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.
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Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or family:
“Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated. The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with perfect fullness.”
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