Doctor Pietrzycki died in 1910. In the message of Mayor J. A. Muirhead on January 3, 1911, we find the following reference to the bequest:
* * * "Pietrzycki Park, donated to the city by our late esteemed townsman, Dr. Marcel Pietrzycki, and the no less magnificent bequest in his last will and testament, by which the City of Dayton is named as the beneficiary of the greater part of his estate to be used for the establishment of an industrial school in our midst. It is estimated that the amount which will be available for this purpose when the estate is settled up and all bequests paid, will exceed $100,000."
By the terms of the will the judge of the superior court, the mayor of the city, and the clerk of the school board were to be the trustees. But as the doctor, among his other peculiarities, insisted on drawing his will and other papers, without any lawyer's assistance, it was found that the language was such as to compel personal names instead of ex officio appointments, and as a result, Judge C. F. Miller, Dr. C. H. Day and Attorney E. W. Clark became permanent trustees for the management of this unique and valuable bequest.
The practical measures for full realization of the Pietrzycki Foundation are as yet largely tentative, but the fund is in process of application, and within a few years Dayton will have, without question, one of the best equipped industrial schools in the country.
CHURCHES OF COLUMBIA COUNTY
The history of the early churches of the Touchet country is similar to that of Walla Walla. The preachers of that early day had to do pretty much everything of secular as well as spiritual nature. Like other pioneers, those preachers were wholesouled, hearty, often robustious, and representative of the Church Militant and Triumphant as well as the Church Spiritual. They were usually men of eloquence and power, stronger on revivals and "hell-fire" than most of the pastors of this cooler and more scientific age, but playing a noble part in the foundation building of early days.
The Methodists seem to have been the pioneers on the Touchet, and of them Presiding Elder W. Calloway was the first to hold regular services. That was in 1866, and the meetings were held in the schoolhouse on the Touchet. The first regularly organized church dates its beginning on March 20, 1875. Among the pastors of that early church was Rev. S. G. Havermale, who became one of the early settlers in Spokane, filing a homestead claim on the Island, new in the heart of that city, a claim of enormous value, but the profits of which inured more to others than to the pioneer preacher.
The old camp-meetings at Shiloh, just above Huntsville, witnessed many a scene in those days, religious and otherwise.
There was a famous camp ground also on Mill Creek, about six miles above Walla Walla, in the Dudley grove. One of the preachers and authors of national reputation, L. A. Banks, now of Boston, author of that charming book, "An Oregon Boyhood," and other books of wide celebrity, started his career at those old camp grounds of Shiloh and Walla Walla.
One of the some group, who started as a "boy-preacher" in the early '70s was G. W. Kennedy. In recent years he has written a very interesting book called "The Pioneer Campfire." From it we make these extracts, not all of which belong to the Touchet, but to the wider area: