3 results for author: Sandy Conley
Monument, Howard, NY – Marcus Whitman and Rev. Henry Spalding
In 1836, there was some concern that Narcissa and Marcus could not go west. Another couple in the party would be necessary so that Narcissa would not be the only woman. After other couples had refused or been deemed unqualified, Marcus caught up with Reverend Henry Harmon Spalding and his wife Eliza Hart Spalding in Howard, NY in early February 1836 and persuaded them to abandon their plans to become missionaries to the Osage Indians in what is now Kansas and to go further west with him and Narcissa.
This would prove to be a bit of a problem, because a younger Henry Spalding who was born in Wheeler and educated in Prattsburgh, had proposed to ...
Women’s History Month – March 2019
March is Women’s History Month and there is no better example of New York Women’s achievements than Narcissa Prentiss Whitman, one of the first two non-Indian women to cross the continental divide in 1836.
American adventurer William J. Snelling wrote in the February 1832 issue of New England magazine, “Only parties of men could undergo the vicissitudes of the journey; none who ever made the trip would assert that a woman could have accompanied them.”
Oregon Country historian and biographer Clifford M. Drury wrote “the successful crossing of the Rockies through South Pass by Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding on July 4, 1836, unlocked the ...