost of m