The congregation met in the homes of the members until 1849, when a log school house was built in the north end of present-day Amity. A young schoolmaster by the name of Ahio S. Watt named it Amity. And we find that Elder Glen O. Burnett “delivered the principal address when the first school in Amity was opened in the spring of 1849.” The California gold rush took some of the members to the goldfields for a few years. The Indian and Civil wars retarded the progress of the little church. It was not until 1869 or 1870 that it had its first building. The ground for this building was given by Enos Williams, who also gave the village square in front of the church to the children of Amity in perpetuity. The building was erected by a pioneer carpenter, Charles Burch. This building served the congregation until 1912, when the present church building was erected seventy-five feet west of the original structure. The old building was moved to another part of town and is still used for church purposes by another religious communion. Enos Williams, William Buffum, and Robert Lancefield were charter members of this church. They were leaders in the community, school, and church life of this period. These laymen did not confine their good work to the Amity area alone. When circuit riders Harvey and Burnett founded Bethel College in Polk County, they sent their children to its high school department and college classes, or supported it with financial help. The pioneer Amity Church of Christ is not a story about a wooden building as much as it is a story of great men, both its ministers and its laymen—men who were willing to sacrifice for their faith. The church at one time was in grave financial difficulty. There was a possibility of losing its building. A member, Heber Martin, then past seventy years of age, went to the bank and offered to mortgage his farm to save the church building from a mortgage foreclosure. Happily, this man’s faith aroused the community and the property was saved. Bethel College _Dr. James Matthew Alley_ [Illustration: Oregon Historical Society] In the figures of the 1850 census, there were no illiterate persons in Polk County. This was due to the high quality of the pioneers who settled in this area of present-day Yamhill and Polk Counties, which was called “The Athens of the West.” Between the years of 1843 and 1860 some of the best educated and most dedicated men ever to come over the Oregon Trail gravitated to this section of the Oregon Territory. Wherever they settled they started a school and a church. Many of them were members of the Christian Church. It was only natural that a circuit rider preacher, Elder Glen O. Burnett, should call the people of this religious communion together in a camp meeting in an oak grove near Bethel in 1852. At this meeting the idea of Bethel College was conceived.