Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/941

Rh and on his new store, the first brick business house in the settlement. At the first annual election, held in June, 1845, Mr. Abernethy was chosen governor while he was absent at the Sandwich Islands buying goods for his new store. Dr. John E. Long became secretary of state, but was drowned soon after, while fording the Clackamas river on horseback, and lies buried in the Catholic churchyard at Oregon City. Frederick Prigg was chosen in his place and he, too, was drowned soon after. Francis Ermatinger, clerk in the Hudson's Bay store, was made treasurer, and James W. Nesmith, judge. Marcus Ford became district attorney, Sidney W. Moss, assessor, and Joseph L. Meek, sheriff again. Thirteen representatives were elected, among them H. A. G. Lee, Hiram Straight and M. M. McCarver of Oregon City. At this legislature of 1845, wheat was made a legal tender in the payment of debts, and Sheriff Meek took a census of the population, reporting 2,110 people in Oregon, all but ninety-one of whom lived in the Willamette valley.

After the emigration of 1843 had arrived, Sidney W. Moss found in a tent on the bank of the river a widow, with several children, whose husband had died on the journey. Engaging the lady to take charge of his boarding house, he set out with the hand of her little son in his to find a schoolmaster. Hailing John P. Brooks, he engaged him on the spot, gave him a room in his house, and paid him himself to open the first public school in Oregon City. In this year also the Catholic sisters opened a private school.

In May, 1844, Rev. Harvey Clark, a self-supporting Congregational missionary, was preaching at the house of Peter H. Hatch when it was proposed to organize a church. With Robert Moore, Osborne Russell, a trapper from a Baptist family in Maine, who had been converted while reading his Bible in the Rocky mountains, and Peter H. Hatch, as deacon, the church was organized. Mr. Moore desired the name to be "The Presbyterian Church of Willamette Falls," and being the oldest man, influential and of strong convictions, the others yielded the name, although the mode of constituting the church was essentially congregational. About this time, also, the Methodist church, begun in 1842, was completed and dedicated, the first Protestant house of worship west of the Rocky mountains.

In the fall of 1843, Rev. Modeste Demers of Canada, conducted the first Catholic service in Oregon City in a small house owned by a Mr. Pomeroy, and here services were held until a Catholic church was built in 1845, and dedicated in 1846.

In December of 1845, Rev. Hezekiah Johnson and Rev. Ezra Fisher arrived in Oregon City, and commenced preaching at private houses and in outlying neighborhoods. A Baptist church was organized at the house of Peter H. Hatch, on Fourth and Water streets. In October, 1847, Dr. McLoughlin donated two lots, and Mr. Johnson built a meeting house, largely with his own hands, thus completing the first Baptist church west of the Rocky mountains. In the fall of 1848, Mr. Johnson started a school in his meeting house, that later, with Rev. Ezra Fisher in charge, was called the Oregon City University, and finally removed, became the Baptist college at McMinnville. From Oregon City as a center, Mr. Johnson traveled as an evangelist by canoe, on foot and astride his trusty cayuse. He said this was his best study, and his best sermons were worked out on horseback. Rev. Fisher also traveled extensively organizing churches. One time his pony "Dolly" threw him and a rib was broken. Some months after an eastern paper printed this item, "Rev. Ezra Fisher of Oregon, while on his way to one of his appointments, was thrown from his carriage and one of his ribs was broken." This created amusement when read on the Willamette, for there were few carriages in Oregon, and none for poor Baptist ministers who were preaching and supporting families on two hundred dollars a year.

Every autumn immigration was greater than the last, and 1845 proved no exception. Earliest of all came Col. William G. T'Vault, who brought news of the election of James K. Polk to the presidency on the cry of "'54, '40 or fight."