Ellen Whitmore

Ellen Rebecca Whitmore (also Goodale; March 2, 1828 – February 23, 1861) was the first principal teacher at the Cherokee Female Seminary in modern-day Oklahoma and later served as a missionary in Hawaii.

Biography Ellen Rebecca Whitmore graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1850. Cherokee leader David Vann and William Potter Ross hired her and Sarah Worcester to teach at the newly built Cherokee Female Seminary, in Indian Territory (in modern-day Oklahoma). Her journey from Massachusetts started on October 5, 1850, and ended on November 13 of the same year when she, along with Sarah Worcester and David Vann, arrived in Park Hill, Oklahoma. Worcester's father and stepmother, who were missionaries at Park Hill, met them there. Upon their arrival to the location of the new school, Whitmore wrote in her journal:"The little room where I am writing, and which they call mine, is unfinished,—has neither paint nor plaster,—but it has a nice comfortable bed, a nice rocking chair and a bright blazing fire in the corner, and its occupant is very cheerful and happy. Three thousand miles! . . . I can see the building from the piazza of this house with my eyeglass. It is a beautiful brick building with pillars on three sides of it and presents a fine appearance from here. I shall go as soon as I can to see it, and I look at it with a good deal of interest. The future is hidden from me—whether happiness or sorrow is in store for me in that school I cannot tell. If I can only see plainly that I am in the path of duty it is all that I could ask." After their marriage, the couple traveled to Hawaii where they worked as missionaries and worked with the Polynesian people of Hawaii. Goodale and her husband had five children.

Whitmore and her fellow educators at the Cherokee Female Seminary later won recognition when her students were given exams on subjects they learned at the seminary. William S. Robertson was one of the people assessing the students, and after all of the exams were completed he stated that "They [the students] were a credit to their teachers & their Nation may well be proud of them."