Did you know Tabitha Moffatt Brown...

Tabitha Moffatt Brown was a social reformer and educator. She married the Rev. Clark Brown, a Congregational minister and raised three boys and one girl together until Rev. Brown died in 1817.

Tabitha was an American pioneer colonist who traveled the Oregon Trail to the Oregon Country. She arrived fairly poor in the Willamette Valley. Some of her spare clothing was bartered with several Kalapuya to acquire buckskin. She used the material to begin manufacturing gloves, which were purchased by fellow settlers and loggers and she soon made a living for herself.

She helped to found an orphanage with Congregational minister, Rev. Harvey L. Clark who, with his wife Emeline, had moved to Oregon Territory as missionaries to Native Americans. He established Congregational churches in Forest Grove and Oregon City, and served as chaplain to the Provisional Legislature of Oregon.

As a teacher, Tabitha was always interested in education and she assisted Rev. George Atkinson, another Congregational missionary sent by the American Home Missionary Society and proponent of women's education, in the founding of Tualatin Academy, which would grow to become Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. Brown was honored in 1987 by the Oregon Legislature as the "Mother of Oregon."

Tabitha died in Salem while living with her daughter on May 4, 1858. She is buried in Salem at the Pioneer Cemetery. A World War II Liberty Ship built in 1942 was named in her honor. Her great–granddaughter, Mary Strong Kinney, was an advocate for women’s rights and Oregon’s first female State Senator.

                                                                                 .  . . was a Congregationalist?

Historical story by: Gary Fisher
Celebrating 400 Years of American Congregationalism

Learn more about our Congregational History at naccc.org