Indian school kept for nine months beginning in the autumn of 1842. Here was a substantial building with regular teachers and an effective organization making it in fact the first school in the State of Oregon.
On the 7th of January, 1842, a meeting was held at the house of Jason Lee, who had then removed from his first location on the Willamette river bottom to the new location at Salem. This meeting was called to prepare plans for an educational institution for white children A committee was appointed consisting of Dr. Ira L. Babcock, Rev. Gustavus Hines and Rev. David Leslie to prepare plans. The next meeting was held on February 1st, 1843, at the old Mission House on French Prairie, and there it was decided to begin immediately to lay the foundation of the proposed Institution. An organization was effected; and the first Board of Trustees were selected, consisting of Jason Lee, David Leslie, Gustavus Hines, J. L. Parrish, L. H. Judson, George Abernethy, Alanson Beers, Hamilton Campbell, and Dr. Ira L. Babcock, and the name of the first institution of learning for Oregon was to be "The Oregon Institute." At this meeting and co-operating with the Methodists was an independent Congregationalist missionary named Harvey Clarke, who took a lively interest in the proceedings, and was placed on the Committee to select a site for the Institute building. After this site was selected, and $4,000 raised by subscription made almost wholly by the Methodist missionaries themselves, the erection of a building was commenced under the superintendence of Wm. H. Gray, Presbyterian; so that in its inception the Oregon Institute was not wholly a Methodist enterprise.
But this institute formed a nucleus around which all the Methodist sentiment and action rallied; and out of it grew the more pretentious enterprise of the Willamette University. And the University Sun had in turn its satellites, the Wilbur Academy in Umpqua county, the Sheridan Academy, the Dallas Academy, and the Santiam Academy at Lebanon in Linn county, and the Portland Academy. A seminary for young ladies was established at Oregon City, in 1851, and controlled and managed jointly by the Methodists and Congregationalists and of which Rev. Harvey Clark was the first teacher.
The next after the Methodists and Congregationalists, to take up the question of church schools came the Catholics. The first Catholic school established in Oregon was St. Mary's Academy, on Fourth street in Portland in 1859. On October 21, of that year the twelve foundresses reached Portland in their long journey from Montreal, Canada. These heroic sisters who were to lay the foundation of a great teaching order in the northwest, were: Sisters, Mary Alphonse, Mary David, Mary of Mercy, Adelaide Renauld, Mary Margaret, Mary O'Neill, Mary of the Visitation, Agiae Lucier, Mary Francis Xavier, Vitaline Provost, Mary of Calvary, Violet McMullen, Mary Frebonia, Melanie, Vandandaigue, Mary Florentine, Alphonsine Collin, Mary Perpetua, Martine LaChappelle, Mary Arsenius, Philomene Menard, Mary Julia, Olive Charboneau, and Sister Mary Agatha, Celin Pepin. From this first colony of teaching sisters has grown nearly fifty schools and colleges with over two hundred teachers, all of which are purely church schools.
