Tradition

History

The history of St. Paul Parochial School is over 150 years old. In the early 1830s, French trappers settled on the east side of the Willamette, 30 miles south of the river’s confluence with the Columbia. This hardy bunch, mostly Catholic French Canadians, lived in log cabins. In 1836, they built a log church. In 1839, Father Blanchet arrived, established a 2,500-acre mission and named it after Saint Paul, the missionary saint.

St. Joseph’s College, the first Catholic school in Oregon, was built due to the inspiration of Archbishop Blanchet and with funds from a former fur trader, Joseph Larocque. On October 17, 1843, St. Joseph’s College, a primary and secondary school for boys, opened with Father Antoine Langlois in charge.

On September 9, 1844, six Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, who had braved icy seas on their ship the l'Infatigable, opened Sainte Marie de Willamette in St. Paul. The school building was a shed, and the first classes were held in the fields. The Sisters painted the building, stopped the holes in the walls with moss and supported the school by milking their cows and selling butter. Students, who ranged in age from 16 to 60, paid for their education with flour, meat, eggs, salt, candles and tea.

In 1846, Archbishop Blanchet oversaw construction of the brick church that still stands today in the center of St. Paul. The church served as the pro-cathedral for the Oregon territory, a 3,500 square-mile expanse that covered a good piece of the Pacific Northwest.

Both schools endured until most of the families at St. Paul left for the California gold fields, and most of those who remained died of typhoid. In 1853, the Sisters left for San Jose.

As more and more pioneers made their way to Oregon, the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary answered Archbishop Blanchet’s call. In 1861, they arrived in St. Paul, planted crops and began classes in the abandoned school building. The Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary served in St. Paul well into the 1980s.

In 1958, the current school building was built. The new building included six classrooms, library and office area. Through the past 40 years the school has served between 60 and 100 students a year in grades one through eight. A Kindergarten was added in the early 1990s. From 1993 to 2000, the school had been served by the Sisters of Saint Mary of Oregon. Because of the increases in class sizes, an addition to the school of three classrooms and a staff room was completed in April 2000. The second phase of the building plan includes a multi-purpose room to be built sometime in the future.