thought advisable; also to begin the sale by public auction of the town lots, as surveyed for that purpose, the first sale to take place September 10, 1846. Only half a dozen families were there previous to this time.[1]
In July 1847 a bond was signed by Wilson, the conditions of which were the forfeiture of $100,000, or the fulfilment of the following terms: That he should hold in trust the six hundred and forty acres thrown off from the land-claims above mentioned; that he should pay to the missionary society of the Methodist Episcopal church of Oregon and to the Oregon Institute certain sums amounting to $6,000; that he should use all diligence to perfect a title to the institute claim, and when so perfected convey to the first annual conference of the Methodist church, which should be established in Oregon by the general conference of the United States, in trust, such title as he himself had obtained to sixty acres known as the 'institute reserve,' on which the institute building was situated for which services he was to receive one third of the money derived from the sale of town lots on the unreserved portion of the six hundred and forty acres comprised in the Salem town-site and belonging to the several claimants. Under this arrangement, in 1848, Wilson and his wife were residing in the institute building on the reserved sixty acres, Mrs Wilson having charge of the school, while the agency of the town property remained with her husband.
The subsequent history of Salem town-site belongs to a later period, but may be briefly given here. When the Oregon donation law was passed, which gave to the wife half of the mile square of land embraced in the donation, Wilson had the dividing line on his land run in such a manner as to throw the reserve with the institute building, covered by his claim, upon the wife's portion; and Mrs Wilson being
- ↑ Davidson's Southern Route, MS., 5; Brown's Autobiography, MS., 31; Rabbison's Growth of Towns, MS., 27–8.
