MONTGOMERY, MARCUS WHITMAN: 1839-1894.
Marcus Whitman Montgomery , son of Mathew Peter and Mary Sherwood Bull Montgomery, was born in Prattsburg, N. Y., on June 21, 1839. He was named for Dr. Marcus Whitman, of Oregon fame, who was an intimate friend of his father.
When he was less than a year old, he was brought to Jay County, Ind., by his parents. His father died when he was a boy in his teens he became stenographer for the Missouri Legislature. Returning to Indiana, now twenty years of age he founded a newspaper, page: 225[View Page 225] THE JAY TORCHLIGHT, and edited it for three years, publishing in it much Jay County history and starting at this time to collect material for his History of Jay County, Indiana.
He attended Liber College, where he met and married Mary Votaw, in 1859, and he graduated from Amherst College in 1869. After spending six years in business in Cleveland, O., he entered Yale Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1878. While a student at the seminary he wrote a history of the English Bible which was never published.
His first and only pastorate was with the Congregational Church in Fort Scott, Kan. In 1881 he became superintendent of Minnesota and North Dakota for the churches of the American Home Missionary Society and in 1884 superintendent of church work among U.S. Scandinavians. He twice visited Sweden and Norway and investigated the free-church movement there.
In 1887 he traveled to Utah to study the Scandinavian -Mormon population and, in consequence of this trip, wrote a widely published article which was an attempt to stem the tide of Scandinavian converts to Mormonism. He also wrote a book in this cause and made addresses.
At the time of his death, on Feb. 6, 1894, he was an instructor at Chicago Theological Seminary.
Information from the Portland Public Library.
- History of Jay County, Indiana.
Chicago, n.d. [1864].
- A Wind from the Holy Spirit in Sweden and Norway.
- The Whole Story about the Mormons.
- Mormon Delusion: Its History, Doctrine, and the Outlook in
Utah. Boston, n.d. [1890].
