Mary Whitney was born in Portland, Maine, in 1812. In her youth, Mary’s father and later her mother died, leaving her an orphan.  Perhaps believing marriage was a way to escape poverty, she soon married but discovered that her husband was not a lasting match for her, resulting in a divorce. About this same time, Mary published a booklet, cautioning gentlemen from New York, Hartford, and Philadelphia about the differences between a trophy society lady with no domestic skills and a woman who had homemaking skills.1 Moving to Hartford, Connecticut, she met a young attorney, John Smith Phelps, and they found each other to be a lifelong match.  Some Phelps family members disapproved of John’s betrothed, so after they married in 1837, John and Mary sought a new life on the western frontier, settling in Springfield, Missouri.2

In Greene County, Mary established a reputation as being self-reliant. While her husband, John was away on legal business, she ordered the construction of a log cabin on a lot the Phelps couple owned at the northwest corner of Short Benton Avenue and St. Louis Street. After the cabin was completed in 1838, Mary Phelps furnished the cabin, moved out of the Haden boarding house, and began home life in the new cabin.3 About the time their children, John Elisha and Mary Anne, turned ten years and two years old respectively, Mrs. Phelps realized the negative influences of life in their rough and tumble growing frontier town; she convinced her husband to move the family to a more isolated setting, a farm the Phelpses had recently purchased south of the town.4

As John Smith Phelps was often absent from Greene County during his eighteen years of service in Congress beginning in 1845, Mary oversaw day-to-day family life and farm operations with the assistance of as many as seventeen slaves on the Phelps family farm, “Prairie Shade.” Mary Whitney Phelps even found time to operate a school.5 She also became an accomplished mule trader in the region.6 Indeed, everything with which Mary Whitney Phelps associated herself seemed to prosper. Her reputation as a good luck charm was not lost on John Butterfield, who insisted she travel with him on the inaugural run of Butterfield’s overland stagecoach and mail delivery route from Springfield and Tipton, Missouri in 1858.7

Rather than remove herself from an active war zone during the American Civil War, Mary Whitney Phelps chose to remain on the family farm. She not only persevered amongst all of the wartime adversity, she espoused new honorable causes and thrived. On the day following the Battle of Wilson’s Creek in August 1861, Mary ordered a casket for the Union army commander, Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon, who was killed at the battle. While Confederates soldiers camped on the Phelps farm, they burned lumber which had been sawn to construct a new farmhouse, and some even threatened to defile Lyon’s body. Through it all, Mrs. Phelps demonstrated pure willpower, ensuring the general’s remains were quietly buried on the Phelps farm; an agreement was later secured to remove the general’s body to Connecticut for a funeral and final burial.8

Mary also attended the sick and wounded soldiers. Her daily nursing was much appreciated. According to one soldier, she was the “guardian angel of the sick and wounded” soldiers hospitalized at Springfield. She also organized sewing groups to make clothing for soldiers and destitute refugees. Being an orphan at one time in her life, Mary readily led efforts to board, feed, teach and care for orphaned children of deceased soldiers. In recognition of wartime losses sustained throughout the American Civil War, Congress passed a bill in the amount of $20,000 as a reward for Mary Whitney Phelps. Mrs. Phelps used the money from the Congressional award to care for the region’s war orphans.9

Noting the power her husband had possessed during his congressional career, Mary joined the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in the postwar period and became a vice president. She lobbied the Missouri Legislature and Congress on behalf of a woman’s right to vote in 1869 and 1870.10 Passing away due to pneumonia at the Phelps farm in 1878, Mary was memorialized as a willful, capable, self-reliant, prosperous and philanthropic woman who earned the respect of family, friends, and acquaintances nationwide. Emerging from poverty as an orphan in Maine, Mary Whitney Phelps became the First Lady of Missouri in 1877. Her life brought honor to her community.11

Contributed by the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield

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1. History of Greene County, Missouri (1883), p.822; “Putting a face to a name – pioneer Mary Phelps,” Springfield (Missouri) News-Leader, May 8, 2004, p.9 C; See Greene County, Missouri, court documents covering a lawsuit with the plaintiffs, Craighead & Allen, printers vs. Mary Whitney Phelps and John Smith Phelps for not paying off promptly the production costs for her 12,000 booklets. Photocopies of court transcripts are located in “Mary Whitney Phelps” information file at the Library Center, Springfield-Greene County Library.
2. Jerena East Giffen, Mary, Mary, quite: the life and times of Mary Whitney Phelps, 1812-1878 (Peabody, Massachusetts: Giffen Enterprises, 2008), pp.1,3-4,8; Jean Carnahan, If walls could talk : the story of Missouri’s first families (Jefferson City, Missouri: MMPI, 1998), p.37.Reminiscences of eleven Arkansas, Missouri and Texas Light Batteries (Little Rock: Central Printing Company, 1903), 9-10.
3. History of Greene County, Missouri (1883), p.822; “First Ladies of Springfield: Mary Whitney Phelps,” Springfield! Magazine, March 1995, p.37.
4. Personal reminiscences and fragments of the early history of Springfield and Greene County, Missouri (1914), p.53; Mary Phelps Montgomery letter to Ben Lammers, December 21, 1936. Page 2 of the letter has a description of the Phelps farmhouse and the reason for moving their son, John Elisha, from Springfield to the 1050-acre farm. Transcript in the “Mary Whitney Phelps” information file located at the Library Center, Springfield-Greene County Library.
5. Carnahan, p.39; “The secret life of Hugh Cameron,” Springfield (Missouri) Leader, August 16, 1909, p.3.  Cameron recalled on February 23, 1864, that the Phelps Farm was named Prairie Shade, not Phelps Grove.
6. The mule trader source was historian David C. Hinze, now deceased.
7. Carnahan, p.38.
8. “Death of General Lyon; statement of Mrs. Mary Phelps,” Boonville Weekly Eagle, November 20, 1874, p.1; Mary Phelps Montgomery letter to Ben H. Lammers, dated October 7, 1936. Photocopies are located in the “Mary Whitney Phelps” information file, Library Center, Springfield-Greene County Library.
9. History of Greene County, Missouri (1883), p.823; Carnahan, p.42; “Wilson Creek Reminiscences,” Over the Tea Cups, August 1897, p.8. Located in “Mary Whitney Phelps” information file, Library Center, Springfield-Greene County Library.
10. “First Ladies of Springfield: Mary Whitney Phelps,” Springfield! Magazine, March 1995, p.61; Carnahan, p.42.
11. History of Greene County, Missouri (1883), p.823; Springfield (Missouri) Times, January 30, 1878, p.3.; “Wilson Creek Reminiscences,” Over the Tea Cups, August 1897, p.8. Located in “Mary Whitney Phelps” information file, Library Center, Springfield-Greene County Library.