protracted meetings; 18 prayer meetings; 6 church meetings; visited one common day school,[1] 1 Sabbath school four times and addressed them each time, and traveled 428 miles. Eleven or twelve hopeful conversions have occurred in the field of my labors, all but one in Rock Island, in connection with a series of meetings carried on by Br. Thomas Powell and myself.
I have baptised 8 and received one by letter into Rock Island church. I have made 55 pastoral visits. No monthly concerts sustained at present. Have obtained 3 signatures to the temperance pledge. . . . Received $22 from the people towards my support. Nothing paid for the various benevolent societies connected with our denomination.
No auxiliary society has contributed for my support. One Sunday School at Rock Island, 6 teachers, about 25 scholars, and about 50 volumes in the library. No meeting house commenced.
In consequence of the great uncertainty of being able to reach the American settlements in Oregon by wagons, the great destitution of ministerial labors in all this region especially on the Upper Mississippi, the unsettled condition of Oregon and the late Indian depredations at the Walla Walla Mission station under the charge of Dr. Whitman,[2] we have concluded to defer going west this spring; yet not without much reluctance and I trust attempting faithfully to commit our cause to him whose we are and to whom we owe everything. Should the door be open so that duty shall appear plain, I now think I shall cheerfully undergo the privations of removing across the desert mountains to the Pacific Coast. May God direct and be it ours to obey.
- ↑ The public school system in the Mississippi Valley began early. In Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, there were enacted in the twenties school laws providing for public common school instruction. In Iowa it came some time later. E. G. Dexter, A Hist, of Education in the United States, pp. 103-116.
- ↑ This probably refers to the trouble with the Indians in the late autumn of 1842. Mrs. Whitman was insulted during Dr. Whitman's absence in the East, and fled to The Dalles. The mission mill at Waiilatpu, Whitman's station, was burned. The news of this, exaggerated and misdated by rumor, seems to have reached Ezra Fisher at this time.
