Harvey Clark Collection

Harvey Clark was an Oregon pioneer of 1840 who helped to found Pacific University, and who owned much of the land where the town of Forest Grove now lies. He was born in Chester, Vermont on October 7, 1807. Originally trained to become a stone mason, he decided to become a minister as a teenager and left to attend the newly-opened Oberlin College in Ohio. At the time, Oberlin was one of the most liberal colleges in the country, with co-education for both sexes and open admissions for students of any race. After being ordained as a minister, he married a fellow Oberlin student from New York, Emmeline Caldwell. The Clarks wished to become missionaries, but the American Board of Foreign Missions turned down their application, possibly because of their association with liberal Oberlin. They decided to travel to Oregon as independent missionaries, supported by the Congregationalist Association of North Litchfield, Connecticut.

The Clarks travelled with fellow missionary Asahel Munger and his wife to Oregon in 1840. They settled in the Western Tualatin Plains and built two log cabins, intending to give religious instruction to the native peoples of the area. As additional white settlers appeared and the Indians died or left the area, however, there were very few natives left to teach. The Clarks instead taught the mixed-heritage children of white trappers and native women. In 1848, when another white settler named Tabitha Brown arrived in the West Tualatin Plains, they organized the school more formally. By this time, its students were mostly the orphans and abandoned children of white settlers. With the help of a third settler, George H. Atkinson, the school was chartered in 1849 under the name Tualatin Academy. Harvey Clark donated land for the school. It held classes on the elementary and secondary school levels. Within a few more years, college-level classes were added, and Tualatin Academy became the preparatory high school for Pacific University. Harvey Clark remained involved with the administration of Tualatin Academy and Pacific University for the rest of his life, serving as a member of its Board of Trustees.

In addition to helping to found Pacific University, Clark also contributed to the formation of the American government in Oregon and to the founding of the town of Forest Grove. Clark participated in the 1843 meeting at Champoeg that helped establish the first provisional American government in the Oregon Territory. He founded the first church in the Forest Grove region in 1844. In the later 1840s, when he donated 200 acres of land to Tualatin Academy, some of it made up the grounds of the campus, and the remainder was sold in lots to help fund the school. The lots from his land claim made up many of the original lots of the town. Clark died in 1858 in Forest Grove at the age of 50.