Early Life
On September 4, 1802 Marcus Whitman was born in Federal Hollow, New York to Alice and Beza Whitman. The family's immigrant paternal ancestor was John Whitman, who immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony before 1639 from England. After his father Beza's death when Whitman was seven years old, he was sent to Massachusetts to live with his uncle.
He dreamed of becoming a minister but did not have the money for such schooling. As a young man, he had returned to New York. He studied medicine for two years with an experienced physician under the form of apprenticeship approved then, and received his degree from Fairfield Medical College in New York. He practiced for a few years in Canada but was interested in going to the West.
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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