Marriage and Family
In 1836, Whitman married Narcissa Prentiss, a teacher of physics and chemistry. Narcissa had also been eager to travel west as a missionary, but she had been unable to do so as a single woman. They had one daughter, Alice Clarissa, born On March 14, 1837, the first Anglo-American child born in Oregon Country. She was named after her two grandmothers. She drowned in the Walla Walla River at age two.
As settlers came in increasing numbers, the Whitmans took in eleven orphaned children, adopting eight from one family whose parents had died. They also established a kind of boarding school for settlers' children at their mission.
Read more about this topic: Marcus Whitman
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and, marriage and/or family:
“I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“Always the same old story—
Father Time and Mother Earth,
A marriage on the rocks.”
—James Merrill (b. 1926)
“I acknowledge that the balance I have achieved between work and family roles comes at a cost, and every day I must weigh whether I live with that cost happily or guiltily, or whether some other lifestyle entails trade-offs I might accept more readily. It is always my choice: to change what I cannot tolerate, or tolerate what I cannot—or will not—change.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)