to Ningpo, China, and Miss Stella Ragon to Shevegyin, Burmah. It also sent to the training school at Chicago Miss Addie Williams, of Oregon. Since 1885 Mrs. E. S. Latourette has continuously served as corresponding secretary; Mrs. M. L. Driggs as president since 1889, and Mrs. James Failing as recording secretary from 1888 to 1903. The society was incorporated in 1890.
In Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho the home and foreign mission work have for the most part gone hand in hand, Union circles pledging support to both causes having been the rule. Miss Allen, general missionary, took charge of the Chinese mission work in Spokane in 1895. The general work was also actively prosecuted, nearly every church in the field being enlisted.
Some of the specific work of the women in this field has been the education of one young woman at the training school, the support for a time of the Scandinavian mission at Spokane. Another opportunity for help was given our women about 1894, by Rev. S. W. Beaven, a resident pastor on Vashon Island, Washington, at Burton, between Seattle and Tacoma. The need for another home for the children of foreign missionaries, beside those already in Massachusetts and Illinois, had long been apparent. Mr. Beaven's proposition was that he and his wife, assisted by his two sisters, should take the initiative in providing such a home if the women's missionary societies on the coast would co-operate. In 1895 a large house was built by Mr. Beaven, the women's societies and individual friends assisting in the furnishings. Later it, with its grounds, was purchased by the denomination on the coast and placed under the management of a representative committee of fifteen, five to reside near the home. Mr. Beaven and his wife were retained as superintendent and matron. Their care and the home has proved ideal, thus softening the sorrows of missionary parents whose children must have their early education in the home land, away from those most dear to them.
During the past two years all the women's foreign missionary societies on the coast have become affiliated with the Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of the West, and the probabilities are that the home at Burton will also come under the same management.
Pioneer courts, as well as pioneers of all other sorts, have a history peculiar to themselves. The first court opened in Corvallis was in a little log house, the home of Mrs. J. C. Avery. Judge Pratt, with all due dignity and the usual ceremony, pronounced the court open, and then Joe Meek, clothed with the authority of United States Marshal, stepped outside the door and called in a loud, sonorous voice, "Hear ye! hear ye! come into court," though there was not a person within hearing save Mrs. Avery, nor another object that broke the stillness save the dasher of her churn, as she sat by the fireplace composedly churning during this imposing ceremony, the formal opening of the first court in that judicial district.—(Notes furnished by Mrs. George R. Helm, nee Miss Frances Avery.)
