Spalding-Allen Collection

Dudley Allen

Dudley Allen was a family Physician born in 1814 and raised in Kinsman, Ohio.  He met Henry Harmon Spalding at the Western Reserve Academy, in Hudson, Ohio.  They became friends. When Spalding first went out west with the Whitmans, Spalding and his wife Eliza stopped in Kinsman and provisioned their wagon there to travel west.  Thereafter, Allen and his Church sent missionary barrels full of clothing and supplies to the Spalding Mission.  Dudley Allen became associated with Oberlin College when in the 1840’s his son, Dudley Peter Allen enrolled in the College, and Allen Sr. moved to Oberlin and the still standing Allencroft house.  He then became aware of the Oberlin College Museum, and in 1847 sent Spalding a letter asking him to send Indian curios and objects for the museum.  These objects traveled in boxes and barrels all the way to Hawaii and then around South America to get back to Allen and Oberlin. These he gave to the Oberlin Museum. He died in 1898 in Oberlin, Ohio.

Henry Spalding

Henry Harmon Spalding was born in 1803 in New York state and attended the Lane Seminary and the Western Reserve Academy, where he met Dudley Allen.  He was ordained as a Presbyterian Minister and in 1836 established a mission among the Nez Perce at Lapwai, on the Clearwater River in present day Idaho. His missionizing included preaching, translating the Gospel into the Nez Perce language, and teaching agriculture to the Nez Perce. Spalding served not only as the minister of the Presbyterian Church, but also as the county school commissioner, postmaster and local Indian Agent while in Lapwai.

Upon receiving letters from Dudley Allen requesting Indian objects, Spalding began collecting a variety of everyday objects and clothing that he purchased from the Nez Perce Tribe, including the now-repatriated bag. It took several years before he was satisfied that he had enough to send back to Ohio in 1846. Spalding worked among the Nez Perce from 1836 until 1847, when the massacres of missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and eleven others took place near Walla Walla.. This led the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to suspend missionary activities in that area. Spalding returned to the Nez Perce Indian Mission in 1871 to reestablish its presence, and continued to work there until his death in 1874.