Despite her ill-health and natural timidity, Ellen Harmon felt constrained to carry out the instruction she had received to share her visions publicly. She recounted, however, that “the idea of a female traveling from place to place caused me to draw back.”8Ibid., p. 36. Finally, through the encouragement of fellow believers in Portland, she set out “to bear my testimony” as “the way opened,” leading to an extended itinerary within the New England states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.9Ibid., pp. 38-49, 67-79. Little did she know that this would launch a lifetime of travel and speaking that would crisscross the United States of America and also include Europe and Australia.10By 1880 she reported having “crossed the plains fifteen times” (“Incidents by the Way,” Review, June 17, 1880, p. 386). 1EGWLM 14.5
At first Ellen traveled most often with her older sister, Sarah, and other close friends, sometimes accompanied by former Millerite ministers. Earlier, probably in 1844,11James White recalled that she was still 16 years of age when he first met her in Portland, Maine. Ellen White, on the other hand, dated her introduction to James White to early 1845 in Orrington, Maine. she was first introduced to one such leader, Elder James White, and within two years the two would unite their labors together through marriage. James would later describe it in this way: “As she should come before the public she needed a lawful protector, and God having chosen her as a channel of light and truth to the people in a special sense, she could be of great help to me.”12James White and Ellen G. White, Life Sketches (1880), p. 126. They were married on August 30, 1846. 1EGWLM 14.6
Not long after their marriage James and Ellen White began to observe and teach the seventh-day Sabbath, as introduced to them by former Millerite preacher Joseph Bates. Traveling now as a team and without any fixed home of their own, they visited the scattered believers, attended Bible conferences, and began to use the printed page as a means to make known their understanding of Bible prophecy and the importance of the seventh-day Sabbath, and to bring unity among the disparate bands of former Millerites. 1EGWLM 14.7