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"Spokane and The Spokane Country - Pictorial and Biographical - Deluxe Supplement." Vol. II. The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1912. (No author listed.) pgs. 18-20.
CARRIE ADELL (GREEN) STRAHORN, wife of Robert E. Strahorn, of Spokane,
is a native of Marengo, McHenry county, Illinois, being the second daughter of
Dr. John W. and Louise Babcock Green. Her parents were pioneers of northern
Illinois, her father having removed in 1846 from Greenfield, Ohio, of which
place Dr. Green's parents were founders. These grandparents of Mrs. Strahorn,
on her father's side, were descendants of prominent patriots of like name of
the Revolutionary war. Her mother, who died in Marengo in 1899, was a native
of Lavonia Center, New York, and was a descendant of Aaron Burr. Dr. John W.
Green, Mrs. Strahorn's father, who died in Chicago in 1893 was for fifty years
one of the most noted surgeons of the Mississippi valley. He was the first
surgeon to administer an anesthetic west of Chicago. He served with great
distinction during the war of the Rebellion, first as regimental surgeon of
the Ninety-fifth Illinois, and later as brigade and finally as division
surgeon with General Grant in the Army of the Tennessee. Mrs. Green
accompanied her husband throughout the famous Red river campaign, sharing
every danger of field and hospital.
Carrie Adell Green had the advantage of the public schools of Marengo,
supplemented by a liberal education in the higher branches at Ann Arbor.
Developing an ardent love for music, she studied to good purpose under some of
the foremost American and European vocal master, and thus, when wedded to
Robert E. Strahorn, at Marengo, September 19, 1877, she possessed to an
unusual degree the graces and refinements and all the wholesome attributes and
practical helpfulness of the sensibly reared young womanhood of those days.
It is not too much to say that Carrie Adell Strahorn has well
maintained the lofty traditions of the sturdy, heroic stock of pioneers,
patriots and state builders of her ancestry. A superb, home-loving, womanly
woman always, yet she has had so much to do with the development of the
frontier that her public life and accomplishments have been the inspiration
and pride of many communities in the Rocky Mountain and Pacific coast states.
It has been well said of her that she has "mothered the west".
Immediately after her marriage in 1877 she set out with her husband on
the often dangerous and romantic, and always toilsome career (in a field
covering nearly half our continent) the brighter aspects of which are so
vividly portrayed in her famous book "Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage," which
was published in 1911 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.
Probably no other woman has so thoroughly experienced every phase of
far west exploration and genuine pioneering. This, covering a period of
thirty-four years while the west has been in the making, has gone through all
gradations from the wilderness haunts of the hostile savage along through the
rudest camps of the miner and cowboy to zealous, practical participation in
colonization, and town and city building in many waste places, often far in
advance of the railways. This work was particularly noticeable and effective
from 1877 to 1880 in Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, and from 1880 to 1890 in
Utah, Montana, Idaho and Washington. From 1890 to 1898, while Mr. Strahorn
transferred his activities largely to New England, Mrs. Strahorn pursued her
musical and literary studies in Boston. During this period, however, the
Strahorns spent a portion of each year in Spokane and vicinity, or elsewhere
in the Rocky Mountains. Since 1898, when they located permanently in Spokane,
Mrs. Strahorn has been everything in the life and growth of the city and state
that might be expected from one so fully equipped and so ardently in love with
the Pacific coast country and its institutions.
Being a frequent contributor to the columns of various eastern
publications during all these years, she has made the most of many
opportunities to faithfully portray the leading characteristics of far west
life and development, never failing to award due praise to the heroic work of
the pioneers, as well as to educational and charitable institutions [words
missing] enthusiastically strive for wider recognition of the merits of
western resources and institutions, and our climatic, scenic and other
attractions.
The camp or home of the Strahorns has always been a landmark of
hospitality and a rallying point for the creation and nourishing of public
spirit and the strenuous promotion of every good cause. Not a few of the far
west's foremost men in business, professional and political life, join her
noted husband in gratefully ascribing much of their success to Mrs. Strahorn's
untiring encouragement and general helpfulness in her home, social and public
activities at the period in their lives when such help meant everything to
them. She has also accomplished much in church building and in the founding
and support of educational and charitable institutions. Notwithstanding the
success, financially and otherwise, of Mr. Strahorn, and her prominent place
and hearty participation in the social life of Spokane, Mrs. Strahorn has not
relaxed in her devotion to these more useful and serious things and is still
actively engaged in literary pursuits.
Submitted by: Nancy Pratt Melton
* * * * Notice: These biographies were transcribed for the Washington Biographies Project. Unless otherwise stated, no further information is available on the individuals featured in the biographies.