school on the great subject of their relation and obligation to God, to man, and to themselves. I open and close the school each day with prayer."[1]
Ezra Fisher is described in an article[2] on "Early Oregon Schools," by Marianne H. D'Arcy, who enrolled in the Oregon City College in 1850, or 1851. Of him she says, "Mr. Fisher to my youthful mind was very austere, and when Lucy Jane[3] turned the third reader class over to him, after our second failure in spelling and definition, it was a dreadful moment to me. He kept us after school, and in dismissing us said in his most impressive voice, 'If this lesson is not correctly recited tomorrow, I shall make you boys take off your coats and I shall flog you, and as for you miss (pointing to me), I shall ferrule your hands.'" After a sleepless night because she was unable to get her lessons she was much relieved the next morning when her father decided to enroll her in the new Clackamas County Female Seminary.
However, the main objective and ambition of Ezra Fisher was not teaching but missionary work. He continually asks the Home Missionary Society for competent teachers to relieve him from his educational activities. In the fall of 1851, George Chandler and James Read were sent to Oregon City to conduct the school. At the opening of the fall term the girls' department[4] was dismissed, and only boys were admitted. The boys numbered about forty pupils.
Upon the arrival of Chandler and Read, the school was advertised as follows in the local newspaper:[5]
The fall quarter of the Oregon City college will commence in The Baptist meeting house in this city on Monday, the 14th inst., under the tuition of President George W. Chandler, late of Franklin College, Iowa, and Reverend James S. Read, A.M., the following are the terms. Each quarter will consist of eleven weeks. Tuition for Reading and Spelling per quarter, six dollars, English grammar, Geography, Natural Science, eight dollars, Latin, Greek, and Higher Mathematics, ten dollars. An
