120 JAMES R. ROBERTSON. academy and the college at a time when students were needed. For his successor the trustees turned to the band of missionaries upon whom they could always depend and elected in March, 1849, Rev. Gushing Eells, as the record expresses it, " for the next term and onwards, Providence permitting." In the person of Mr. Eells the trustees had secured another of those New England characters who figured so prominently in the founding of Pacific Univer- sity. Tracing his descent back to the Ironsides of Crom- well he united to high ideals of education and religion much of the Cromwellian discipline. Mr. Eells was born in Blandford, Massachusetts, and was a graduate of Wil- liams College and Hartford Theological Seminary. Like Mr. Atkinson he had intended to enter the service of the American Board in Africa, but had been deterred on ac- count of the unsettled conditions prevailing there. Mr. Eells was one of those missionaries who had located among the Indians of the eastern part of the Oregon Country and had not been hindered by Hudson Bay officials from oc- cupying a dangerous field. He had stood by his post as long as it was possible, and then yielded more to the wishes of others than his own desires. Coming to the Willamette Valley he entered the service of the Oregon Institute" as teacher where he was located, when induced to enter the service of the denominations with which he was affiliated. He remained as principal of the academy but one year, resigning because of his strict ideas of dis- cipline in some of which he was not supported by the board of trustees. He engaged in farming in the neigh- borhood of Hillsboro until his recall to the academy at a later date, 1857, when he served a longer period, resign- ing at last in 1860 to return to the scene of his earlier endeavors. Here he was one who was prominent in lay- ing the foundations of Whitman College.
