tribes, for the safety and protection of the white settlers, and the immigrants to
Oregon, is one of great historical interest. On that point all must, perforce for
their own safety, agree to hold the Indian to the paths of peace.
THE METHODIST LEADERS.
Next in order after the pioneer missionaries came the men who began to build churches for white men and women. In this work the Methodists were fore- tunate in getting a corps of active, forceful men. Roberts, Waller, Parrish and Wilbur would have made their mark in any community. Rev. J. L. Parrish v/as the business man, par excellence, of the early missionaries. Parrish and Waller raised the first money and built the first church building west of the Rocky moun- tains — the Methodist church at Oregon City. Parrish also built the first three story brick business house in the city of Portland. He did not profess to be a great preacher; but as long as there was a vital necessity for some man to raise money, J. L. Parrish had the energy, persistence and financial head-piece to man- age such business successfully, and thus keep the Methodist ship in safe water, and sailing at the head of the fleet.
Rev. A. F. Waller was also a good business man, more of a manager than a preacher; and it was to his careful management of the funds and resources of the Willamette university, that it was able to keep its doors open, and teaching forces actively at work through all the financially lean years from 1862 down to and through the financial panic of 1893.
But the two men who did most to plant Methodism on firm and solid founda- tions, and buttress it around and about with self-supporting churches and hard working circuit riders, were Rev. Wm. Roberts and Rev. Jas. H. Wilbur. While these two men were both much above the ordinary as preachers of the gospel, their chief claim to historical eminence, was that of hard workers. They were always at work for the church. It had no rivals in their afifections or ambitions. Roberts had the credit of building more church buildings in Oregon than any other man ever living in the state. His success was so great in that respect that his bishop kept him continually on the move from one station to another. And it is now, as these lines are penned on October 31, 1910, just sixty-three years since Win. Roberts held the first religious serz'ice and preached the first sermon in what is now the city of Portland. On that day, sixty-three years ago, the sum total of Portland, Oregon, was fourteen log cabins scattered around in the brush of the primeval forest from what is now the foot of Stark street, along up the river to Jefiferson street and back to First street. Mr. Roberts was then acting as superintendent, or deputy bishop, of the Methodist work, then going on in Oregon. And from that time on to his death, for fifty years, Wm. Roberts labored incessantly to organize new churches throughout the state, and to erect new church buildings, until it stood to his credit that he had organized more churches and built more church buildings than any other man west of the Rocky mountains.
Mr. Roberts was elected chairman of the first Methodist conference held west of the Rocky mountains, and appointed the first superintendent of Methodist missions in Oregon, the appointment dating from Salem, September 5, 1849. At that date there were only three Methodist churches, fourteen local preachers, and three hundred and forty-eight professed Methodists in Oregon.
James H. Wilbur, afterwards, and now known in history as "Father Wilbur" was a somewhat different man from Roberts. With equal force and industry, as Roberts, yet with a broader and more comprehensive grasp of the situation, Wilbur not only sought to preach the Methodist gospel and build Methodist meet- ing houses, but he looked forward to the power and influence of educational in- stitutions to support and promote the growth of the church. And his idea upon that point was different from that of his ministerial associates. And
