Welcome to the American Story.

Stories about what it is that makes America beautiful

and worthy of our love.

This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.

I call this one.

Go West.

Go West, young man, and grow with the country.

Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune,

famously admonished his readers in 1865.

Many men, young and old, had already taken his advice long before he gave it.

And women, too, for all kinds of reasons.

Narciss Apprentice, for example, born in 1808 in Pittsburgh, New York, became caught up in the second great awakening.

Western and Central New York was known as the Burned Over District, because evangelizing had been so widespread that it was said no one was left to convert.

She volunteered to join an expedition to Oregon to scout out opportunities for possible

mission sites.

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions did not allow single women or men to be missionaries.

But a local physician, Marcus Whitman, had similar missionary ambitions.

So when Bachelor Whitman heard had similar missionary ambitions.

So when Bachelor Whitman heard of Narciss's plans,

he contacted her,

and she agreed to become Narcissa Prentiss Whitman.

The exact boundary of the Oregon country was vague at best.

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