Oregon Temperance Society: Beginnings

Read this entry in a primary source that was reprinted in the Oregon Historical Quarterly many years ago:

11 February 1836

[I]n compliance with a previous invitation all the neighbors visited us at the Mission house P. M. at which time a temperance society was formed the first existing west of the Rocky mountains O[regon] T[erritory]--Three of our neighbors readily signed the temperance pledge, others made frivolous excuses for not signing and others wanted time to consider of the subject. The following day three of them came and signed--The following week J. Lee obtained nine more subscribers there are in all Eighteen members,--O Lord save this rising settlement from the curse of intemperance.

Mission Record Book of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Willamette Station, Oregon Territory, North America, Commenced 1834, ed. Charles Henry Clay, Oregon Historical Quarterly 23 (1922): 242.