Judson kept a diary of her experiences following March 1, 1853 (the day she and her family left for Washington Territory), which she later abridged and rewrote into A Pioneer's Search for an Ideal Home: A Personal Memoir, published shortly before her death.

[3][4][5][6][7][8] Her parents were Jotham Weeks "J. W." Goodell, a Presbyterian minister descended from British colonists, and Anna Glenning "Annie" Bacheler.

[13] Following the Donation Land Claim Act, the Goodells traveled to the Oregon Territory in 1851, leaving Phoebe and her elder brother William behind.

Judson's twin sister Mary and her fiancé Nathan W. Meloy settled in Willamette, Oregon[13] (today part of West Linn) and J. W. Goodell named and established the town of Grand Mound, Washington, with his wife and younger children,[14] where he took up a job as postmaster and part-time minister alongside George F. Whitworth (who would later found Whitworth University).

[17] Upon the outset of Judson's emigration to the American West, she laid out the criteria for her "ideal home": It should be built by a mountain stream that flowed to the Pacific ... and nothing should obstruct our view of the beautiful, snow-capped mountains.Boarding a train to Cincinnati, Ohio,[16] they reached St. Louis, Missouri by steamboat,[18] where they transferred to a smaller steamer headed for Kansas Landing (now Kansas City, Missouri).

[19] Here they traveled two miles (3.2 km) to West Port, Missouri (now part of Kansas City), where they roomed in a hotel for five weeks, making preparations for their journey and building their wagon.

[20] Having read Uncle Tom's Cabin, Judson disapproved of the hotel's use of slaves and even argued on behalf of them with the landlady.

[20] In West Point they allowed a "young Scandinavian" named Nelson to ride with them, and in turn were invited to join the wagon train of Rev.

[23] Incidentally, the Hines–Judson Wagon Train surpassed all the caravans which did not rest on Sunday (including the Leonards'), because their oxen could keep their strength.

[6] Leaving their cattle with the Meloys till spring,[28] the Judsons hired American Indians to canoe them to Grand Mound, Washington, where they claimed the 320 acres (1.3 km2) adjacent to the Goodells.

[35] That same year Judson's brother William Goodell, with his wife and three children, came across the plains to Claquato with Holden's parents and sister Trecia (who married U.S.

While the native Chehalis Indians were not openly hostile in Claquato, they began touring each of the settlers' homes, taking inventory of their possessions, so that in the event of a takeover the spoils would be evenly split.

[46] Lucretia, weakened by her fear of American Indians ever since escaping during Isaac Ebey's beheading, was removed by her husband to Las Cruces, California (in Santa Barbara County) near the end of the Civil War in 1864.

Judson believed that Las Cruces might be the "ideal home", and she and Holden planned to leave their unprosperous grocer business.

Like many Washingtonian bachelors at the time, he had married an American Indian (a young Lummi princess known as Lizzie), building a small cabin in 1860.

[1][50] Patterson treated Lizzie as a slave and left her to run the farm with Ned, a young Indian hand, while he was on business in Olympia.

[50][51] Lizzie and Ned eloped to Sumas (then the site of another Indian encampment), leaving behind Patterson's two young daughters, Dollie and Nellie.

[53][54] When Judson returned to the island in September 1871 to retrieve Mary, Eason Ebey read her the poem Hohenlinden (by Thomas Campbell).

[56] The Patterson property had a small log cabin and a milk barn on the cusp of a plateau near the north bank of the Nooksack, with a view of Mount Baker and the Twin Sisters.

Sally and Joe, along with their children Tom, Holatchie, Mathia, Illead, Miladee, and Lewison, practiced a combination of Catholicism and worship of the "Sothalic Tyee" (Great Spirit).

Lacking a medicine man, Sally sent for the priest from the Lummi mission, who required the remuneration of a firearm and one cow for his visit.

McClanahan's youngest child, Daniel, was left with his Nooksack wife Nina (sister of Chief Seclamatum or Indian Jim).

[70] The Methodist missionary Charles M. Tate (from Chilliwack, British Columbia), along with the Staulo Indian "Captain John", came to Lynden in the late 1870s to proselytize the Nooksacks.

[75] Later Tennant would move to Lynden and become the first resident minister, his westernized Lummi wife Clara striking up a friendship with Judson.

At the request of Judson, Holden enlisted the help of the native Nooksack Indians to remove the Little Jam (which they were only too glad to do), working for three months.

The entire city of Lynden was shut down (with stores closed and schools dismissed) on January 18 in honor of her funeral and death.