Cephas Washburn, Founding Missionary, Dwight Mission

Washburn was a Vermonter, born in Randolph on July 25, 1793, and ordained a Congregational minister in January 1818. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent him to the Arkansas Cherokees, and in July 1820 he preached the first sermon ever given in Little Rock. He resigned from Dwight in 1850 and ended his career as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, retiring in 1855. He died on March 17, 1860, and is buried in Little Rock. His memoir, Reminiscences of the Indians, published in 1869, records Western Cherokee life as he observed it.

What the plaque says

Cephas Washburn Founding Missionary Dwight Mission Dwight Mission was founded as a school for the Cherokees under the leadership of Rev. Cephas Washburn in 1818. Originating near present Russell- ville, Arkansas, the mission was moved to this location in 1828. For four dec- ades Rev. Washburn inspired mission- aries to dedicate their lives to Indian education and provided Cherokee youths with an incentive to learn and to achieve. Born in a well-to-do New England family, Rev. Washburn foresook an aristocratic life to come to a frontier country to live among a peo- ple who had been banished from their homes and whose language he did not understand. He suffered disease, priva- tions and inadequate financial support, as well as the indifference of many Indian families. However, he refused to waver from his mission, and after for- ty years, having retired from the mis- sion, he spent the remainder of his life organizing churches and seeking finan- cial support for Indian education. 1980

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sequoyah's Cabin Museum — 11 mi
  The log cabin near Akins where Sequoyah, who gave the Cherokee language its syllabary, settled in 1829, kept since 2016 by the Cherokee Nation inside a stone shelter of 1936.
• Spiro Mounds Archaeological Center — 23 mi
  A Mississippian ceremonial center on the Arkansas River, about 850 to 1450, whose burial mound was mined in the 1930s, now run in consultation with the Caddo Nation and the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes.
• Fort Gibson Historic Site — 29 mi
  The army's first post in what became Oklahoma, built at Three Forks in 1824, where removed nations arrived; deeded to the Cherokee in 1857, it later housed the Dawes Commission.

More markers nearby

• Dwight Mission — 6.4 mi
• Tahlonteeskee — 14 mi
• Webbers Falls — 16 mi
• Tamaha Jail and Ferry Landing — 23 mi