Marie Equi by Michael Helquist6/28/2023 Holcomb paid a nominal fee for 121 acres two miles west of The Dalles. She took advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862 that allowed American citizens, including single women, to file a land claim. Holcomb arrived in Oregon first, in the winter of 1891. Both women longed for something more, something better. She completed two years of course work at Wellesley College outside Boston while Equi was forced to leave high school and work in a textile mill to support herself. Holcomb was three years older than Equi and better educated. They were close friends from their high school days in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Holcomb proposed threatening Taylor with an umbrella Equi chose to wield a whip instead.Įqui and Holcomb had immigrated to The Dalles, a robust town on the Oregon side of the Columbia River, in the early 1890s. After several entreaties, the two women decided to take things into their own hands, literally. Taylor, the superintendent, had refused to pay Holcomb the balance of the salary he promised earlier. Equi had demanded justice for her companion, Bessie Holcomb, who was a teacher at a local private school. In July of 1893 Marie Equi became a local celebrity in The Dalles, Oregon for assaulting one of the town’s most prominent citizens, a school superintendent and a Baptist minister. She was slight, she was twenty years old and she paced the dusty streets of a small Western town – with a rawhide whip.
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