Linfield University, the Pioneer Baptist College
Near Mcminnville, Oregon
The tree shaded campus on the south side of McMinnville is Linfield University, one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the Pacific Northwest. Its roots reach back to pioneer Baptists who, in the earliest years of the Oregon Territory, wanted a college of their own. In eighteen fifty eight the Oregon Territorial Legislature chartered the Baptist College at McMinnville, and the school opened to educate the sons and daughters of valley farmers at a time when the wagon ruts of the Oregon Trail were still fresh.
For its first decades it was known simply as McMinnville College. The name changed in nineteen twenty two to honor a gift. A widow named Frances Ross Linfield donated a substantial endowment and family land in memory of her late husband, the Reverend George Fisher Linfield, a Baptist minister.
In gratitude the college took his name. For nearly a century afterward it was Linfield College, a small liberal arts school known for its oak lined quad and, later, for its nursing and winemaking programs, until it formally became Linfield University in the year twenty twenty. Each summer the campus also hosts the International Pinot Noir Celebration, binding this old Baptist school to the wine country that grew up all around it.
