An Uncommon Friendship

Jesse Applegate crossed the plains to Oregon with the Owens family in 1843. Applegate became a life-long friend and supporter of Bethenia Owens-Adair and encouraged her to attend medical school.

In this letter an aging Jesse Applegate encourages Bethenia to study medicine and revoke the typical duties associated with 19th century womanhood. Applegate's represents a response uncharacteristic of most late nineteenth-century men and Oregonians. In fact, Owens-Adair expresses the prevailing, and somewhat more resistant, attitude in a reminiscence posted in the Oregon Journal on June 28, 1914:

"When I finally announced that I was going to become a doctor it broke the heart of all my friends, and I was publicly disgraced. Women that I had known for years drew their skirts aside and went by on the other side of the street; men refused to bow to me, and friendless and alone, I started by stage for San Francisco on my way to Philadelphia."