The History of Woman Suffrage Volume III Part 49

My first speech in public, I find by my old journal--which serves me better than I thought it would--was given in Music Hall in this city in November, 1870. This meeting was held under the auspices of the State a.s.sociation, and was presided over by the Rev. Olympia Brown. I find that in the winter of 1871 I made addresses in various parts of the State. The journal also tells of a good deal of trotting about to get signatures to pet.i.tions, for I had more time to do that thing then than I have now.

The first woman suffrage meeting ever held in Hartford, and the first, probably, in Connecticut, was the one you and Mrs. Stanton held in Allyn Hall in December, 1867. Our State Suffrage a.s.sociation was organized in October, 1869. The signers[168] to the call for that convention were quite influential persons.

In my hunt through the journals of the two legislative houses I found in the House journal for 1878 that Mr. Pratt of Meriden had presented the pet.i.tion of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac C. Lewis. Mr. Clark of Enfield, presented the pet.i.tion of Lucy A. Allen; Mr.

Gallagher of New Haven presented several pet.i.tions that year, one of them being headed by Mr. Henry A. Stillman of Wethersfield, followed by 532 names, and another by Mrs. D. F. Connor, M. D.

Mr. Broadhead of Glas...o...b..ry presented the pet.i.tion of the Smith sisters. This unique pet.i.tion Miss Mary Hall, who was with me in the secretary's office, chanced to light upon, and she copied it.

It is a doc.u.ment well worth handing down on the page of history, and runs as follows:

_The Pet.i.tion of Julia E. Smith and Abby H. Smith, of Glas...o...b..ry, to the Senate of the State of Connecticut:_

This is the first time we have pet.i.tioned your honorable body, having twice come before the House of a.s.sembly, which the last time gave a majority that we should vote in town affairs; but it was negatived in the Senate.

We now pray the highest court in our native State that we may be relieved from the stigma of birth. For forty years since the death of our father have we suffered intensely for being born women. We cannot even stand up for the principles of our forefathers (who fought and bled for them) without having our property seized and sold at the sign-post, which we have suffered four times; and have also seen eleven acres of our meadow-land sold to an ugly neighbor for a tax of fifty dollars--land worth more than $2,000. And a threat is given out that our house shall be ransacked and despoiled of articles most dear to us, the work of lamented members of our family who have gone before us, and all this is done without the least excuse of right or justice. We are told that it is the law of the land made by the legislature and done to us, two defenceless women, who have never broken these laws, made by not half the citizens of this State. And it was said in our Declaration of Independence that "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."

For being born women we are obliged to help support those who have earned nothing, and who, by gambling, drinking, and the like, have come to poverty, and these same can vote away what we have earned with our own hands. And when men meet to take off the dollar poll-tax, the bill for the dinner comes in for the women to pay. Neither have we husband, or brother, or son, or even nephew, or cousin, to help us. All men will acknowledge that it is as wrong to take a woman's property without her consent as to take a man's without his consent; and such wrong we suffer wholly for being born women, which we are in no wise to blame for. To be sure, for our consolation, we are upheld by the learned, the wise and the good, from all parts of the country, having received communications from thirty-two of our States, as well as from over the seas, that we are in the right, and from many of the best men in our own State. But they have no power to help us. We therefore now pray your honorable body, who have power, with the House of a.s.sembly, to relieve us of this stigma of birth, and grant that we may have the same privileges before the law as though we were born men. And this, as in duty bound, we will ever pray.

JULIA and ABBY SMITH.

_Glas...o...b..ry, Conn., January 29, 1878._

The story of the Smith sisters, from 1873 and on, will be handed down as one of the most original and unique chapters in the history of woman suffrage. Abby Smith, with my friend Mrs.

Buckingham, attended with me the first meeting of the Woman's Congress, in New York, in October, 1873. While there, she said she should, on her return, address her town's people on woman suffrage and taxation, as they had not been treated fairly in the matter of their taxes. She did so on the fifth of November, addressing the Glas...o...b..ry town meeting in the little red-brick town-house of that place--a building that will always hereafter be connected with the names of Abby and Julia Smith. Several years after, wishing to address them again, she was refused entrance there, so she and Julia addressed the people from an ox-cart that stood in front. This was after their continued warfare against "taxation without representation" had aroused the opposition of their townsmen, but that first speech in 1873 was the beginning of their fame. Abby sent it to me for publication in the _Times_ of this city, but the editor not having room for it sent it to the _Courant_, which gave it a place in its columns, thus (unwittingly) setting a ball in motion that ran all round the country, and even over the ocean. The simplicity and uniqueness of the story of "Abby Smith and her cows," gave a boom to the cause of woman suffrage as welcome as it was unexpected.

The Glas...o...b..ry mails were more heavily laden than ever before in the history of this. .h.i.therto unknown town, for letters came pouring in from all quarters to the sisters. The fame did not rest entirely on Abby and her cows; Julia and her Bible came in for an important share, and the newspaper articles in regard to them were a remarkable blending of cows and Biblical lore, dairy products and Greek and Hebrew. Many of the articles were wide of the facts, being written with a view to make a bright and readable column. For instance, a Chicago paper got up a highly colored article in which it said that Abby Smith's mother--Hannah Hickok--was such an intense student that her father had a gla.s.s cage made for her to study in. The only vestage of truth in this story was that, lacking our modern facilities for heating, Mr.

Hickok had an extra amount of gla.s.s put into the south side of his daughter's room that the sun might give it a little more heat in cold weather. Hannah Hickok seems to have had a mental equipment much above that of the average woman of that day; she had a taste for literature, and was something of a linguist, and wrote, moreover, at different times, quite an amount of readable verse. She had a taste for mathematics, and also for astronomy, and made for her own use an almanac, for these were not so plenty then as now; she could, on awakening, tell any hour of the night by the position of the stars. Evidently Hannah Hickok Smith was not an ordinary woman; and it is quite as evident that her daughters were equally original, though in a different direction.

Women who have translated the Bible are not to be met with every day--nor men either, for that matter, but Julia Smith not only did this, but translated it five times,--twice from the Hebrew, twice from the Greek, and once from the Latin; and thirty years later, or after the age of eighty, published the translation; and then, to crown the list of marvels, married at the age of eighty-five.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Phebe A. Hanaford]

One point more, and the one nearest my heart. You ask me about my "dear friend Mrs. Buckingham." I can give no details of her suffrage work, but her heart was in it, and her name should be handed down in your History. She was at one time chairman of the executive committee of our State a.s.sociation, and she would, if she had thought it necessary, have spent of her little income to the last cent to help along the cause. She made public addresses and wrote many suffrage articles and letters that were published in different papers, but she made no noise about it; her work was all done with her own characteristic gentleness. Generous to a fault, winning and beautiful as the flowers she scattered on the pathway of her friends, she pa.s.sed on her way; and one memorable Easter morning she left us so gently that none knew when the sleep of life pa.s.sed into the sleep of death; we only knew that the glorious light of her eyes--a light like that which "never shone on sea or land"--had gone out forever.

"She died in beauty like the dew Of flowers dissolved away; She died in beauty like a star Lost on the brow of day."

The Hartford Equal Rights Club[169] was organized in March, 1885, and holds semi-monthly meetings. Its membership is not large, but what it lacks in numbers it makes up in earnestness. Its proceedings are reported pretty fully and published in the _Hartford Times_, which has a large circulation, thus gaining an audience of many thousands and making its proceedings much more important than they would otherwise be. It is managed as simply as possible, and is not enc.u.mbered with a long list of officers.

There are simply a president, Mrs. Emily P. Collins;[170] a vice-president, Miss Mary Hall; and a secretary, Frances Ellen Burr, who is also the treasurer. Debate is free to all, the platform being perfectly independent, as far as a platform can be independent within the limits of reason. Essays are read and debated, and many interesting off-hand speeches are made. It is an entirely separate organization from the Connecticut State Suffrage a.s.sociation, founded in 1869. But its membership is not confined to the city; it invites people throughout the State, or in other States, to become members--people of all cla.s.ses and of all beliefs. Opponents of woman suffrage are always welcome, for these furnish the spice of debate. Among the topics discussed has been that of woman and the church, and upon this subject Mrs.

Stanton has written the club several letters.

Last spring (1885) a number of the members of the club were given hearings before the Committee on Woman Suffrage in the legislature in reference to a bill then under consideration, which was exceedingly limited in its provisions. The House of Representatives improved it and then pa.s.sed it, but it was afterwards defeated in the Senate. Some of the meetings of the club have been held in Hartford's handsome capitol, a room having been allowed for its use, and a number of members of the House of Representatives have taken part in the discussions. Mrs. Collins, president of the club, is always to be depended upon for good work, and Miss Hall, its vice-president, is active and efficient.

She is in herself an ill.u.s.tration of what women can become if they only have sufficient confidence and force of will. She is a practicing lawyer, and a successful one.

FOOTNOTES:

[158] The life of William Lloyd Garrison, Vol. 1.: The Century Company, New York.

[159] She was soon followed by Mrs. Middlebrook and Mrs. Lucy R.

Elms, with warm benedictions. The latter called some meetings in her neighborhood in the autumn of 1868, and entertained us most hospitably at her beautiful home.

[160] Those who leave the tangled problem of life to G.o.d for solution find, sooner or later, that G.o.d leaves it to them to settle in their own way.--[E. C. S.

[161] Among them were Paulina Wright Davis, Dr. Clemence Lozier, Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Celia Burleigh, Caroline M. Severance, Rev. Olympia Brown, Frances Ellen Burr, Charlotte B. Wilbour, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, Nathaniel I. Burton, John Hooker, the Hutchinsons, with Sister Abby and her husband, Ludlow Patton.

[162] _President_, Rev. N. J. Burton, Hartford. _Vice-presidents_, Brigadier-general B. S. Roberts, U. S. A., New Haven; Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Hartford; Rev. Dr. Joseph c.u.mmings, Middletown; Rev.

William L. Gage, Hartford; Rev. Olympia Brown, Bridgeport.

_Secretary_, Miss Frances Ellen Burr. _Executive Committee_, Mrs.

Isabella B. Hooker, Mrs. Lucy Elmes, Derby; Mrs. J. G. Parsons and Miss Emily Manning, M. D., Hartford. _Treasurer_, John Hooker.

[163] On her departure for St. Petersburg, where her husband was minister plenipotentiary, Mrs. Jewell left a check of $200 for the State society. She was an honored officer of the National Suffrage a.s.sociation until the time of her death, in 1883.

[164] Mrs. Hooker writes us that the act pa.s.sed upon Governor Hubbard's recommendation was prepared at his request by Mr. Hooker, and was essentially the same that had been unsuccessfully urged by him upon the legislature eight years before. She then goes on to say: "What part our society had in our bringing about so beneficent a change in legislation, cannot be better set forth than in two private letters from Samuel Bowles of the _Springfield Republican_, and Governor Hubbard. While these gentlemen were friends of Mr.

Hooker and myself, yet, as politically opposed to each other, their united testimony is exceedingly valuable, and since they have both pa.s.sed on to a world of more perfect adjustments, I feel that nothing would give them greater satisfaction than to be put upon record here as among the earliest defenders of the rights of women.

"SPRINGFIELD, Ma.s.s., March 28, 1877.

"MY DEAR MRS. HOOKER:--I return your letters and paper as you desired. It is an interesting story, and a most gratifying movement forward. I am more happy over the bill pa.s.sed, than I am sorry over the bill that failed. We shall move fast enough. The first great step is this successful measure in Connecticut--the establishment in practice of the principle of equal, mutual, legal rights, and equal, mutual, legal responsibilities, for which I have been preaching and praying these twenty years. We owe the success this year, _first_ to the right of the matter; _second_, to the agitation of the whole question which has disseminated the perception of that right; _third_, to you and your husband in particular; and _fourth_, to the fact that you had in Connecticut this year a governor who was recognized as the leading lawyer of the State, a genuine natural conservative who yet said the measure was right and ought to go. It is this last element that has given Connecticut its chief leadership. It is a bigger thing than it seems at first to have an eminent conservative lawyer on the side of such legislative reform. I hate very much to take your husband's side against you, and yet now that I am over fifty years old, I find I more and more sympathize with his patience and philosophy with the slow-going march of reform. But with such things going forward in national politics, and such a sign in the heavens as this in Connecticut, we ought all to be very happy--and I believe I am, in spite of debts, hard work, fatigue and more or less chronic invalidism. At any rate I salute you both with honor and with affection."

"Very faithfully yours, SAMUEL BOWLES.

"This letter I enclosed to Governor Hubbard and received the following reply:

"EASTER, April 1, 1877.

"MY GOOD FRIEND:--It was a 'Good Friday' indeed that brought your friendly missive. And what a dainty and gracious epistle Sam.

Bowles does know how to write! He is a good fellow, upon my word, full of generous instincts and ideas. He ought to be at the head of the _London Times_ and master of all the wealth it brings. Add to this, that the Good Physician should heal him of his 'chronic invalidism' and then--well what's the use of dreaming? Thank _yourself_, and such as you for what there is of progress in respect of woman's rights amongst us. I do believe our bill is a 'great leap forward' as Bowles says in his editorial. 'Alas!'

says my friend ----, 'it has destroyed the divine conception of the unity of husband and wife.' As divine, upon my soul, as the unity of the lamb and the devouring wolf. * * * But enough of this. I salute you my good friend, with a thousand salutations of respect and admiration. I do not agree with you in all things, but I cannot tell you how much I glorify you for your courage and devotion to womanhood. I am a pretty poor stick for anything like good work in the world, but I am not without respect for it in others. And so I present myself to yourself and to your good and n.o.ble husband whom I take to be one of the best, with every a.s.surance of affection and esteem. Thanking you for your kind letter, I remain, dear madam,

"Yours very truly, R. D. HUBBARD."

[165] At the various hearings Mrs. Anna Middlebrook, Mr. and Mrs.

Joseph Sheldon, Julia and Abby Smith, Rev. Olympia Brown, Mr. and Mrs. Hooker were the speakers.

[166] See Appendix for Mr. Hooker's article, "Is the Family the Basis of the State?"

[167] At the convention of March 17 and 18, 1884, the speakers were Mrs. Hooker, Susan B. Anthony, the Rev. Charles Stowe, Julia Smith Parker, Mrs. Emily Collins, Abigail Scott Duniway, Miss Leonard, Mrs. C. G. Rogers, the Rev. Dr. A. J. Sage, Mrs. Ellis, Miss Gage, the Rev. J. C. Kimball, the Rev. Mr. Everts of Hartford, Mary Hall and F. E. Burr. The officers elected at this meeting were: Isabella B. Hooker, _President_: F. Ellen Burr, _Secretary_; Mary Hall, _a.s.sistant-secretary_; John Hooker, _Treasurer_. _Executive Committee_; Mrs. Ellen Burr McMa.n.u.s, Mrs. Emily P. Collins, Mrs.

Amy A. Ellis, Mrs. J. G. Parsons Hartford; Mrs. Susan J. Cheney, South Manchester; Mrs. John S. Dobson, Vernon Depot; Judge Joseph Sheldon, Charles At.w.a.ter, James Gallagher, New Haven.

[168] John Hooker, Isabella B. Hooker, the Rev. N. J. Burton, Rachel C. Burton, Franklin Chamberlin, Francis Gillette, Eliza D.

Gillette, Frances Ellen Burr, Catharine E. Beecher, Esther E.

Jewell, Calvin E. Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe and others, Hartford; Joseph c.u.mmings, Middletown, President of Wesleyan University; Thomas Elmes, Lucy R. Elmes, Derby; Charles At.w.a.ter, New Haven; Thomas T. Stone, Laura Stone, Brooklyn. The officers elected for the a.s.sociation were: _President_, the Rev. N. J.

Burton, Hartford; _Secretary_, Frances Ellen Burr; _Executive Committee_, Isabella B. Hooker; Mrs. Lucy R. Elmes, Derby; Mrs. J.

G. Parsons, Miss Emily Manning, M. C., Hartford; Mr. Charles At.w.a.ter, New Haven; Mr. Ward Cheney, Mrs. Susan J. Cheney, South Manchester; Mrs. Virginia Smith, Hartford. _Treasurer_, William B.

Smith, Hartford. There was a long list of vice-presidents, which I presume you do not care for, nor for the other names that were added as changes had to be made in the years that followed.

[169] A member of the club says: "We receive more of our life and enthusiasm from Frances Ellen Burr than all other members combined; indeed, the chief part of the work rests on her shoulders."

[170] See Mrs. Collins's Reminiscences, chapter V., Vol. I.