Background
Elkanah Walker (1805-1877) and his wife, Mary Richardson Walker (1811-1897), both of whom were from Maine, married in 1838
and left to be missionaries in Oregon Territory. Together with Reverend Cushing Eells and his wife, Myra Fairbanks Eells,
they established a mission at Tshimakain, near Fort Colville, Washington, where they lived from 1839 to 1848, working as protestant
missionaries among the Spokane Tribe of Indians. The Walkers left the Tshimakain Mission following the killing of missionaries
at the Whitman Mission in Walla Walla, Washington by the Cayuse Indians in November 1847, eventually settling in Forest Grove,
Oregon in 1849. In the 1860s, Elkanah Walker was on the Board of Trustees of the Whitman Seminary (now Whitman College) in
Walla Walla. Both he and his wife, Mary Richardson Walker, died in Forest Grove, Oregon.
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