Marcus Whitman

Marcus Whitman
Born	September 4, 1802 Federal Hollow, New York
Died	November 29, 1847(1847-11-29) (aged 45) Waiilatpu, Oregon Country
Education	Fairfield Medical College
Spouse(s)	Narcissa Prentiss
Church	Methodist
Congregations served	Whitman Mission
Title	Missionary

Marcus Whitman (September 4, 1802 – November 29, 1847) was an American physician and missionary in the Oregon Country. Along with his wife, Narcissa, he started a mission to the Cayuse in what is now southeastern Washington state in 1836. The area later developed as a trading post and stop along the Oregon Trail, and the city of Walla Walla, Washington developed near there.

In 1843, Whitman led the first large party of wagon trains along the Oregon Trail to the West, establishing it as a viable route for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who used the trail in the following decade. Settlers encroached on the Cayuse near the Whitman mission. Following the deaths of all the Cayuse children and half their adults from a measles epidemic in 1847, in which the Cayuse suspected the Whitmans' responsibility, they killed the Whitmans and 12 other settlers in what became known as the Whitman Massacre. Continuing warfare by settlers reduced the Cayuse numbers further and they eventually joined the Nez Perce tribe to survive.

On September 4, 1802, Whitman was born in Federal Hollow, New York to Beza and Alice <Green> Whitman. Their immigrant paternal ancestor was John Whitman, who immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony before 1639 from England. After his father's death when Whitman was seven, he was sent to Massachusetts to live with his uncle.

Whitman dreamed of becoming a minister but did not have the money for such schooling. As a young man, he had returned to New York. He studied medicine for two years with an experienced physician under the form of apprenticeship approved then, and received his degree from Fairfield Medical College in New York. He practiced medicine for a few years in Canada but was interested in going to the west.