Sager Orphans - After The Whitman Massacre

After The Whitman Massacre

At this point family life ended for the remaining four Sager orphans. The girls were split up and grew up with different families. All of them married young.

• Henrietta, the baby girl born on the Oregon Trail, had no children. She died at the age of 26, mistakenly shot by an outlaw.
• Matilda had 8 children. She spent her later life with a daughter in California, where she died on April 13, 1928, at the age of 89.
• Elizabeth had 9 children. She lived in Portland, Oregon, where she died on July 19, 1925 at the age of 88.
• Catherine, the oldest of the Sager girls, married Clark Pringle, a Methodist minister and bore him 8 children. They lived in Spokane, Washington. About ten years after her arrival in Oregon she wrote an account of the Sager family's journey west. She hoped to earn enough money to set up an orphanage in the memory of Narcissa Whitman. She never found a publisher. She died on August 10, 1910, at the age of 75.

Her children and grandchildren saved her manuscript without modification, and today it is regarded as one of the most authentic accounts of the American westward migration.

In 1897, more than 3,000 visitors attended the 50th anniversary commemoration of the massacre on the mission grounds. Invited as guests of honor were some of the survivors of the events of 1847, including Catherine Sager Pringle, Elizabeth Sager Helm and Matilda Sager Delaney, the last survivors of the Sager orphans.