opened a school in the Oregon City Baptist[1] Church building which had been built the previous year.
The education society met again February 8, 1850, and decided on Oregon City as a favorable location for a Baptist educational institution. At this time more than fifty pupils attended school in the church building. It was decided to erect a school house on a favorable site, and Richmond Cheadle was appointed agent at a salary of one hundred dollars a month for two months to raise $4,000 with which to construct the building. Also, a request was sent to the Baptist Home Missionary Society for a bell and text books as were used in the New England schools. At a meeting held February 15, 1850, the board of trustees decided to name the school the Oregon City College. The following week the school is reported as having from sixty to seventy scholars. Of them Fisher says, "I had about ten young men and lads who declaimed each two weeks and about twenty, male and female, who wrote and read their compositions each alternate two weeks, two boys in algebra, one young lady in natural philosophy, about a dozen in geography and about the same number in English grammar, about twenty in arithmetic and two in history."[2]
The immediate success of the school and the desirability of Oregon City as a permanent location led Hezekiah Johnson, Ezra Fisher, and Joseph Jeffers to buy a land claim adjoining the Oregon City claim for a sum of $5,000.[3] Of this amount, Hezekiah Johnson paid one half and Ezra Fisher one fourth.[4] A friend paid the remainder. Approximately fifty-one acres were turned over to the trustees of the college on which to build their school. At about the same time, a town[5] lot valued at three hundred dollars was donated to the school by Dr. John McLoughlin.
The educational facilities of the school in 1850 were scant,
- ↑ This was the first Baptist church west of the Rocky Mountains.
- ↑ Fisher, Correspondence, 285.
- ↑ According to legal requirements, Fisher moved on the claim and obtained the final papers in 1855.
- ↑ Fisher earned this money digging gold in California; Correspondence, 20.
- ↑ Lot 8, block 97, on the Oregon City plat.
