After the ceremony, Cyrus and Sarah made the 200 miles (320В km) trip back to Brainerd on horseback, spending their nights camping out and cooking their food over open fires. They were married in New Orleans on Christmas Eve, 1818. Sarah made the long, arduous ocean voyage unaccompanied from her parental home, while Cyrus came from Tennessee on horseback.

Sarah and Cyrus were determined not to wait, but decided to meet in New Orleans. Although he wanted to return to New England for the wedding, the church would not allow him to leave his post in Mississippi for a long enough time. By 1818, when Kingston was preparing to start building with the Choctaws in Mississippi, he had proposed to marry her. It is not clear when and how she would meet Cyrus Kingston, but evidently the event occurred and a strong attraction ensued. Her father would become an elder in the Pawtucket Congregational Church. Varnum, born in Dracut, Massachusetts on January 16, 1784, was one of ten children of Parker and Dorcas (nГ©e Brown) Varnum. Varnum, Brainerd included not only the mission itself, but also a boarding school and an agricultural school. He was first sent to Tennessee in 1817, where he began ministering to the Cherokee tribe and founded Brainerd Mission near Chickamauga. Kingsbury was ordained by the Congregational Church in Ipswich, Massachusetts in 1815. Choosing to become a missionary to American Indians, he was hired as the first missionary by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). He then studied at Andover Theological Seminary, where he also graduated in 1815. In 1812, he graduated from Brown University with a bachelor's degree. Cyrus was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts by an aunt and uncle.

Almost nothing is known about his parents, who may have died when he was very young. Kingsbury was born in Alstead, Cheshire County, New Hampshire on November 22, 1786.

4.2 Other Choctaw missions in Indian Territory.

Mission cyrus 1