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Narcissa Prentiss Whitman, part 4.

© Mary Trotter Kion

A DARK AND DEVOUT DOCTOR

Narcissa Prentiss remained at home, waiting to see what the future would bring. She’d had her chance. Perhaps she could have married Henry Spalding and could now be looking forward to a life as a missionary’s wife. But that was not to be.

On Sunday evening, October 13, 1833 Miss Eliza Hart was wed to Henry Spalding in the chapel at South College. The Reverend Giles Doolittle performed the ceremony. It was somewhat ironical, considering that Spalding had previously voiced his displeasure with abolition and was in favor of sending all free Negroes to Africa, that when the Reverend Doolittle died he was buried in the cemetery at Hudson near the grave of Owen Brown. Brown, like his martyred son John, was a great abolitionist.

But, for now, Mr. and Mrs. Spalding continued their studies and strove to make ends meet now that Henry, because of his marriage, had lost the financial aid for education he’d been receiving. In the spring of 1833, somewhere between their educational labors and caring for the borders they’d taken in, the Spaldings read the letter from William Walker that was printed in a Christian publication.

Walker’s letter concerned four western Indians who had traveled all the way from the Rocky Mountains to St. Louis, Missouri. They were searching for the White Man’s religion. Eliza and Henry probably, also, became aware of the departure of Jason Lee and his group for Oregon Country in 1834. Samuel Parker had also departed that same spring for St. Louis. Knowing that the savages from the Far West were earnestly seeking Christian instruction and that other religious persons had already taken that giant step westward surely added fuel to the Spalding’s missionary fire.

Samuel Parker had continued on to the west and returned. He then made a second journey beyond the Rockies. This time, he was accompanied by another man, Doctor Marcus Whitman. The doctor, though not a minister, made the decision to seek a mission among the Indians of the west. This presented two problems for him. The first was that he needed to recruit more couples to accompany him. The ‘couple’ part was his second problem. Dr. Whitman was a single man. He needed a wife, devout and supporting, to go west with him. To solve both of these dilemmas, Whitman returned to the East where at least one of his situations found a conclusion. He was introduced to Narcissa Prentiss. They were engaged to be married and Whitman returned west to seek a location for their mission.