CORRESPONDENCE 447
a few exceptions, the entire population of the Umpqua and and the gold regions of Oregon have congregated on our southern border within the term of the last eighteen months. Is not Oregon then a missionary field? We desire your Board to take another view of our condition. By referring to the minutes of our Association you will see that we report eleven small churches. 258 Two others are constituted and probably some four or five more will spring into existence the coming summer. In all these churches we number about 160 members. Forty or fifty more may include all the mem- bers of the territory; and these members come to us from al- most every state in the union, and some from Australia. It would be almost a miracle, in bringing together such a com- munity, if all would at once co-operate, in ways and means to carry out the great objects of the gospel, with all the harmony of the spheres. Yet be it said to the praise of these brethren and to the honor of the gospel of Christ that, according to the means of grace they enjoy, they will not suffer in com- parison with most of the country churches in the States, both as it regards the order of the members or the willingness to support the gospel. Now when we remember that nine years ago the first of these brethren arrived in Oregon and from that time to the present they arrived in this valley poor, many without bed or bedding, save a few blankets, with their teams either lost in the mountains or reduced to skel- etons, and every necessary of life to provide anew, with clothing, groceries, cooking and farming utensils at a price fourfold that of the cost in the States, that in churches of from six to twenty-seven members no two families lived nearer than a mile of each other, and these interspersed with every variety of religionist found in the States, till it is not common for more than two Baptist churches to be found in
258 The minutes for June, 1851, show only nine churches; the West Union, Yamhill, Rickreal, Oregon City, Sandam, Lebanon, Shiloh, Molalla, and Clatsop Churches. The French Prairie and Marysville Churches were organized, but not admitted. Minutes of Willamette Baptist Association for 1851. Mattpon, Bap. An. of Ore., 1:1-17. The author must have been mistaken, for the Association of 1852 did not meet until the June after this letter was written.
