boys at St Paul on French Prairie, and two schools for girls, one at Oregon City and one at St Mary, taught by the sisters of Notre Dame. An academy known as Jefferson Institute was located in La Creole Valley near the residence of Nathaniel Ford, who was one of the trustees. William Beagle and James Howard were the others, and J. E. Lyle principal. On the Tualatin plains Rev. Harvey Clark had opened a school which in 1846 had attained to some promise of success, and in 1847 a board of trustees was established. Out of this germ developed two years later the Tualatin Academy, incorporated in September 1849, which developed into the Pacific University in 1853–4.
The history of this institution reflects credit upon its founders in more than an ordinary degree. Harvey Clark, it will be remembered, was one of the independent missionaries, with no wealthy board at his back from whose funds he could obtain a few hundred or thousand of dollars. When he failed to find missionary work among the natives, he settled on the Tualatin plains upon a land-claim where the academic town of Forest Grove now stands, and taught as early as 1842 a few children of the other settlers. In 1846 there came to Oregon, by the southern route, enduring all the hardships of the belated immigration, a woman sixty-eight years of age, with her children and grandchildren, Mrs Tabitha Brown.[1] Her kind heart was pained at the number of orphans left to charity by the sickness among
- ↑ Tabitha Moffat Brown was born in the town of Brinfield, Mass., May 1, 1780. Her father was Dr Joseph Moffat. At the age of 19 she marRev. Clark Brown of Stonington, Conn., of the Episcopal church. In the changes of his ministerial life Brown removed to Maryland, where he died early, leaving his widow with 3 children surrounded by an illiterate people. She opened a school and for 8 years continued to teach, supporting her children until the 2 boys were apprenticed to trades, and assisting them to start in business. The family finally moved to Missouri. Here her children prospered, but one of the sons, Orris Brown, visited Oregon in 1843, returning to Missouri in 1845 with Dr White and emigrating with his mother and family in 1846. His sister and brother-in-law, Virgil K. Pringle, also accompanied him; and it is from a letter of Mrs Pringle that this sketch has been obtained.
