Publishers Preface

To "Baptist Annals of Oregon" by Rev. C. H. Mattoon.

IN placing before you, dear reader, the first volume of the Baptist Annals of Oregon, we deem it necessary to make a brief explanation. It has taken over twenty years of patient, painstaking effort on the part of the Author, to compile and write the two volumes which we hope to print. That the facts therein contained are authoritative and deserve publication goes without saying. All the manuscript and other materials have been assigned to a committee of the Oregon Baptist State Convention, who have begun the publication. It is not for the purpose of making money that this enterprise has been undertaken, but feeling that here is a mine of valuable information for our denomination and others, which should be made accessible to all, we have been impelled to assume a difficult task on a limited amount of means. We need your approval and cooperation. We trust you may find in this volume the incentives of a higher life, the motives for a firmer loyalty to the cause we love, The volume to follow will be equally as interesting as this one, and together, they will form a set of books worthy of any home library .All of the manuscript has been carefully revised and criticized by the ablest and best men in the denomination in Oregon; hence, there should be no hesitancy in accepting the work on the ground of narrowness or partiality. The history of your own church is included in the work, if a Baptist church, and it may be that some member of your own family is mentioned. If this volume meets with the approval of those for whom it is published, the other volume will follow in due time.