01Biography
Tabitha Moffat married the Reverend Clark Brown in 1799 and taught school after his death in 1817. When her grown children decided to move from Missouri to Oregon, she refused to stay behind. In April 1846, aged 65, she set out with her own wagon, the families of her son Orus and her daughter Pherne, and her brother-in-law, Captain John Brown, who was 77.
Past Fort Hall, Tabitha and her daughter's family took a new southern cutoff that Jesse Applegate was promoting. The road was longer and rougher than promised, and the food ran out. Tabitha and the ailing captain went ahead to find help, and the family crossed the Calapooya Mountains in falling snow. On Christmas Day she reached a minister's house in Salem. In an old glove she found a single coin worth six and a quarter cents.
02Why they matter
Started the school for orphans and pioneer children that grew into Tualatin Academy and Pacific University.
03How they died
She bought needles with the coin and sewed buckskin gloves to sell. In 1848 she opened an orphans' home and school at Tualatin Plains, now Forest Grove, with the Reverend Harvey Clark, and the next year it was chartered as Tualatin Academy. She died at her daughter's home in Salem on May 4, 1858, aged 78.
04Legacy
In 1987 Oregon's legislature named her the 'Mother of Oregon.' Pacific University in Forest Grove honors her as a founder.