September 29, 1849: Tualatin Academy, Later Pacific University, Chartered by Territorial Legislature

One of the oldest chartered universities in the West, Forest Grove’s Pacific University was incorporated by the Oregon Territorial Legislature on September 29, 1849 (Pacific University, by Henry L. Bates in The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society Vol. 21, No. 1 March, 1920).

Tabitha Moffat Brown, with help from Reverend Harvey L. Clark, his wife Emeline, and the Reverend George H. Atkinson established what was then called Oregon Orphans’ Asylum and School at Tualatin Plains in 1848. The school was incorporated by the legislature as Tualatin Academy in 1849. In 1853, Reverend Sidney Harper Marsh (pdf) arrived as an instructor, and would become Pacific University’s first president a year later when the school received a new charter as the Tualatin Academy and Pacific University.