With the arrival of the first reinforcement of mission workers, including the first physician, Dr. White, in 1837, and others in 1838, the living conditions in the old mission quarters were impossibly crowded. In a book published in 1848, based on Dr. Elijah White’s source materials, the writer says: “There was some difficulty in accommodating the new comers, but they were obliged to enter the house with the old inmates, already numerous.... (This) made Mrs. White anxious to remove to their own house, which they did in a few days although it was not fit condition for inhabitants. There was no chimney in it, and but roof enough to cover a bed; a few loose boards for a floor, and one side entirely unenclosed.” The house was completed as soon as possible. But as there was no suitable stone at hand for the hearth, it was made of clay and ashes “which after drying, became measurably though not perfectly hardened. But one of Mrs. White’s greatest domestic privations was that she could never wash her hearth.” When the mission carpenters, under W. H. Willson, finished the house, and Mrs. White was settled, she made it a home which won praise from the wife of the Fort Vancouver chaplain, the Rev. Herbert Beaver, when she and her husband visited the Whites. “They were much pleased with everything around them, especially the indoor arrangements. ‘Why, Mrs. White,’ said Mrs. Beaver ‘how nice this is; it looks as though a white woman’s hands had been here. This is the first white woman’s house I have been in since my arrival in this country.’” Many visitors besides the Beavers stayed at the White home, including Dr. Marcus Whitman, from the American Board Missions; Dr. McLoughlin, and visiting missionaries from the Hawaiian Islands. From the size of the retinue which accompanied Dr. and Mrs. McLoughlin, and the description of their camping equipment, it must have been that they camped near the house while they visited, as the party could never have been housed under its roof. We have a description of the Mission Hospital, as it was some years after Dr. White’s occupancy, from Lt. Charles Wilkes, a United States government exploring agent, who visited the Willamette Valley in June 1841. “We rode on to the log houses which the Messrs. Lee built when they first settled here. In the neighborhood are the wheelwright’s and blacksmith’s, together with their workshops, belonging to the mission, and about a mile to the east, the hospital, built by Dr. White, who was formerly attached to the mission.” The History of Wheatland Ferry _Mrs. Ross Rogers_ [Illustration: (uncaptioned)]