Samuel Parker | |
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| Born | April 23, 1779 Ashfield, Massachusetts |
| Died | March 21, 1866 (aged 86) |
| Occupation | Missionary |
| Spouse(s) | N. Sears Jerusha Lord |
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Samuel Parker (1779–1866) was an American missionary in the Pacific Northwest, He was the first Presbyterian minister in the region. He scouted locations for potential missions with Marcus Whitman among the Liksiyu and Niimíipu nations in 1835.
Samuel Parker was born on April 23, 1779, in Ashfield, Massachusetts, to Thankful Merchant Parker and Elisha Parker. [1] He was educated on the East Coast where he graduated in 1806 from Williams College, and in 1810 from Andover Theological Seminary. [1] Parker was ordained as a minister in 1812, and then taught and preached in New York until 1833. [1] There he married his first wife, Miss N. Sears, and in 1815 he married a second time to Jerusha Lord, with whom he would father three children. [1] One son's name was Samuel J. Parker.
In 1834 Parker answered a call for missionaries to move to the American West brought about by four Flathead tribesmen asking William Clark for religious guidance. [1] In 1835, he traveled west with fellow missionary Marcus Whitman. [1] After preaching at the Green River rendezvous of the American Fur Company, Parker continued west while Whitman returned east. [1] During the winter of 1835 to 1836, Parker was a guest at the Hudson's Bay Company's fur trade outpost on the Columbia River, Fort Vancouver. [1] He was then the first Presbyterian missionary in what later became the state of Oregon. [2] Parker then sought out locations for the establishment of missions in the region. He traveled through the Willamette Valley and Lower Columbia Valley to select sites that were later used by the missionaries of the American Board for Foreign Missions, including what became the Waiilatpu Mission. [1] Parker then left the region by ship, sailing first to the Sandwich Islands and then around Cape Horn to the Eastern Seaboard. [1]
Parker returned to New York and informed the board of the best sites for missions. [1] He was then rejected for missionary work for the board due to his advanced age. [3] He published a book in 1838 describing his journey to Oregon, Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains. [1] Parker died on March 21, 1866, and is buried in Ithaca, New York. [1]
The Oregon missionaries were pioneers who settled in the Oregon Country of North America starting in the 1830s dedicated to bringing Christianity to local Native Americans. There had been missionary efforts prior to this, such as those sponsored by the Northwest Company with missionaries from the Church of England starting in 1819. The Foreign Mission movement was already 15 years underway by 1820, but it was difficult to find missionaries willing to go to Oregon, as many wanted to go to the east, to India or China. It was not until the 1830s, when a schoolmaster from Connecticut, Hall Jackson Kelley, created his "American Society for the Settlement of the Oregon Country," that more interest and support for Oregon missionaries grew. Around the same time, four Nez Perce arrived in St. Louis in the fall of 1831, with accounts differencing as to if these travelers were asking for “the book of life,” an idea used by Protestant missionaries, or if they asked for “Blackrobes,” meaning Jesuits, thus Catholic missionaries. Either way this inspired Christian missionaries to travel to the Oregon Territory. Oregon missionaries played a political role, as well as a religious one, as their missions established US political power in an area in which the Hudson’s Bay Company, operating under the British government, maintained a political interest in the Oregon country. Such missionaries had an influential impact on the early settlement of the region, establishing institutions that became the foundation of United States settlement of the Pacific Northwest.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was among the first American Christian missionary organizations. It was created in 1810 by recent graduates of Williams College. In the 19th century it was the largest and most important of American missionary organizations and consisted of participants from Protestant Reformed traditions such as Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and German Reformed churches.
Marcus Whitman was an American physician and missionary.
Jason Lee was a Canadian Methodist Episcopalian missionary and pioneer in the Pacific Northwest. He was born on a farm near Stanstead, Quebec.
The Whitman massacre was the killing of the Washington missionaries Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa, along with eleven others, on November 29, 1847. They were killed by members of the Cayuse tribe who accused Whitman of having poisoned 200 Cayuse in his medical care. The incident began the Cayuse War. It took place in southeastern Washington state near the town of Walla Walla, Washington and was one of the most notorious episodes in the U.S. settlement of the Pacific Northwest. Whitman had helped lead the first wagon train to cross Oregon's Blue Mountains and reach the Columbia River via the Oregon Trail, and this incident was the climax of several years of complex interaction between him and the local Native Americans. The story of the massacre shocked the United States Congress into action concerning the future territorial status of the Oregon Country. The Oregon Territory was established on August 14, 1848.
Whitman Mission National Historic Site is a United States National Historic Site located just west of Walla Walla, Washington, at the site of the former Whitman Mission at Waiilatpu. On November 29, 1847, Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa Whitman, and 11 others were slain by Native Americans of the Cayuse. The site commemorates the Whitmans, their role in establishing the Oregon Trail, and the challenges encountered when two cultures meet.
Henry Harmon Spalding (1803–1874), and his wife Eliza Hart Spalding (1807–1851) were prominent Presbyterian missionaries and educators working primarily with the Nez Perce in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. The Spaldings and their fellow missionaries were among the earliest Americans to travel across the western plains, through the Rocky Mountains and into the lands of the Pacific Northwest to their religious missions in what would become the states of Idaho and Washington. Their missionary party of five, including Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa and William H. Gray, joined with a group of fur traders to create the first wagon train along the Oregon Trail.
Tiloukaikt was a Native American leader of the Cayuse tribe in the northwestern United States. He was involved in the Whitman Massacre and was a primary leader during the subsequent Cayuse War.
Narcissa Prentiss Whitman was an American missionary in the Oregon Country of what would become the state of Washington. On their way to found the Protestant Whitman Mission in 1836 with her husband, Marcus, near modern-day Walla Walla, Washington, she and Eliza Hart Spalding became the first documented European-American women to cross the Rocky Mountains.
The Sager orphans were the children of Henry and Naomi Sager. In April 1844 the Sager family took part in the great westward migration and started their journey along the Oregon Trail. During it, both Henry and Naomi died and left their seven children orphaned. Later adopted by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, missionaries in what is now Washington, they were orphaned a second time, when both their new parents, as well as brothers John and Francis Sager, were killed during the Whitman massacre in November 1847. About 1860 Catherine, the oldest daughter, wrote a first-hand account of their journey across the plains and their life with the Whitmans. Today it is regarded as one of the most authentic accounts of the American westward migration.
The Methodist Mission was the Methodist Episcopal Church's 19th-century conversion efforts in the Pacific Northwest. Local Indigenous cultures were introduced to western culture and Christianity. Superintendent Jason Lee was the principal leader for almost a decade. It was a political and religious effort. Two years after the mission began, the church's Board of Foreign Missions described its intent to reclaim "these wandering savages, who are in a very degraded state, to the blessings of Christianity and civilized life." Alongside the missions founded in the region were several secular operations opened. These were maintained to allow for material independence from the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), then the preeminent economic entity in the region among European descendants.
Hunter Corbett D.D. was a pioneer American missionary to Chefoo, Shandong China, he served with the American Presbyterian Mission. He was a fervent advocate of the missionary enterprise.
Harvey L. Clarke was an educator, missionary, and settler first on the North Tualatin Plains which would become Glencoe, Oregon and then on the West Tualatin Plains that would become Forest Grove, Oregon, United States. A native of Vermont, he moved to Oregon Country in 1840 where he participated at the Champoeg Meetings May2, 1843, and helped to found Tualatin Academy that later became Pacific University. Clarke also worked for the Methodist Mission and was a chaplain for the Provisional Legislature of Oregon in 1845.
The Wascopam Mission or Dalles Mission was a branch of the Methodist Mission active in the Pacific Northwest. It was the first post established outside the Willamette Valley, opened at Celilo Falls along the Columbia River on March 21, 1838, by Rev. Daniel Lee and Rev. Henry K. W. Perkins.
Alvin Thompson Smith was an American missionary and politician in what became the state of Oregon. A native of Connecticut, he lived in Illinois before moving to the Oregon Country to preach to the Native Americans in the Tualatin Valley. There he served in both the Provisional Government of Oregon and the government of the Oregon Territory, as well as helping to establish Tualatin Academy, later becoming Pacific University. Smith’s former home, the Alvin T. Smith House in Forest Grove, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Mary Richardson Walker was an American missionary. She was the daughter of Joseph and Charlotte Richardson of West Baldwin, Maine. Both parents were school teachers and valued education for all their children. She attended Maine Wesleyan Seminary. Mary wanted to be a missionary and applied at the American Board of Missionaries, but she was turned down, because she was not married.
Pierre Chrysologue Pambrun was a French Canadian militia officer and later a fur trader in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. Pambrun fought against the United States in the War of 1812, in particular the Battle of the Châteauguay. He joined the HBC during a time of turmoil with its competitors, the North West Company. After the Battle of Seven Oaks, he was among those held captive by men employed by the NWC.
Cushing Eells was an American Congregational church missionary, farmer and teacher on the Pacific coast of America in what are now the states of Oregon and Washington. His first mission in Washington State was unsuccessful. Eells and his family had to leave after the Native Americans massacred a group of neighboring missionaries. They spent the next fourteen years farming and teaching in Oregon, before returning to Washington, where Eells founded a seminary that later became the Whitman College. Eells continued to teach and preach in Washington for the remainder of his life.
The Fort Walla Walla–Fort Colville Military Road was built in June 1859 to connect the Walla Walla area with its fairly easy access to the Columbia River to the mountainous area of the Huckleberry and Selkirk Mountains of current Northeast Washington and the Inland Northwest. Brigadier General William S. Harney, commander of the Department of Oregon, opened up the district north of the Snake River to settlers in 1858 and ordered Brevet Major Pinkney Lugenbeel, 9th Infantry Regiment to establish a U.S. Army post to restrain the Indians perceived as hostile to the U.S. Army's Northwest Division and to protect miners who traveled to the area after first reports of gold in the area appeared in Western Washington newspapers in July 1855.
Asa Bowen Smith, also known as A.B. Smith, was a Congregational missionary posted in Oregon Country and Hawaii with his wife Sarah Gilbert White Smith. In 1840, Smith wrote the manuscript for the book Grammar of the Language of the Nez Perces Indians Formerly of Oregon, U.S.. He conducted the first census of the Nez Perce. After eight years as a missionary, he returned to the Northeastern United States where he was a pastor of the Buckland Congregational Church in Massachusetts and of the Congregational Church in Southbury, Connecticut.
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