Part of the American History & Genealogy Project

Jerusha Bingham Kirkland 1743 ~ 1788

Jerusha Bingham, as a niece of the Rev. Doctor Wheelock, who was deeply interested in missionary work, had her attention early called to the needs of Christian teaching among the Indians. Later she married Doctor Kirkland, the well-known missionary, and she and her husband had the distinction of being recommended by the Continental Congress as adapted to labor among the Indians, and as alone able to preserve their neutrality toward the war.

During the period when the early wars threatened the destruction of the new nation by the aboriginal inhabitants she worked faithfully with her husband in that arduous and responsible work of pacification.

She was the mother of John Thornton Kirkland, who was born at Little Falls, New York, August 17, 1790. When this son had achieved national prominence his biographer wrote, "It was from a mother of distinguished public spirit, energy, wisdom and devotedness that he received the rudiments of his high intellectual and manly resolutions."

Women of America

Source: The Part Taken by Women in American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.