Below: Rev. Harvey Clark’s log house was one of a handful in West Tuality (Forest Grove) when plans were laid to start an orphan school that would soon become Tualatin Academy and, later, Pacific University. The school opened in March 1848.
Below: Harvey Clark, first pastor of the Congregational Church in West Tuality, brought enlightened ideas about social issues to his work there. (Courtesy of the United Church of Christ, Forest Grove)
Below: A.T. Smith home, built in 1854. Alvin Smith, along with his wife Abigail, was a missionary and pioneer who kept a detailed diary of early life in the area.
West Tuality (Forest Grove)
On the West Tualatin Plains, a crossroads community—West Tuality (now Forest Grove) —developed around a Congregational church whose pastor was the unsuccessful missionary Harvey Clark. The first church on the Tualatin Plains had been John Smith Griffin’s tiny congregation, which formed in 1842 on the East Plains but also served parishioners on the West Plains. Unfortunately, Griffin’s rigid approach to religion soured a handful of his West Plains parishioners, and in 1845 they “dismissed” Griffin and called Harvey Clark to be their pastor. The new church’s mission would be to serve Oregon Trail migrants, but its founders soon took on a much more ambitious task: the founding of an educational academy and—ultimately—a university.
The first person to suggest starting a school was 67-year-old Tabitha Brown, who crossed the continent in 1846 at the age of 66 and met the Clarks in 1847. While staying at their home that winter, she discussed her concern for children whose parents had died on the Oregon Trail and told of her desire to minister to them. With Harvey Clark’s encouragement and the tiny West Plains community’s help, she was able to open a school the following year.
By the time she did, two missionary couples—Henry and Eliza Spalding and Myra and Cushing Eells—had arrived in West Plains, nearly destitute and in need of work. They had been forced to close their missions east of the Cascades in the aftermath of the tragic Indian attack on the Whitman Mission and had been taken in by Harvey Clark, A. T. Smith, William Geiger and other Congregationalists.
Mrs. Spalding apparently was hired to teach in Tabitha Brown’s new orphan school that first year, while Tabitha cared for the children in a new log boarding house built by the men of the congregation. Her charges remembered fondly that she cooked for them with beef supplied by the church and vegetables from her own garden, took them on outings to gather wild strawberries, decorated the dining room tables with bright calico, awakened them with song, and was their cheerful companion. Soon she was caring not only for children whose parents had died on the journey westward but for those whose fathers were gone to the California gold fields and for other local “scholars,” regardless of their parents’ ability to pay. Within months the school attracted the attention of Rev. George Atkinson, newly arrived representative of the American Home Missionary Society, who encouraged Clark and others to expand the school into an academy that could provide the children of the new territory with a fine education.
On Sept. 26, 1849, the territorial legislature granted Tualatin Academy an official charter, and in July 1850 settlers came for what Rev. Elkanah Walker described as “a grand gathering of all the region” to raise the framework of an academy building. The result of their efforts was the Old College Hall building that still stands on the Pacific University campus.
Difficult years ensued, when wrangling by the trustees and polarization within the community threatened to close the school. But the institution survived these ordeals, and many farmers in the region began to build fine houses in town so their families could live in proximity to Tualatin Academy. Today, many of these handsome homes, ranging from the 1859 Classical Revival Thomas Hines house to the 1888 Queen Anne A. I. Macrum house, still stand on the tree-lined streets south of Forest Grove’s downtown core.
From its earliest days, West Tuality was regarded as a cultural center where settlers’ children could receive a quality education on the frontier. Its founders espoused the strictest religious motives, combined with some of the most advanced human rights theories of the day. As well-educated men and women from the Eastern seaboard, they maintained ties to a more sophisticated, godly world and were determined to recreate that world in their town. (Bourke and DeBats, p. 319) Elsewhere in the valley, their settlement was dubbed “Piety Hill” and their lofty goals were viewed with some amusement. But to a large degree the moral tone they set affected the entire county.
Paul Burke and Donald DeBats Washington County.
The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore & London, 1995.
Excerpt from This Far-Off Sunset Land a Pictorial History of Washington County, Oregon by Carolyn M. Buan, available at the Washington County Historical Society & Museum.
Carolyn Buan, for many years the owner of Writing & Editing Services in Portland, is the author of A Changing Mission: The Story of a Pioneer Church (a sesquicentennial history of the United Church of Christ in Forest Grove) and co-author, with Linda Dodds, of Portland Then and Now. She recently retired and is working on her first mystery, which is set in a small village in Norway. She also served WCM as a board member and newsletter editor.
