REVEREND EZRA FISHER

112

Oregon

City,

Mar.

10th, 1855.

Rev. Benjamin M. Hill. Dear Brother:

The church

Oregon City have invited Br. Johnson and them the coming year and agreed and Br. Post $75. Perhaps this on do could the whole. But it falls far short they in

Br. J. D. Post to supply to give Br. Johnson $50 is

the best

Br. Post's time is engrossed in his of meeting our wants. school and the most he can do is to preach half the Sabbaths, attend the weekly prayer meetings and perhaps visit a little

Saturdays in the afternoons.

Br. Johnson will preach half

the Sabbaths, but does not contemplate visiting at all. You will see by this that the church must be greatly neglected I hoped the church would have in the pastoral relations.

chosen some

man

as their pastor and asked the

Home

Mis-

sionary Society to help in his support, so that he could give himself to the ministry, or have asked your Board to send

them a minister and

let

him enter upon the work

as a

man

do not yet see it so. Perhaps I noticed in the January number of the Home Mission Record a notice of my reappointment. I shall endeavor to

of God.

all is

serve the Board to

my

for the best.

I

best ability through the

summer and

at least, my health will permit and God blesses. I have received no letter from you for near three months. fall

if

364 when wrecked. I Suppose one was lost on the Southerner of the season with the churches coming expect to spend most in the upper part of the valley and in Umpqua and Rogue River valleys and, when in Rogue River Valley, I may cross the Ciscue [Siskiyou] Mountains into Chasty [Shasta] Valley, as it will be but about 25 miles from Rogue River Valley and 125 from the settlement in the Sacramento Valley. A large town called Yreka has sprung up in that valley, in which it is said there are numbers of Baptist members who have had but few Baptist sermons preached to them. Yreka 365 is

364 The steamship "Southerner," Capt. F. A. Sampson, was wrecked on the coast at Cape Flattery, Dec. 26, 1854. Washington shing Oregpnian, Jan. 27, 1855. 365 Yreka sprang up as a result of the mining in Shasta County, California, which began in 1850. diggii _ opened in March, 1851, gave rise to the 1850."" Important diggings town, which was incorporated in 1854. It declined with the mines after 1857. Bancroft, Hist, of Calif., VI: 4P4.