Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/113

OREGON PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 105 women for their wives. There were also thirty-three American women, thirty-two children, thirteen lay members of the Pro- testant Missions, thirteen Methodist ministers, six Congrega- tional ministers, three Jesuit priests, and sixty Canadian-French, making an aggregate of one hundred and thirty-seven Ameri- cans, and sixty-three Canadian-French (including the priests in the latter class) having no connection as employes of the Hudson's Bay Company. "I have said that the population outside of the Hudson's Bay Company increased slowly. How much so, will be seen by the fact that up to the beginning of the year 1842, there were in Oregon no more than twenty-one Protestant ministers, three Jesuit priests, fifteen lay members of Protestant churches, thirty-four white women, thirty-two white children, thirty-four American settlers, twenty-five of whom had native wives. The total American population will thus be seen to have been no more than one hundred and thirty-seven." Rev. Gustavus Hines, in his "Missionary History of Oregon/' says that in 1840 there were only nine Methodist ministers in the Oregon Mission. Some of the lay members, of which J. L. Parrish, the Mission blacksmith, was one, became ministers, which probably accounts for the difference in the estimates of Thornton and Hines as to the number of Methodist ministers. In Gray's "History of Oregon," pages 185-192, he endeavors to give a list of the early settlers in Oregon, and says that he, at one time, made a list of names, but the list had been lost. He further says: "It will be seen that we had in the country in the fall of 1840, thirty-six American settlers, twenty-five of them with native wives ; thirty-three American women ; thirty-two chil- dren, thirteen lay members of the Protestant Missions, nine- teen ministers (thirteen Methodist, six Congregational), four physicians, three American and one English, three Jesuit priests, and sixty Canadian-French, making outside of the Hudson's Bay Company, one hundred and thirty-seven Ameri- cans and sixty-three Canadians, counting the three priests as Canadians." This is one of the instances in which Gray's History agrees with other Oregon histories.