Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 21/Pacific University
THE QUARTERLY
of the
Oregon Historical Society
Copyright, 1919, by the Oregon Historical Society
The Quarterly disavows responsibility for the positions taken by contributors to its pages
PACIFIC UNIVERSITY
By Henry L. Bates
Time is a relative quantity and the age of an institution or a nation is a matter of comparison. The Rocky Mountain range seems hoary indeed as compared with the generations of men who have lived in the Willamette Valley; and yet geologists tell us that this mountain barrier belongs to the most recent geologic time as compared with the countless aeons since first the Appalachian range lifted its head.
We are all young here in Oregon. Contrast the brief existence of our educational institutions with such a foundation as Harvard, nearly ready to celebrate her tercentenary; and yet Harvard is young compared with the University of Paris with its nearly 800 years of continuous history.
So, while it is my pleasing task to narrate some of the facts concerning one of the oldest educational institutions west of the Mississippi River preceded indeed, only by the splendid foundation laid by Rev. Jason Lee at Chemeketa, I realize that every work of man here is recent and immature by comparison.
Harvard was founded in 1636, Yale in 1701, and many a college in the East and Middle West has celebrated its hundredth anniversary. Oregon's Provisional Government was established in 1845, proclaimed as a territory in 1849 and admitted to the Union in 1859. Only in 1847 did the first steamer enter San Francisco bay. California was ceded to the United States in 1848 and admitted in 1850. Washington was organized as a territory in 1853 and became a state as late as 1889. Vancouver Island was constituted a British colony only in 1849.
The high character and quality of the tide of immigration to this Northwest in the thirties and forties is evidenced by their early interest in education and religion.
The building of schools and churches seemed to them to be one of the first necessities for the establishment of a permanent and desirable social structure in this new land of promise.
Many of the leaders came from that part of the East which gave us our free public school system and where the Christian College was the dominant type of the higher schools of learning.
They stopped not to question the necessity of such schools here. The first school teacher west of the Rockies was John Ball, who opened a school at Vancouver in 1832 with 25 half-breed children.
The first school south of the Columbia was the Mission school near old Champoeg, taught by Philip L. Edwards in 1835. Then comes that heroic pioneer Methodist missionary, Rev. Jason Lee, whose mission, as often has been the case, was to found schools as well as churches; and in 1842 the Oregon Institute at Chemeketa or North Salem, was begun primarily as a school for Indian children though the school was not formally opened till 1844. Out of this grew in time Willamette University, which received its college charter from the Territorial Legislature in 1853, just one year before Pacific University received its charter.
Pacific University, too, like many of the best educational institutions of our land, had its origin in a missionary enterprise. It was truly the child of missions in that its foundation
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was laid by men who were dedicated to missionary labor and to planting the seeds, in this far-away land, of a Christian civilization.
The first in order of time, at least, of these men of high ideals and a lofty vision was the Rev. Harvey Clark, a native of Vermont, who, with his young wife, a graduate of Oberlin, fired with zeal for missionary work among the native tribes, had come to Oregon in 1841 as independent, self-supporting missionaries.
He settled upon his land claim, on which the town of Forest Grove now stands, and built a log house in which he and his wife taught the children of the settlers, being thus the first school teachers in Washington County.
Mr. and Mrs. Clark had a vision of a school of higher rank that might in time be established and that should mean much for the highest enlightenment and culture of this new land.
Meanwhile they waited some time for the opportunity and the means to realize their ideal.
Their first helper came in the person of a woman, Mrs. Tabitha Moffet Brown one of that long list of most heroic forerunners of civilization, to whom all too little tribute has been paid, the pioneer wives and mothers of the Pacific North- west.
This is hardly the place to dwell very long upon her roman- tic story ; it is a familiar one in Washington County. She was the widow of an Episcopalian minister of Stonington, Conn., who was left without property and with three small children to support. After teaching school several years, at the age of nearly three-score years and ten, she came to Oregon to be with her sons and grandchildren who had preceded her.
She crossed the plains with an ox-team, coming into Oregon by that ill-fated Southern route and suffering untold dangers and hardships on the way.
This was in 1846 and almost immediately "Grandma Brown," as she came to be affectionately called far and wide in the
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
PACIFIC UNIVERSITY 5
Northwest. In 1865 he was sent East by the state in the in- terest of prison reform. With Lt. Symonds of the U. S. Corps of Engineers, he wrote the article on Oregon for the Encyclo- pedia Britannica, ninth edition.
He dedicated the first Congregational Church building in the North-west at Oregon City, August 18, 1859, and later he organized the First Congregational Church of Portland. But Dr. Atkinson, like a true son of New England, brought with him to this new land an ambition and a well-defined purpose to plant schools as well as churches here.
It is on record that before leaving for his distant field of labor he made a visit to New York for final instructions and while there was introduced to Rev. Theron Baldwin, secre- tary of the American College and Education Society, then newly organized to establish and aid new colleges. He said to Dr. Atkinson:
"You are going to Oregon ; build an academy there that shall grow into a college, as we built Illinois College." Learn- ing soon after his arrival of the orphan school at West Tual- atin, he rode over from Oregon City and visited Mr. Clark in his log house. The men found they had a common purpose and ideal and at once combined their efforts to attain their purpose.
They called together an association of ministers at Oregon City on September 21 ? 1848, at which time it was resolved to establish an academy at Forest Grove. One year later, Sep- tember 29, 1849, Tualatin Academy was incorporated by the Territorial Legislature.
Mr. Clark was the first president of the board of trustees and continued to hold the position till the time of his death. Mrs. Brown's orphans were taken over by the new school, but for a 1 number of years she kept a boarding house for the students, the price of board being $2.00 a week. In 1854, in a letter to a friend, Mrs. Brown, then in her 75th year, said :
6 HENRY L. BATES
"In 1851 I had 40 in my family at $2.50 a week and I mixed with my own hands 3423 Ibs. of flour in less than five months.
200 acres of Mr. Clark's donation land claim were given as a basis of the endowment for the new school and later 150 acres more were given to secure adequate instructors.
About one-half of the present beautiful campus of 30 acres was the gift of Mr. Clark. Others contributed generously of their scanty means and their labor none to so great an extent as Mr. and Mrs. Clark. His interest in education was broader than his denominational choice. He was a warm friend and supporter of the Methodist school organized in 1842 and he taught for a year in the Mission School at Champoeg.
For 40 years or until his death in 1889, Dr. Atkinson was secretary of the board of trustees of the Academy and College and was seldom absent from its meetings.
Doubtless the greatest single service which he performed for the struggling enterprise was the securing the man who was the first president. For several years after the founding of the Academy there were no permanent teachers and no established curriculum.
Faithful work was done in the log church by such men as dishing Eells and J. M. Keeler, but still the vision of Mr. Clark seemed far from fulfillment.
So Dr. Atkinson went East by way of the Isthmus no easy journey in those days. He gained the support of the American College and Education Society, which endorsed the college and pledged the interest on $10,000 for the support of its first president. Best of all, however, and more significant for the future development of the school, he persuaded Rev. Sidney Harper Marsh to leave his New England home and become the head of the school at Tualatin Plains and develop it into a college.
Mr. Marsh was a young man of 28, descended from a line of educators. His father was President James Marsh of the
PACIFIC UNIVERSITY 7
University of Vermont, and one of the foremost American edu- cators of his day. His grandfather was Eleazer Wheelock, the first president of Dartmouth College.
It is not strange that a young man with such an ancestry and such an inheritance should accept with enthusiasm the invitation to go to Oregon and give the best of his powers to build up in the new land a college similar to those with which he was familiar in New England.
He had no knowledge of pioneer conditions reared in a scholarly home and used to the refinement of the best society in a University town, he had to meet at once the hardships and privations of frontier life without any preparation.
He found here almost nothing to build a college upon no buildings, no permanent funds, no adequate teachers, and, most discouraging of all, no apparent need or desire for such a school.
President Marsh set himself steadfastly and courageously to supply all these needs.
Immediately upon his arrival steps were taken to add college grades of instruction to those in the Academy and in January, 1854, new articles of incorporation were granted by the Legis- lature, and under the corporate name of Tualatin Academy and Pacific University the present school was created.
We today can hardly realize the trials and hardships which the new president had to endure. But brighter days began to dawn. The country began to fill up. Families moved in and built homes around the young college. Students began to stay long enough to get into college and in process of time young men and women were graduated, many of whom have been among the foremost leaders in the public life and service of the state. The need of funds was ever pressing and Presi- dent Marsh made three different trips to the East to solicit aid. $70,000 in cash and many valuable books for the library were secured on these trips. Among these latter the most notable
8 HENRY L. BATES
gift was that of more than 400 volumes by Sidney E. Morse, the son of a famous geographer and brother of the renowned inventor, S. F. B. Morse. One of the most valuable books in the library is a copy of Ptolemy's Universal Geography printed at Basle in 1542 on the title page of which is inscribed, "Sidney E. Morse from his affectionate brother, S. F. B. Morse, Rome, June, 1830."
A more recent addition of great value was the gift of over 200 old and rare books from the library of D. W. Craig, a pioneer journalist of Oregon. One book printed in 1482 is one of the two or three oldest books west of the Rocky Moun- tains.
Another book of unique interest and value is a copy of a primer printed in the Spokane dialect, on the Lapwai press in 1842, said to be the only perfect copy in existence.
Today the library numbers about 20,000 volumes housed in a modern brick structure, the gift of Andrew Carnegie.
There was early organized as an important department of the University a Conservatory of Music which is today giving instruction in piano, pipe organ, violin, voice training and musi- cal history and theory of a character equal to any similar instruction given in the state.
Grandma Brown left to the college at her death, or rather gave before her death, a lot in the village and a log house which was afterwards sold for $506.60 this sum was invested and reinvested until today it has reached something like $5,000.
President Marsh was able thus to realize in some degree the dream of the founders. He found a "small and weak academy and left it well organized, fairly well equipped and with a character established for all time for sound learning and thor- ough instruction" and worthy ideals.
After 25 years of strenuous toil he laid down his task with his life in 1879.
Those who succeeded him in the presidential chair have been Rev. John R. Herrick, Rev. J. T. Ellis, Rev. Thomas McClel
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land who left here after nine years of service in 1900 to take the presidency of Knox College, from which he has re- cently resigned. Following him came President Wm. N. Fer- rin, another teacher from Vermont, then President C. J. Bush- nell, and now the school seems to be entering upon a new era of enlargement and healthy growth under the enthusiastic and efficient leadership of President Robert Fry Clark, who was inaugurated last June.
Mention at least ought to be made of some of the men and women who so efficiently helped to make the instruction in academy and college of the high quality for which it has always been justly proud.
Rev. Cushing Eells was the first principal of Tualatin Academy.
E. D. Shattuck, a young Vermonter, was an early teacher and afterwards for more than 25 years was one of Oregon's ablest and most honored jurists.
Another early teacher in the Academy was Mrs. Elizabeth Miller Wilson, who died only a few years ago at The Dalles.
Rev. Horace Lyman came to assist President Marsh when the burden seemed to be heaviest and his labors and influence counted much for the success of the enterprise. For several years most of the college teaching was done by these two men. Dr. A. J. Anderson was a teacher in an early day going from here to the presidency of Whitman College.
Thomas Condon, one of the ablest thinkers the state ever had, went from the faculty of Pacific University to help start the State University at Eugene and with him went Professor Collier and Dr. Luella Clay Carson.
Coming rather early also to assist President Marsh in his great work, was Professor Joseph W. Marsh, his brother and another graduate of Vermont. For more than 40 years, as professor of Latin and Greek and college librarian, Prof. Marsh made an impress on the minds and hearts of generation after generation of students and left memories that multitudes
10 HENRY L. BATES
still cherish. He delighted in learning and he loved his fellow- men.
The first Bachelor's degree was granted in 1863 to a class of one, but that one was Harvey W. Scott, Oregon's greatest journalist and one of the keenest thinkers of his generation.
It has been said that he and the Honorable Thomas H. Tongue, who graduated five years after Mr. Scott, were two of the chief factors in carrying the state for sound money in the days when the free silver delusion seemed likely to carry everything before it.
The graduates of Pacific University number less than 400 its student body has never been large but among that small number have been some of the ablest and finest men and women who have helped to make Oregon, and that noblest thing in a state, a noble citizenship.
Out of all proportion to her numbers has been her influence for sound learning, true culture and righteous living in this great North-west.
Her alumni have not only wielded a worthy influence in Oregon but in foreign lands and on mission fields. Hastara Tamura, an important educator in Japan, and Kin Saito, Chief Justice of the Court of Hokkaido, Hakodate, Japan, Rev. J. Elkanah Walker, for many years a missionary to China, and more recently Dr. John X. Miller, a missionary in India and recognized by the British Government in India as doing work of unusual value in industrial education, the present city editor of the Oregonian lawyers, physicians, teachers and min- isters all over the Pacific North-west. These are some of the contributions of Pacific to the finest citizenship of the world at home and abroad.
She has always kept her standards high none are higher in the North-west. A few years ago when a Federal Commis- sion standardized the colleges and universities of the state, she was one of the first three to be recognized as a standardcollege.
Her graduates are admitted for graduate or professional
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study in all the leading colleges and universities in the land.
If Garfield's conception was a true one, that Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and himself as a student on the other end was all that was needed to make a college, then must it not be true that the value of a college must be measured at least as much by the devotion and learning and character of its instructors and the fine quality of the young men and women which it turns out, as by its costly equipment and size of its student body? Pacific University at least does not think she has lived altogether in vain.
Her growth has been slow partly because the population of Oregon has never been great. When Dr. Atkinson came to Oregon there were not more than 7,000 people in the state.
In 1870 Oregon, Washington and Idaho combined had only 130,000.
The rush for gold in '48- '49 drew one-half or two-thirds of the able-bodied men from Washington County. And yet in 1912 Oregon ranked third in having the highest percentage of students in college or one to every 150 of the population. Kansas stood first with one to 112, and Utah second, 1 to 121.
In 1915 Tualatin Academy graduated its last class and passed out of existence. The increasing number of standardized high schools seeming to make secondary schools of the academy type unnecessary.
Twenty-five years ago there were only three high schools in the state. Today there are 200 of the standard variety.
While being in some sense the child of the churches, Pacific University has never been sectarian or under denominational control. Her aim has always been "to make it possible for the young people of the Pacific Northwest to obtain a thorough education under Christian influences." The name "University" has always been somewhat of a misnomer. It reflects the high aims and worthy aspirations of its early founders rather than actual achievements in the shape of graduate courses and pro- fessional schools.
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Pacific belongs indeed to that important class of "the small college" and she is not only proud of it but is inclined to believe that her special mission to humanity is best fulfilled in that capacity.
At present, at least, her endowment is inadequate and her equipment greatly in need of improvement but she and her sister independent Christian colleges in the state can do things for the youth of the land which great universities with larger faculties, more costly equipment and crowds of students cannot possibly do.
There never was a time when the peculiar influence and the dominating ideals of a distinctively Christian college were more needed in America to mold the character and clarify the motives of our youth in these days of unrest and uncertainty. . The peculiar needs of the time make it a matter of the high- est patriotism to the whole people to support such an institu- tion ; for it is laying the foundations of a Christian civilization, it is doing its part to make America safe for democracy.
Today the outlook for Pacific University seems bright with promise. A beautiful campus, second to none in the state ; five buildings, all modern but one; an endowment fund of about a quarter of a million ; a loyal and enthusiastic student body ; the prestige of an honorable past and an honor roll of worthy sons and daughters ; the confidence that her friends who believe in her and in her mission, will show their faith by their works and increase her funds and add to her buildings and her equip- ment ; a devoted and self-denying faculty ; the ideals of her founders still sacredly cherished ; these are what Pacific Uni- versity posseses today as the sure foundation of her belief in her mission and her future in the generations to come.