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Heritage Corner

Published 10:22 am Friday, May 16, 2008

Sarah and Daniel Whitney on their homestead in 1887. The horse was named Charley.
Sarah and Daniel Whitney on their homestead in 1887. The horse was named Charley.

Born in 1825 (or 1824, records differ) Sarah Jane McCoy married her first husband John Green in 1843. Lured by tales of gold in California, the Greens left Illinois in 1862 and went west in a covered wagon. Their eighth and last child, a son named Frank, was born six weeks after his father died in 1864. Sometime after arriving in California, Sarah remarried a Mr. Daniel P. Whitney.

The Whitneys moved to the Northup area of Bellevue in the 1880s, following Sarah’s daughter Mary and her husband Alvin Goff. A photograph of the property taken in 1887 shows a very substantial two-story structure with glass windows, so the Whitneys must have been financially comfortable. They lived on the homestead until their deaths; Sarah died in 1901, Daniel in 1902. Both are buried in the Kirkland Cemetery.

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