amounted to thirty persons. These people were all packed into one small house. None of them were accustomed to such confinement, all having been brought up in tents, tepees, or the open air. Some were diseased; many became ill from change of diet, and soon an epidemic of something like diphtheria broke out, and instead of a school, the place became a hospital with sixteen children lying sick at one time in one small room. The school was a failure, and nearly broken up for want of some common sense in regard to the simplest precautions to protect the health of children. The school was continued amid discouraging circumstances, the missionaries doing everything in their power to remedy want of proper buildings, as Dr. McLoughlin testifies, until 1838. During this time, there never was at best more than thirty-five or forty pupils, mostly natives or half-breeds; and of these, one-third died. In Himes' History of Oregon, it is stated, "That the mission family consisted of those adults, and twenty-three Indian and half-breed children, ten of whom were orphans. And besides these, there were twenty-two Indians and eight half-breeds who attended the day school. All were taught to speak English, and several could read. The larger boys worked on the farm in fine weather, earning at the lowest pay of the Hudson's Bay Company, their board, clothing and tuition."
This first teacher in Oregon, Philip L. Edwards, was a Kentuckian by birth, and came from Richmond, Missouri, to Oregon when he was twenty-three years of age. Of more than ordinary attainments, he loved order and refinement. A frontier man, he knew how to accommodate himself to the rough and tumble of frontier life. While possessed of high moral sense, he was not a missionary or a professor of religion. After teaching this school, he returned to Missouri, studied law and married, and during the troubles with the Mormons in 1841, enlisted in the militia forces against the Mormons, and was appointed a colonel. In 1850 he emigrated to California, settling in Nevada county, taking an active part in politics and dying in May, 1869.
THE FIRST SCHOOL IN PORTLAND.
From Prof. T. H. Crawford's sketch of the public schools of Portland is taken the following: "Up to the organization of district No. i, in April, 1856, no official records have been found. From files of the Oregonian, from personal interviews with our older citizens, from many interesting letters from the pioneer teachers of Portland, from historical sketches already published by J. Quinn Thornton, W. H. Gray, S. F. Chadwick, T. L. Eliot, S. W. King and others, have I collected what follows.
"The first day school of any kind in Portland was opened in the fall of 1847 by Dr. Ralph Wilcox. It was conducted in a house erected by Mr. McNamee, at the foot of Taylor street. It was properly a private school. It continued probably one quarter. The names of some of the pupils are given: Frances McNamee (Mrs. E. J. Northrup), her brothers, Moses, Adam and William; Charlotte Terwilliger (Mrs. Walter Moffett Cartwright); Milton Doan's children, Sarah, May, Peter and John; Henry Hill, Helen Hill (Mrs. William S. Powell), J. Miller Murphy, Lucy and Charlotte Barnes, Emma and Sarah Ross, Alonzo Terwilliger. There were, no doubt others, but their names I have not ascertained.
"Dr. Wilcox was born in East Bloomfield, Ontario county, N. Y., July 9, 18 18. Graduated at Geneva Medical College, August 7, 1839. Come to Oregon in 1845. Died in Portland April 18, 1877.
"In February, 1848, Thomas Carter and family reached Portland. In April or May of that year Miss Julia Carter (Mrs. Joseph S. Smith) opened a school in a log cabin on the corner of Second and Stark streets. She taught one quarter. She had perhaps thirty-five pupils in all. Most of them attending Dr. Wilcox' school were her pupils. These additional names are recalled: John Cullen, Carrie Polk, the Warren girls (one now Mrs. Richard White, the other Mrs.
