Tag Archives: Marcus Whitman

2022 — a Double Handful of Anniversaries

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Anniversaries! Why do they matter?
Well, actually, they don’t, when you come right down to it. A hundred years isn’t any more important than eighty years… or for that matter, than thirty-nine years and six months.
Still, human beings constantly thirst for patterns, which can help keep us alive. And we’re tuned to the cyclical pilgrimage of the years, with ever-returning spring and her sisters greeting us in the same pattern, all through our lives.
Anniversaries matter to us. They can be an occasion to remember, observe, and (depending on the type of event), celebrate. And 2022 offers repeated possibilities.
First of all, the TOWN OF URBANA has its bicentennial this year. It was created in 1822 from territory belonging to Bath, and incorporated as its own municipality.
Look at a map, and Urbana is the fist that grips the upright of Keuka Lake’s slingshot. Some of the very earliest grapes in the Finger Lakes region were cultivated in Urbana, and Pleasant Valley Wine Company, formed before the Civil War, is still in business today. Urbana’s lakeside slopes make good ground for vineyards.
Though the Town’s mostly rural, there are unincorporated settlements such as Rheims, Pleasant Valley, Urbana, and North Urbana (which is southwest of Urbana – go figure). The Fish Hatchery and the Davenport Hospital are in Urbana, but the best known part of Urbana is probably the Village of Hammondsport, which was indeed a port back in canal-and-railroad days. It’s also, of course, the home of Urbana’s most famous son, the aviation giant Glenn Curtiss, who lies buried just a few miles from where he was born, and just a few rods from where his first flights electrified the nation.
Also incorporated in 1822 was the Town of Cameron, far from the Lake and high on the Appalachian Plateau. Cameron is the birthplace of General William Woods Averell, whose Civil War career was followed by a life of diplomacy, invention and enterprise – he invented an early form of asphalt for roads. Cameron and West Cameron (but not Cameron Mills) are unincorporated settlements. The land was originally separated from Addison.
Centenary Methodist Church in Bath is enjoying its bicentennial this year, though Methodists had been meeting informally before that. It took them a few years to get their building up, but once they did they shared it with any congregation, such as the Baptists and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion, in need of a home. They are now on their third edifice, and are currently hosting the Seventh Day Adventists.
This year Avoca Baptist Church enjoys its 175th anniversary. There’s also a sad 175th to acknowledge. On November 30 of 1847 Marcus and Narcissa Prentiss were killed in Oregon Territory. Later on we’ll look at the ins and outs, and rights and wrongs, of that affair (watch this space!). But for now we’ll just note that Narcissa Prentiss was a Prattsburgher, an alumna of Franklin Academy, while her husband Marcus had practiced medicine in Prattsburgh and Wheeler, before they went to Oregon Territory as missionaries.
Hornell Intermediate School was opened in 1922 as Hornell High School. It was perhaps the first of our truly modern schools, and it’s the oldest school in Steuben County that started as a public school, and is still used as a public school.
This is the centennial year for the Village of Riverside, incorporated within the Town of Corning in 1922. Earlier called Centerville, the new Village gave itself a new name. Unfortunately at some times Riverside could have been called River-In or River-Under. The Village was badly flooded in 1935, 1946, and 1972.
Which reminds us that this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Aniello’s Pizzeria in Corning, on June 22, 1972 – and then of the Hurricane Agnes flood on June 23. It’s certainly not an occasion to celebrate – it killed 19 people in Steuben alone – but it must be remembered. And we’ll do so soon, in more detail, in another edition of this blog.

Remembering Marcus Whitman

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For pretty much the past century, we have lived in a world where Glenn Curtiss was the most famous Steuben County person… though there were spells in there where Margaret Sanger gave him a run for his money.

*But for the PREVIOUS century, the winner hands-downs would have been Marcus Whitman.

*After practicing medicine in Wheeler from 1828 to 1835, Whitman traveled out as far as today’s Idaho as a medical missionary. Such a journey was extremely unusual… very few white Americans had been out that far west since Lewis and Clark… but Whitman would soon top that.

*Returning home he married Narcissa Prentiss of Prattsburgh, and with another local couple the two set off for Oregon, where they made homes and began missionary work, along with medical practice and business ventures.

*Whitman went to St. Louis on mission business in 1843, and when he headed back he guided the first large wagon train of settlers, establishing the Oregon Trail as a viable route. His cross-country journeys were remarkable, but he and his wife had their fame solidified when they and 12 others were killed by Cayuse Indians in 1847. (While we can regret the atrocity, we need to also remember that the Cayuse themselves had been VICTIMS of atrocities, and that the region was teeming with conflict between Indian and European, British and American, Catholic and Protestant… not to mention the Mexican War and fierce conflicts over Mormonism.)

*Besides being remembered in the name of the “Whitman Massacre,” Marcus Whitman has numerous memorials across the country.

*The Whitman Mission National Historic Site was established (under different nomenclature) in 1936.

*Whitman College in Walla Walla was established in 1859, and now has some 1500 undergrads. Alumni include “Batman” actor Adam West and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

*Marcus Whitman Central School District and Marcus Whitman High are in Rushville; Whitman once lived nearby.

*Wallowa-Whitman National Forest straddles the Idaho-Oregon state line. Theodore Roosevelt established it, under different nomenclature, in 1908.

*Whitman Glacier, and the Whitman Crest, are on Mount Rainier.

*A bronze tablet in Wheeler commemorates his service as a doctor.

*A plaque at Franklin Academy in Prattsburgh honors alumna Narcissa Prentiss, and also mentions Marcus. A historical marker at the Narcissa Prentiss House also mentions him.

*A plaque at DeWitt Park in Ithaca memorializes the commissioning of the Whitman-Spalding mission party.

*Whitman’s birthplace in Rushville has a New York State Historic marker.

*In Washington state, September 4 is Marcus Whitman Day.

*In 1977, Marcus Whitman was named to the Steuben County Hall of Fame.

*Each state gets to donate two statues to the National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol, and Washington donated a statue of Marcus Whitman. (There’s a duplicate at Whitman College.) His “colleague” from Washington is Mother Joseph, a Roman Catholic nun who established schools, orphanages, hospitals, and shelters throughout the region. Given the attitudes of their own day, probably they would each be horrified, if not enraged, to be paired with a “heretic.” But the times, and the mores, both march on.

Steuben Folks Make the (Educational) Comics

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A number of Steuben County folks have made enough of a splash in the world that they have become the subjects of biographies, documentaries, and histories. Using the Grand Comics Database (www.comics.org), I recently did some exploration to see how Steuben County has fared in “educational” (or even entertainment) comic books.

*Glenn Curtiss of Hammondsport, perhaps our closest approach to a superhero, appears in eight publications, beginning with a caricature in a 1909 aeronautical publication. (Tom Baldwin, who at the time was living and working in Hammondsport, also appears.)

*The other Curtiss appearances are all non-fiction pieces on the history of flight — two of them in Norwegian!

*The next most-frequent is Marcus Whitman, who shows up in five comics, PLUS cover appearances (as small insets) in Real Life Comics (1945) and True Comics (1946). Two of his appearances are in Norwegian, and there is probably also at least one Dutch reprint.

*Other Prattsburgh-area folks, such as Narcissa Prentiss and Henry Spalding, also come into the Whitman stories. But Henry appears on his own in a 1958 story about Chief Joseph.

*Corning-born Margaret Sanger has two current book-length graphic biographies: Woman Rebel, published in Canada, and Our Lady of Birth Control. Sanger ally Katherine Houghton Hepburn, also of Corning, appears in a photo in the notes to Woman Rebel.

*Corning Glass Works appears, though not by name, in a 1961 story about making the 200-inch disc for Mount Palomar observatory. And numerous Steuben men appear in caricature in a 1907 private publication by the Steuben County Society of New York City.

*In a class by himself is Dick Ayers, who passed away two years ago shortly after his 90th birthday. Dick lived in Pulteney for a couple of years during the Great Depression — Hammondsport teacher Stan Smith got him his first paying art commission. A mid-March check of the Grand Comics Database showed that Dick, who worked in comic books for about 70 years, penciled 3349 stories; inked 5274 stories; lettered 832 stories; wrote 76 stories; colored 1 story; and appeared as a character in 22 comic-book stories — even beating Glenn Curtiss! Considering how long he worked in the field, no doubt there are many more stories yet to be discovered.

“Crossing the Rockies” to Oregon – AND to the Comic Books

I enjoy comic books, and I collect comic books. A few years ago I reported in this space about a Classics Illustrated Special Edition, To The Stars! This is because that issue has a major feature on the 200-inch telescope at Mount Palomar, including creation of the glass disc in Corning in 1935.
There’s also an issue called Crossing the Rockies, which I’d never seen, but which I figured HAD to mention Marcus and Narcissa (Prentiss) Whitman. I finally took the plunge a few weeks ago and ordered a used copy available on Amazon.
And just about the whole first chapter, nineteen pages, is dedicated to the Whitmans.
So to tell the tale as the comic tells it… [with editorial comments from me in square brackets]…
The chapter’s entitled “The Oregon Trail,” and it opens with several Oregon Indians asking for missionaries. “The greatest of these missionaries was Doctor Marcus Whitman,” and he’s introduced in the third panel.
Whitman accompanies Reverend Samuel Parker to the far west, at first sneered at by mountain men when he falls sick. Before long, though, he’s nursing them through cholera and performing surgery on Jim Bridger, compelling the scoffers and scorners to change their tune.
Sent back east to recruit more settlers, he startles the folks in his home town of Rushville (who weren’t expecting him) by stalking into church in mountain-man mode, accompanied by two Indians. [This is the only area community actually named in the story. Rushville’s Marcus Whitman High School honors this native son.]
Whitman persuades four others to join him in Oregon, including Henry and Eliza Spalding and Narcissa Prentiss, whom he marries. [Marcus lived and doctored for a while in Wheeler, where a stone marker commemorates his stay. Narcissa and Bath-born Henry were from Prattsburgh, where they knew each other from town, church, and school. In fact, Narcissa had declined a marriage proposal from Henry – no clue how it affected the close-knit party knowing that Eliza was Henry’s second choice and Henry was Narcissa’s second choice. Franklin Academy has a monument to its famed alumni, and a plaque in Ithaca commemorates their commissioning service. The Narcissa Prentiss home is now a museum in Prattsburgh.]
Against all advice they take the women into the Great Prairie and up the Rocky Mountains; indeed, the women insist upon it, and carry on gamely with the men through snowstorms and raging rivers. After a 96-day trip they reach Walla Walla on September 1, 1836, hailed as the first white women to cross the continent. [Well, maybe. Seems to me it depends on how you slice it. Certainly Spanish-American and Mexican-American women had crossed in the Texas-New Mexico-Arizona-California region.]
Whitman returns to the east on business. When hard times combine with reports of a wonderful setting in Oregon, nearly a thousand emigrants itch to leave Missouri in 1843, and they hire the returning Marcus Whitman as their guide. No other wagon train has ever made the trip, but he wins them through, and within two years 4000 more have joined them.
This of course puts extreme pressure on the local Indians, who start to push back. Two panels straightforwardly tell how Cayuse Indians killed Marcus, Narcissa, and a dozen more on November 19, 1847. [All of which is factual. The story sticks to the facts, doesn’t make it too bloody, and does not portray the attacking Cayuse as savages.] Following this two Oregon men cross the continent to Washington and demand that the government provide for protection and organization in the territory, which soon comes to pass.
While the 1958 comic never questions the white “westward expansion,” it also does not demean the Indians. They all speak in full grammatical sentences, and they are not portrayed as bloodthirsty or unreasonable.
The Whitmans and the Spaldings were remarkable people – Marcus crossed the five times, under grave dangers and mostly on foot or horseback, in a day when most people never went twenty miles from their homes. He was a missionary, a doctor, a pioneer, and a developer… mixing up those roles may have contributed to his death. One thing he never dreamed of being was a comic book hero.