When Bishop Benjamin Wistar Morris set sail from New York on April 21, 1869, he was not alone as he embarked for his new appointment at the helm of the diocese of Oregon and Washington. He was accompanied by five energetic and visionary women who planned to found a school in Oregon. Traveling with the bishop were his wife, Hannah, her sisters Mary, Lydia and Clementine, and the bishop’s sister, Rachel. They sailed down the coast to Panama, crossed the isthmus by train, then sailed up the West Coast to San Francisco and then on to Portland. As their boat came up the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, they were impressed by the Cascades, especially Mt. St. Helens. It seemed appropriate to name their new school after this mountain, which itself was named for the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine. By the time their ship, the Continental, arrived in Portland, a passenger on the boat had enrolled his daughter, Helen Teal, as the first student at the new school.

With money donated by John D. and Catherine Wolfe, Bishop Morris purchased two pieces comprising a city block at Fifth and Main streets (bounded by Fourth, Fifth, Madison, and Jefferson) in Portland. One of the properties was owned by the widow of the previous bishop and contained a home and a chapel. St. Helen’s Hall opened in those buildings on Sept. 6, 1869, and the following year a dormitory was constructed for 30 boarders. Mary Rodney was the principal, a position she would hold for 27 years. Her sister Lydia was her assistant, and Clementine taught music. Fifty students assembled to the ringing of the bell that had been shipped around Cape Horn, and that enrollment increased to 75 students by the end of the first school year.

During the 1870s, the Rodney sisters and the Morrises lived in houses on the school property along with some of the boarders. The chapel was moved and remodeled to create a lower story that provided space for a laundry, gymnasium and 20 additional dormitory rooms. Classes included trigonometry, Latin, logic, Greek, astronomy, physics, Shakespeare, Milton, English history and grammar, music, art, chemistry, French, geography, Bible studies, algebra and geometry. In 1878, St. Helen’s Hall had 12 teachers and 132 students, including 36 boarders. Tuition was $300 a year.

Information for this page was condensed from The First Century, a history of St. Helen's Hall written by Sally Reed Stout.

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