ABSTRACT
The area itself was larger than France, and would be connected to the Old World largely though the Catholic mission to Oregon and the personalities of the first French speaking missionaries. Emissaries seeking missionaries can be traced to the 1820s, but the Catholics did not respond until much later, after the Protestants in the 1830s began to support missions to the Oregon territory. The bibliographic remnants of a mission "library" survive in about 150 French books collected at Mt. Angel Abbey, St. Benedict, Oregon, where the archdiocesan seminary is located. In the case of Blanchet's books, they followed him from his base of operations at St. Paul to Oregon City's proto-cathedral, and thence to Portland to serve as a reference collection for the whole province's clergy. The latter appearance of quarto and folio size books in Oregon in the late 1840s attests the growing trade and more bountiful supplies via ocean routes.
