The first Baptist meeting house on the Pacific Coast was built by Rev. Johnson in Oregon City, 1848. The Oregon City University was opened by the latter in Oregon City, 1849. The first formal meeting of Baptists in the Pacific Northwest for educational purposes was held in June, 1851. The first Baptist ministerial conference on the Pacific Coast convened at Pleasant Butte, near Brownsville, 1854. McMinnville College, which was tendered to the Baptists convened at Soda Springs in 1836, by Rev. S. C. Adams of the Christian Church and accepted by the Central Baptist Association of Oregon in 1857, was opened under Baptist control in 1858. Its enrollment the first winter was 178. The first Baptist Sunday School missionary on the Pacific Coast was W. J. Laughary, appointed in 1872. The first Baptist Chinese Mission in the Pacific Northwest was organized by the First Baptist Church of Portland in 1874. The first Baptist Chinese missionary in this territory, Rev. Gong Tyng, arrived in 1875. The organization of the first Baptist Scandinavian mission in the Northwest was effected by the First Baptist Church of Portland, in 1875, in which city the beginning of the Baptist Women's Foreign Mission movement in Oregon took place in the following year. The first constitutional commitment of the Baptists of Oregon to the foreign mission work was by the convention and some of the associations in 1880. The first formal council to recognize the organization of the Baptist Church in Oregon was convened at Grants Pass, 1886.—Baptist Annals of Oregon.
Joab Powell. Many of the Oregon colonists were Baptists. They exhibited genuine missionary spirit, and were noted for their acts of charity, for the building of churches and for other enterprising deeds, among which was the establishment of McMinnville College. From the outset there were strong preachers among them. Hut while others may have been greater, the most noted Baptist preacher in Oregon was Rev. Joab Powell, who occupies a peculiar place in pioneer history.
