EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ELIZABETH COLTMAN HEYRICK P/69

                                                                            Read Part One HERE

In this post I will focus on a woman named Elizabeth Heyrick Coltman. She lived from 1769 - 1831. Elizabeth was born in Leicester, UK. Her parents were John Coltman and Elizabeth Cartwright. The family practised Methodism.

In 1787 Elizabeth married John Heyrick. After her husband's death, when she was only 28, she became a Quaker and soon took to social reform.

In the early 19th century, prominent leaders of the British abolitionist movement, William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, believed that when the slave trade was abolished in 1807, slavery itself would gradually die out. However, this proved not to be the case as without legislation, planters refused to relinquish their enslaved property. Campaigners such as Elizabeth wanted complete and immediate abolition of slavery as an institution. A decade after the abolition of the trade, it became clear to the movement that slavery itself would not die out gradually.

 

As a strong supporter of complete emancipation, she decided to address the leaders of the abolitionist movement In 1823 or 1824, Elizabeth published a pamphlet entitled, "Immediate, not Gradual Abolition," criticising leading anti-slavery campaigners such as Wilberforce for their assumptions that the institution of slavery would gradually die out and for focusing too much on the slave trade.

Read Part Seventy HERE

                                                                                                                                                                    

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800; ELIZA STARBUCK BARNEY P/68

                                                      Read Part One HERE

In this post I will focus on a woman named Eliza Starbuck Barney. She lived from 1802 - 1889. Her parents were Quakers Joseph and Sally Gardner Starbuck from Nantucket, Massachusets. Local schools offered girls equal opportunities for education with those of their brothers. During her studies Eliza developed an enduring interest in natural sciences, agriculture and history. Eliza met Nathaniel Barney, ten years her senior, and they married in 1820.                                                                                                              Nantucket abolished slavery in 1773, and thereafter African Americans worked as tradespeople, labourers, sheep and livestock raisers, and as whalers and mariners.

Eliza was a cousin and close friend of abolitionist, suffragist and Nantucket native, Lucretia Coffin Mott. She and her husband kept up a life-long correspondence with Lucretia and her husband James, in which they often discussed the anti-slavery movement. 

Eliza and her husband welcomed a runaway slave named Frederick Douglass and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison into their home when they were visiting the island to attend a Massachusetts Anti-Slavvery Society Convention.

Not only active in the anti-slavery movement. Eliza was also a supporter of the temperance movement and involved in the equal rights and womens' suffrage movements. In 1839 and 1840, she served a secretary of the Nantucket's Anti-Slavery Society and in 1851, with both her daughter and husband at her side, she attended the first womens' suffrage convention held in Massachusetts. Eliza died in 1889.

Read Part Sixty-Nine HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: RHODA DEGARMO P/67

                               Read Part One HERE                                                                                                                                            

In this post I will continue to focus on a woman named Rhoda DeGarmo. She lived from 1798 - 1873. Rhoda was one of America's earliest women's rights activists. Her overt work on behalf of women's suffrage and women's rights began in 1848, when she was chosen as one of the members of the Arrangements Committee of the Adjourned Convention held in Rochester, New York on 2 August, 1848, about two weeks after the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls. With the rest of the Committee, Rhoda met in Protection Hall in Rochester on 1 August, 1848, to formulate an agenda and select a slate of officers for the Convention. The Committee decided to nominate a woman - Abigail Bush . to preside over the convention, a move opposed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Abigail performed her duties with aplomb, putting to rest the doubts of Elizabeth and Lucreatia, and proving the wisdom of Rhoda and the rest of the Arrangements Committee. 

Rhoda also had a prominent role in the Monroe County Women's Rights Convention held in Januray 1853 and at a statewide convention held in Rochester in November 1853.

Rhoda's activities on behalf of women's rights culminated with her vote in the 1872 presidential election. She was one of the fifteen women, including her friend Susan, who succeeded in both registering and casting their votes. When an official election watcher challenged the votes of the women, Rhoda refused to either swear or affirm an oath, insisting that the fact that she would simply "tell the truth" should be enough. Rhoda died in 1873. 

Read Part Sixty-Eight HERE

 

 

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: RHODA DEGARMO P/66

                                Read Part One HERE

In this post I will focus on a woman named Rhoda De Garmo. She lived from 1799 - 1873. She was born in Massachusetts. Rhoda lived with her husband, Elias DeGarmo, in Gates, New York. She joined the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society in 1842, the year that the Society was established. In 1845, she was appointd chair of the Society's counsellors (a group which has been likened to an executive committee). As a woman member of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, Rhoda was also involved in the organisation of Anti-Slavery Fairs, usually held annually. The purpose of the fairs was to raise funds to support the anti-slavery cause and to raise awareness of the plight of slaves and the evil of slavery. 

Rhoda was also part of the network of anti-slavery activists who made up the Underground Railroad. Her home often provided refuge for fugitive slaves on their way to Canada. She was a close friend and co-worker with Susan B. Anthony in the anti-slavery movement.

As a member of the Society of Friends, Rhoda was active in the Farmington (New York) Quarterly Meeting.

Rhoda's belief in the temperance movement led to active partipation in that movement in the early 1850s. When her friend Susan was prevented from speaking at a Sons of Temperance meeting in 1852, Susan began to plan the establishment of a woman's statewide temperance society. A call was put out and almost five hundred women came to a meeting to form the Woman's State Temperance Society. At that meeting Elizabeth Cady Stanton was elected president of the new organisation, while Rhoda was chosen as one of the several vice-presidents.

Read Part Sixty-Seven HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ABIGAIL NORTON BUSH P/ 65

                                                                    Read Part One HERE

In this post I continue to focus on a woman named Abigail Norton Bush She lived from 1810 - 1898.

In 1849 or 1850, after years of suffering business losses, Henry headed west to join the California Gold Rush and to make a life there. By the early 1850s, the whole family had settled in California, where Abigail lived for the rest of her life.

In 1878, she sent a congratulatory letter to the National American Women Suffrage Association, which was then holding a convention in Rochester to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls and the second at Rochester.

When Frederic Douglass passed through Rochester during his escape from slavery the Bush family helped him. In 1883, some forty years later, Abigail wrote to Frederick to find out if he remembered her and asked for his photograph. The answer came with a promptness that at once evidenced his recollection of a regard for the writer.He expressed his great pleasure to hear from the one who had befriended him in days when friends were scarce.He spoke of his present position and future plans as he would to his most trusted friend and in lieu of a photograph sent a cleverly exectuted pencil picture of himself, together with a copy of his address on the 21st anniversary of slavery Emancipation.

In 1898, at the National American Women Suffrage Association 50th anniversary convention. Abigail and other founders of the movement were honoured at a Pioneers Evening. But she would not live to see what they started come to a triumphant conclusion in 1911 in California and nationally in 1920. Abigail died on 10th December, 1898 at the age of 88.

Read Part Sixty-Six HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ABIGAIL NORTON BUSH P/64

Read Part One HERE

In this post I continue to focus on a woman named Abigail Norton Bush. She lived from 1810 -  1898.

Back in Rochester an Arrangements Committee met to organise the convention. A nomination committee composed of Amy Post, Rhoda DeGarmo and Sarah Fish met on the evening of 1st August, 1848 to select officers for the convention.

On 2nd August, 1848 - twelve days after Seneca Falls  the second Women's Rights Convention was held. Amy Post called the meeting to order and reported on behald of the committee the following persons to serve as officers: Abigail Bush as president; Laura Murray vice president; Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Sarah L. Hallowell and Mary H. Hallowell, secretaries.

Women serving as officers? This radical departure from the norm created much controversy - men always presided over meetings. Abigail later recalled that those who opposed her stopped her in the hall, and tried to persuade her to give up her position as president. According to Abigail the group said that James Mott (the husband of Lucretia Mott) would be happy to serve in her place. She refused their offer.

Even the most committed feminists were strongly against the idea of a woman president. They did not want to give a bad public image to the new Women/s Rights Movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked how could a woman serve as president without any knowledge of parliamentary procedure and no experience in holding public meetings?

Amy, Rhoda and Sarah convinced Abigail to proceed, but when Abigail took her position as president, Lucretia and Alizabeth left their places of honour on the platform and took seats in the audience. One of the secretaries then read the minutes of the previous convention at Seneca Falls.

Abigail went on to perform her duties through all three sessions of the convention, becoming the first women to preside over a public meeting attended by a mixed audience of men and women. 

Read Part Sixty-Five HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ABIGAIL NORTON BUSH P/63

Read Part One HERE

In this post I focus on a woman named Abigail Norton Bush. She lived from 1810 - 1898. Abigail was born in Cambridge, Washington County. When she was very young, her family moved to the upstate New York town of Rochester in upstate New York, which was the home of many early social reformers in the early and mid 1800s. In the 1830s, Abigail worked for the Rochester Female Charitable Society, an organisation devoted to the care of the poor and the ill.

In 1833 Abigail married stove manufacturer Henry Bush. The Bushes were ardent supporters of the abolitionist movement and their home became a station of the Underground Railroad.

In a split among abolitionists in 1840, Henry chose to remain with the American Anti-Slavery Society, while Abigail grew more sympathetic to radical reform, and became active in the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society.

The first Women's Right Convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York on 19 and 20 July, 1848, under the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. The women attending that convention were urged to hold similar meetings in their own cities.

Abigail was not at Seneca Falls, but the representatives from Rochester who did attend were moved to organise a convention of their own. Before leaving Seneca Falls, they convinced Lecretia Mott to stay in New York long enough to be the featured speaker at their convention, as she had been at Seneca Falls.

Please Read Part Sixty-Four HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: MARTHA COFFIN PELHAM WRIGHT P/62

                                                                                    Read Part One HERE

In this post I continue to focus on a woman named Martha Coffin Pelham Wright. She lived from 1806 - 1875.

Martha's long career in the women's movement began in 1848 when she worked with Lucretia Coffin Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in organising the first convention  for women's rights in the United States. The conference took place in Seneca Falls, New York, in July of that year. Martha continued to organise and lead women's rights conventions over the following years, serving as secretary of a convention in Syracuse in 1852, vice-president of a convention in Phildelphia in 1854, and then president of three different conventions in 1855. She also presided over the New York State Women's Rights Committee's tenth annual women's rights convention held in New York City in 1860. 

Over the years she played in important role as advisor to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, both of whom were her good friends. When the movement split after the Civil War, Martha remained loyal to both Elizabeth and Susan during those turbulent years, and helped them organise the Americal Equal Rights Association in 1866 and the National Women's Suffrage Association in 1869.

In 1874, Martha was elected president of the National Women's Suffrage Association; however, she died the following year of pneumonia while on a visit to a daughter in Boston. 

Read Part Sixty-Three HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: MARTHA COFFIN PELHAM WRIGHT P/61

                                                                                    Read Part One HERE

In this story I focus on a woman named Martha Coffin Pelham Wright. She lived from 1806 - 1875. Martha was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Both of her parents were devout Quakers and raised the family within the church community known as the Society Of Friends. When she was three, the family moved to Philadelphia where her father thought they might find a cultural environment better suited to the practice of their religion. When Martha's father died a few years later, her mother operated a boarding house and a small shop to support her large family.

After three years in boarding school, Martha fell in love with Peter Pelham, an army captain and one of her mother's boarders. Although Captain Pelham was not a Quaker, which elicited objections from Martha's family, the couple married in 1824, and soon thereafter moved to Florida.Two years later, however, Peter died and Martha returned to her family with her baby daughter. 

In 1827, she moved with her mother to Aurora, New York, where she taught in a school that her mother had opened there. It was in Aurora that Martha met and married a lawyer from Philadelphia, David Wright. The two lived in Aurora until 1839, and then moved to Auburn, New York, where they remained for many years.

P.S. I will continue my story on Martha Coffin Pelham Wright in my next post.

Read Part Sixty-Two HERE