CORRESPONDENCE
439
dred dollars in debt. We have about $1000 uncollected on our subscription paper and we can probably rely on about $200 this fall from that source. We have flooring enough on hand to lay the floor for two rooms and a few hundred feet of ceiling and may probably get some more lumber on the old subscription and more subscribed.
We had the pleasure of welcoming Br. Chandler to this place yesterday, but his family were left sixteen miles back in the first settlements this side of the Cascade Mountains. He was in health and in good spirits, as were his family and Br. Read, 242 all of whom will be in town this week. We trust that from this time we shall be able to do more for our feeble churches than formerly and hope we may enjoy an enlarged measure of the spirit of our Divine Master. We shall call the convention, of which I made mention in my last, about the time of the close of my quarter. I rejoice to find that you have anticipated the same thing in your letter to Br. Johnson. I have discontinued my appointments at Linn City on account of the small number of families in that place this summer, and commenced preaching once a month at Cane- ma, 243 a village springing up at the head of the falls on this side of the Willamette, one mile above this place. We may con- tinue a monthly appointment there after the meeting of the convention, but we must not longer neglect the churches in the valley above. I should have sent you the concurrent certificate of the church 244 by the last mail but for the fact that our church clerk lives three miles from this place on the other side of the Willamette 245 and I have had no opportunity of seeing
242 This was Rev. J. S. Read. He had just graduated from Franklin College. He taught in the Oregon City School for one school year and then went to South- ern Oregon. He returned to Indiana in 1854. Mattoon, Bap. An. of Ore. 1:13.
243 Canemah began in the later forties. It took its name either from an In- ian chief, or from a word meaning a canoe landing; probably the former. George
dian
II. Himes.
244 These certificates were required by the Home Mission Society to be sent in by churches which were asking for the service of its missionaries.
245 The clerk of the Oregon City Church at this time was F. A. Collard, who was then living on his land claim just south of what is now Oswego. Records of First Baptist Church of Ore. City (MS. and records in Clackamas County Court House).
