He was born in New York State in 1801, lived in Illinois and Missouri before leading a company of the 1843 wagon train to Oregon. Lenox sent out the call in 1848 that resulted in the formation of the Willamette Baptist Association. Although he was elected Moderator and Deacon, Lenox was voted out of his church in November, 1862, but was reunited with it before his death in 1872. His grave may be seen in the burying ground adjoining the white, turreted church situated on his Donation Land Claim. The West Union Baptist Church is the oldest Baptist Church west of the Rocky Mountains and one of the oldest Protestant buildings still standing in Oregon.
The Minute Book records the appointment of three committees to locate a site for a Meeting House, but it was not until David Lenox offered a portion of his land on April 9, 1855, that any progress was made toward the erection of the church. The Reverend Ezra Fisher, who was sent to Oregon by the American Baptist Home Mission Board in 1845, delivered the sermon of dedication on Christmas Day, 1853.
The West Union Baptist Church is the only pioneer church in Oregon, measured, blueprinted, and photographed in the Historic American Buildings survey in 1934. This project was carried out by the Civil Works Administration in cooperation with the National Parks Service of Plans and Designs within the Department of the Interior throughout the United States. It was a depression measure that offered employment to architects and secured records of great value pertinent to early American architecture.
Thirty-nine districts for research were designated. Oregon and Washington were “District 39.” The Oregon members of this district committee were Walter Church, architect, Portland; Nellie B. Pipes, librarian of the Oregon Historical Society, and W. R. B. Wilcox, Dean of the Department of Architecture of the University of Oregon. They employed twenty architects and two photographers. On the closing date of the project, April 28, 1934, forty-seven structures in Oregon and seven in Washington had been studied, delineated and photographed.
A list of these buildings may be found in the Oregon Historical Quarterly for June, 1934. Photographs and facsimiles of the blueprints may be inspected at the Oregon Historical Society Library in Portland or purchased through the National Archives in Washington, D. C.
Old College Hall
Irene S. Story
According to the caption on the bronze marker placed by the Multnomah Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution on May 12, 1939, “College Hall (is) the oldest building in continuous use for Educational purposes west of the Rocky Mountains. Here were educated men and women who have won recognition throughout the world in all the learned profession.”
In this building Tualatin Academy developed into what is now Pacific University. When the Academy was chartered in 1849, the classes met in the log cabin erected for the Congregational Church in West Tualatin Plains, now Forest Grove. But in 1850 the board of trustees authorized the erection of a two-story frame building. Here are the words of one of the students, Marcus W. Walker, concerning the “raising”:
“It was in 1850 but in the early summer and never did a brighter sun shine through, a bluer sky or more brilliant green bedeck forest and grove and plain than did those in which boys reveled during those days in which the frame of the old Academy building was placed in position.