wfn.org | United Methodists help dedicate Oregon 'ghost structure'

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Sept. 20, 2002	News media contact: Joretta Purdue7(202) 546-87227Washington
10-71BP{421}

NOTE: Photographs are available with this story.

By Joretta Purdue*

SALEM, Ore. (UMNS) - A "ghost structure" now marks the site of the first
Methodist mission in the North American West.

Spectators and dignitaries gathered Sept. 15 in Oregon's Willamette Mission
State Park to view the outline of the mission's first three buildings,
replicated in iron beams fashioned by inmates of the Oregon penitentiary.
The ghost structure is on a bluff above the Willamette River flood plain, an
area that came to be known as Mission Bottoms.

A small band of missionaries began working in the area in 1834, before
Oregon was part of the United States or even a territory. The group had been
sent by the Methodist Episcopal Church's mission board, a year after the
agency had dispatched missionaries to Africa, an easier-to-reach
destination.

Bishop Edward W. Paup of the church's Portland (Ore.) Area and the Rev.
Patricia Thompson, president of the Historical Society of the United
Methodist Church, led the ceremony, which began with a welcome from Michael
Carrier, director of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. The
audience consisted primarily of members of the churchwide Commission on
Archives and History and the historical society.

John Hook of Salem portrayed early missionary leader Jason Lee as he offered
a prayer of thanksgiving. The prayer was based on Lee's diaries and
correspondence. "Our Father in heaven, we came to Oregon to bring your word
to the native people," he said. "... We found much illness in the native
population from diseases to which they had little or no immunity. We took in
orphans of these declining tribes.  

"And as the white settlers arrived in ever-increasing numbers, we realized
that our mission was to serve them also. We petitioned the Congress of the
United States with these opening words:  'We are the germ of a great state,
and are anxious to give an early tone to the moral and intellectual
character of its citizens.'" 

Paup said it was important to remember that at the 1976 General Conference
in Portland, Ore., then-Governor Robert Strobe promised his support for
preserving the mission site, "which was not only the beginning of Methodism
but also of American government, education, industry and agriculture in the
Pacific Northwest."

'Eden-like qualities'

When Lee, nephew Daniel, and three other men established the mission in
1834, the area known as Oregon did not have defined borders, but included
all of the current states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, as well as parts
of what are now Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, western Canada and
California. By then, Oregon's Native American tribes had been decimated by
diseases transmitted through earlier contact with sailors. Both Great
Britain and the United States had interests in the area. 

Carrier noted the importance of the mission established on this site in
determining the future of the area. "It was a letter sent back (to the
United States) by those missionaries that described the Eden-like qualities
of the Willamette Valley, including record-breaking wheat crops, that set in
motion the lure of following the Oregon Trail," he said. 

"The early settlement of the valley was the result of the establishment of
the provisional government that many of the Methodist missionaries had a
hand in creating," he explained.

The decision to build the ghost structure grew out of a desire to better
interpret the importance of this mission. "The structure is based on the
main mission building complex as described by Daniel Lee, Jason Lee's
nephew, and supported by an 1841 drawing of the buildings, as well as 1980
archeological investigations," Carrier said. "The structure replicates the
size, the shape, the orientations and the chimney locations."

Paup suggested that the ghost structure is not only a reminder of the
buildings that were in this mission but also of the people and the ways in
which lives have been changed by mission and ministry throughout the years.
 
He called for remembering that before Methodists ever arrived, God's story
was being told among people native to this place, "and so we have had the
privilege of joining with all those stories in order to help continue to
tell the story of God's created world and God's people."

"We are grateful to God for the ways in which God called forward leadership
like Jason Lee, but we know there were so many others - not only those
named, but those unnamed, who participated in the way in which this mission
had its beginnings and the contributions that it made to the Pacific
Northwest," the bishop commented. 

Illness and hardship

The original missionaries - the two Lees, both clergymen, along with teacher
Cyrus Shepard and two lay assistants - were sent by the mission board to
serve the Flathead Indians but reached instead an outpost of the Hudson Bay
Company called Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River. From there, they
followed the Willamette River south to an area inhabited by another tribe.

They found unoccupied land beyond the farms of many retired French-Canadian
fur trappers living in the valley. The missionaries picked a site and
struggled to build their first all-purpose building. Later, Shepard opened a
school in part of the building, and 14 children were enrolled - most of them
orphans who also lived at the school. A second building later was erected. 

The missionaries' crops did well in the valley. However, illness and the
pervasive dampness of the area threatened the settlement. In the school's
first 10 months, four children died and one was dismissed, but the school
and the other mission work continued.

Jason Lee asked the mission board to send people with practical skills. He
requested that newcomers bring their families and that single men not be
sent. The board complied and also selected Anna Maria Pittman, a 33-year-old
teacher, to be Lee's wife. 

Pittman sailed from Boston in July 1836, rounded the tip of South America
and disembarked in the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) just before Christmas.
Her party also included a physician and a blacksmith with their families, a
carpenter, a female schoolteacher and Shepard's fianci. It was April before
they were able to obtain passage on another ship headed to Oregon. More than
a month later, they arrived at Fort Vancouver, almost 10 months after their
voyage began.

On July 16, 1837, Lee and Pittman were married. At the same service, Shepard
and Susan Downing were wed, as were a young Native American woman and a
white resident of area. 

The following spring, Jason Lee needed to obtain board approval for a plan
to expand the mission. He departed for New York on March 23, 1838. The
couple's son was born June 23 and died two days later. Anna died the next
day, less than a year after she became a bride.  

Letters from the Oregon missionaries and personal appearances by Lee and
some of the school children generated financial support for the mission and
interest in the Oregon area. The board sent a third and final group of more
than 50 people, who arrived in 1840 and were dubbed the "Great
Reinforcement" by the Willamette Mission residents.

With the river threatening to carry off the buildings, the settlers
eventually moved the mission to what is now the city of Salem, where they
built a gristmill and a sawmill. The Oregon Institute, a school the
missionaries established to serve the growing number of non-native children,
later became Willamette University, the oldest institution of higher
learning in the West. 

Jason Lee also established branch missions in other Northwest locations,
including what is now the Dalles, Oregon City and Astoria. Oregon City has
been designated the end of the Oregon Trail - the route many settlers
followed to the West between the mid-1840s and the 1860s. Estimates of their
number range from 300,000 to half a million.

Final days

Many of the early travelers were influenced by accounts from the Lees and
other missionaries, according to Nancie Fadeley, a former Commission on
Archives and History member.

Lee married again and brought Lucy Thomson with him to Oregon. She, too,
died soon after giving birth, but their child, Lucy Anna Maria, survived. 

The settlements and commercial enterprises with which Lee was associated
thrived, but he was never able to report large numbers of converts among the
Native Americans. Allegations of financial mismanagement also were
circulating. The difficulties of communication - letters took months, if
they ever arrived - and perhaps the complaints of disgruntled missionaries
led Lee to journey back to New York to defend himself in person. 

After hours before the board, Lee was exonerated, but in the meantime a new
superintendent had reached the Willamette Valley. He closed the mission and
sold its property. Some of the missionaries stayed in Oregon and prospered,
one of them becoming the state's first governor. 

Lee, however, was not well after his appearance before the board and died
the following March. He was 41 years old.

# # #

*Purdue is news director of United Methodist News Service's Washington
office.

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United Methodist News Service
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