Pioneer Profiles – October 2019
Reverend Thomas Fletcher Royal, known as “Fletcher” to his family and “T.F.” to his friends, arrived with his family by wagon train in the Rogue Valley on October 27, 1853. Gold had been discovered on the banks of Rich Gulch the previous year, and hundreds of fortune seekers and riff raff had poured into the area, giving birth to the boisterous town of Jacksonville with its “din of Sunday trade, gambling, horse racing, and all kinds of wickedness.” This is where Fletcher Royal chose to preach, and he delivered his first sermon in the Pacific Northwest to a rough and tumble audience on Sunday, three days after his arrival.
Fletcher came from a deeply religious family. His father, William Royal, had also been called to the gospel, joining the Illinois Rock River Methodist Conference in 1831 as a “circuit rider” covering all of Illinois north of Peoria, excluding only Chicago. His grandfather, Thomas Royal, had held religious services in his West Virginia home whenever an itinerant preacher dropped in since there was no church in the area.
Born in his mother’s Dublin, Ohio hometown in 1821, a 25-year-old Fletcher had entered the ministry after teaching school in Illinois for several years. Fletcher was associated with his father’s Rock Island Methodist Conference for the next seven years before being transferred to Oregon’s Methodist Conference.
However, when Fletcher reached Jacksonville, he was in a quandary. He had arrived in Oregon without a specific job, and he had a family to support. He had married Mary Ann Stanley in 1849, and their third child had been born during their overland trek. When he found out that Jacksonville was without a minister, he decided to stay until the Methodist elders gave him an assignment.
Fletcher’s predecessor in the Rogue Valley had been Rev. Joseph S. Smith who had started the Methodist Church’s missionary work in southern Oregon and northern California. Religious services, such as they were, had been held wherever a room could be found in venues that included a gambling house under construction and the “Round Tent,” a large, round, split-lumber building with a dirt floor, used the rest of the week for the court trials and other public gatherings.
Upon seeing the need for a church in the growing town of Jacksonville, Smith had initiated efforts to build one. According to Jacksonville native Pinto Colvig, Smith “was an able man intellectually but did not seem to understand the knack of dealing with such a sportive community as the gold excitement had brought together at this point, so after a brief sojourn he became discouraged and returned to Salem.” However, Smith did succeed in getting the frame of a church building erected.
Fletcher took up the work. According to Colvig, “Royal was a royal fellow with the ‘boys’ and knew how to deal with them. Clugage, the proprietor of the town site, gave the present church lots, and Royal had the framework which Smith had left torn down and removed…. Rev. Royal then commenced a campaign for building funds. He had a familiar way with the ‘boys.’ Would saunter into a gambling hall, stand around awhile watching the Sunday morning games and then he would say: ‘Boys, when you get through with the deal let’s all go down and listen to a little preaching,’ and the boys would generally turn out to hear him.
“One day he walked into the leading saloon of the place, where Charley Williams, Ad. Helms and other were engaged at a game of faro. Said he: ‘Boys, we must have some help in building our church, and I want you fellows to give us a lift.’ ‘But,’ remarked Helms, the dealer, ‘you would not use money got in this way for such a purpose, would you?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ replied Royal, ‘and we would turn it to a better use.’ ‘The little church across the way’ is in part a result of the better use of that money.”
Some of the local ladies pitched in as well, touring the saloons and mining camps, smiling prettily, and asking for donations. The men were surprisingly generous, and a large part of the building fund for the first Protestant Church in southern Oregon came from the contributions of sporting men.
Construction of the Methodist Church was started sometime in 1853 under pioneer builder David Linn. Later James Donough and Charles Pyle were in charge of the construction. The classic revival style structure had timbers and roof shakes hand-hewn by William Kahler, who hauled the lumber to the site by ox team. According to one source, the church was dedicated on Christmas Day, 1854, and according to another historian it was dedicated on New Year’s Day, 1885. Either way, by the time construction of the Jacksonville church was finished, Fletcher Royal had finally been given a definite assignment to this district by the Oregon Methodist Conference.
Thomas Fletcher Royal was pastor of the Jacksonville congregation for only a couple of years. But during that time, he established six Sunday schools in different parts of the valley. He also set up a subscription school, the first school here, and served a term as School Superintendent, during which time he organized Jackson County into school districts.
In 1856, Fletcher was appointed principal and instructor at the Umpqua Academy in Roseburg, one of the state’s earliest schools and remained in that position for the next 10 years. He then became principal of the Portland Academy and Female Seminary for four years, followed by a one-year stint as Principal of Yamhill County’s Sheridan Academy. He next secured an appointment under President Grant’s “Christian Policy” as teacher and clerk at the Siletz Indian Reservation followed by a position as superintendent of instruction at the Klamath Indian Mission in charge of the boarding school.
When administrations changed, Fletcher returned to preaching, serving successively as circuit preacher in Benton, Polk, Yamhill, and Marion counties. During his period, he succeeded in building five more Oregon churches in Canyonville, Ten Miles, Silverton, Salem Heights, and Dallas. After he formally retired in 1896, he was made a “superannuate preacher.” Although he held no regular pastorate, he continued his ministry, preaching at the state penitentiary and the state hospital for the insane.
Thomas Fletcher Royal returned once more to Jacksonville for the Methodist Church’s 50th anniversary on Sunday, October 5, 1902. While his morning sermon drew from Matthew 1:21, his evening service was filled with reminiscences. According to the Mail Tribune, Royal told how he bought his first Jacksonville house in trade for his shotgun and a silver watch; how William Kahler sold his last yoke of oxen to lift the debt off the church; and he paid a glowing tribute to Isaac Jones, “the negro preacher whose eloquent sermons and soul-stirring prayers were a feature of all church gatherings.”
When Royal died in 1902 at the age of 90, he had been engaged in the ministry longer than any other clergyman in the northwest. He spent the last years of his life writing a history of pioneer life in Illinois and Oregon titled Trail Followers and Empire Builders. He was well qualified as author; he was both….
Footnote: The Methodist Church building, located at the northwest corner of Fifth and D streets, originally faced Fourth Street. In 1883 it was rotated 180 degrees to face Fifth Street and the new courthouse. Today we know it as St. Andrews Anglican Church…but that’s another story.
Pioneer Profiles is a project of Historic Jacksonville, Inc., a non-profit whose mission is helping to preserve Jacksonville’s Historic Landmark District by bringing it to life through programs and activities. Visit us at www.historicjacksonville.org and follow us on Facebook (historicjville) for upcoming events and more Jacksonville history.