310 REVEREND EZRA FISHER
City stands at an expense of $5000. Br. Johnson assumed one half of the debt and I paid $1250, which consumed all my available means, and we found a friend of mine who paid $1250. This was the only method we could hit upon by which we could secure anything like a suitable amount of land for college purposes near this place without paying from $8000 to $15000. We have appropriated about fifty acres of the claim, in the most eligible situation and within about half a mile of the most populous part of the town, to college purposes and the Trustees accepted the same. Since I last wrote you we have secured a town lot, 66 feet by 100, in a central part of the city as a donation. 202 This lot is now valued at $300. We wish to put on this lot a building, 66 by 30, two stories, the present season, if possible, to be occupied by the school till such time as we can sustain a school on the college premises. The building and lot will then sell for more than the first cost or, what is rather probable, may be ap- propriated to a preparatory department. By this plan we shall be able to keep a full school from this time forward, with suitable teachers. Should the price of lumber fall, as is prob- able it will, we shall labor hard to raise the requisite means and build this summer and fall. Yet we have few men in Oregon to whom we may look to give us the requisite means. Br. Johnson, one other brother and myself have subscribed $650 toward that object. Our school now occupies the Baptist meeting house and must still occupy it till we can build. We also need a boarding house erected so that we can be pre- pared to board as cheap as board can be had in the country. This must be done or we shall fail of benefiting children of Baptist families in the country. Unless funds can be raised in the States to the amount of five or six thousand dollars, this part of the work must be delayed. Now we think that the school itself will afford a good teacher from six hundred to a thousand dollars salary. We think we can manage to furnish him a garden and other perquisites to the amount
202 This was lot 8, block 97, of the Oregon City townsite, and was southwest of the present Barclay School building. Clackamas County Deed Records.
