Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/553

Rh he made in the methods of teaching gave instant success to his work. The modern normal school may be traced, so it is claimed to the founder of the brothers of the Christian schools.

The Christian Brothers came to Portland early in 1886, took charge of what was then known as St. Michael's college, a pioneer institution in which many men now prominent in the life of the northwest were educated. The college was founded by the late Father Eierens, V. G., and was opened August 20, 1871. Rev. A. Glorieux, now bishop of Boise, was the first president. The college was conducted by the priests of the diocese until the end of 1885, when it was turned over to the Christian Brothers. The first Brothers were three in number, Brother Aldrick, the principal, and Brothers, Bertram and Michael. Brother Michael still survives at Berkeley, California.

The Portland University was founded by Archbishop Alexander Christie in 1901. The buildings, lands and foundations of the enterprise had been provided by the University Land Company co-operating with the Methodist Episcopal church of Oregon. The proposition had been to establish a great university here in Portland, on the spot where Hall J. Kelley had in 1835 platted and planned the first town site in Old Oregon, for the beginning of the great city of the Pacific coast.

But for lack of funds, the Methodists were not able to comply with their contracts with the land company, and push forward their well meant purpose of establishing a great institution of learning. And so the university campus, together with a noble brick building reverted to the land company, and was by it formally transferred to the archbishop as trustee or corporation sole, for the Catholic church.

Upon the acquisition of the property, the name of the institution was changed to Columbia University, and plans were made and measures adopted to open the college in the early fall of 1901. In the presence of a great concourse of Catholic clergy and laity, the archbishop dedicated Columbia University to the cause of Catholic education and to the honor of the Triune God. On the 5th of September, the new institution under the presidency of the Rev. Edward P. Murphy, assisted by a zealous and competent faculty, greeted her first students.

The college has prospered from its opening down to the present, when it has a faculty of fifteen professors, and several hundred students, with a course of study covering the whole field of science, art and literature.

St. Helen's hall defines education in the words of Felix Dupanloup, to be "the end to be obtained. Instruction is one of the means. Instruction provides the mind with certain things. Education forms at the same time the understanding, the heart, the character, and the conscience."

This school was the successor of a school founded for girls, by Bishop Scott, at the village of Milwaukie, six miles south of Portland. The Milwaukie school being then in 1857. remote from Portland, and having no nearby supporting population, Qould not be anything other than a boarding school, and for that there was not sufficient patronage to support it. And so after a few years trial its doors were closed.

When Bishop Morris came to this diocese he came prepared to establish a girls' school that could be both a boarding school, and command day school patronage; and he brought with him a competent principal for such an enter-