EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: MARGARETTA FORTEN P/95

                                                                     Read Part One HERE

In this story I will focus on a woman named Margaretta Forten. She lived from 1806 - 1875. She was the daughter of  James Forten and Charlotte Vandine. The Fortens were one of the most prominent black families in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They were active abolitionists who took part in founding and financing at least six abolitionist organisations. Margaretta and her sisters were educated in private schools and by private tutors.

Because women were excluded from the American Anti-Slavery Society, Margaretta together with her mother and sisters Sarah and Harriet, co-founded the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, the first female bi-racial anti-slavery society, with ten other women in 1833. The goal of this new society was to include women in the activism being done for the abolition of slavery, and "to elevate the people of colour from their present degraded situation to the full enjoyment of their rights and to increased usefullness in society."

Read Part Ninety-Six HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ELIZABETH PEASE NICHOL P/94

                                               Read Part One HERE

In this story I will continue to focus on a woman named Elizaeth Pease Nichol. She lived from 1807 - 1897. In 1840, Elizabeth travelled to London to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention, as did her friend Eliza Smeal Wigham, who was secretary of the Edinburgh Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. 

Before the convention started, Joseph Sturge, the British organiser, told the six women delegates they would not be allowed to participate. Leading Anti-Slavery members had rebuked him for thinking this "insane innovation, this women-intruding delusion," should be allowed. At the time, women attended were required to sit in segregated areas out of the sight of male delegates. 

The matter became contentious because some of the male delegates from the United States supported the women's participation while others spoke of the men's right to exclude women. Consequently, the American women delegates had to join the British women observers in a segregated area.

Elizabeth maintained the connections she had made at the World Anti-Slavery Convention and remained active in the movement for the abolition of slavery through correspondence with international abolitionists such as American Maria Weston Chapman. These letters with like-minded thinkers provide valuable insight into personal communications between women in the movement, not locally but internationally, and we can see just how committed these women were, from small towns and cities across the country and around the world, to a unified goal of emancipation

After moving to Edinburgh, Elizabeth became the treasurer for the Edinburgh chapter of the National Society for Womens' Suffrage. 

In 1853, she married Dr John Pringle and moved to Glasgow. 

Elizabeth died in 1897. 

Read Part Ninety-Five HERE

 

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ELIZABETH PEASE NICHOL P/93

                                              Read Part One HERE

In this story I will focus on a woman named Elizabeth Pease Nichol. She lived from 1807 - 1897. Elizabeth was born in Darlington, England. Her parents were Joseph Pease and Elizabeth Beaumont. They were members of the Society of Friends (Quakers). Her father was a founder of the Peace Society.

The Quakers held a strong view about the value of educating girls as well as boys. Elizabeth attended a school with her brothers and male cousins, one of only two girls at the school.When it closed down, her education continued at home, where it was disrupted by her mother's poor health.

By 1837, Elizabeth was leading the Darlington Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. Charles Stuart, an Anti-Slavery abolitionist and lecturer, encouraged her to send a female delegate or attend a national society being formed by Joseph Sturge. Elizabeth resisted more public involvement, as she did not seek the limelight but wanted to work locally for the causes she held to be important.

In 1838 Elizabeth published an important pamphlet with Jane Smeal Wigham titled "Adress to the Women of Great Britain." This document was a call to action to British women, asking them to speak in public and to form their own anti-slavery organisations.

Read Part Ninety-Four HERE

 

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE P/92

                                                           Read Part One HERE

In this story I will continue to focus on a woman named Elizabeth Buffum Chace. She lived from 1806 - 1899. With the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, Elizabeth continued her striving for the outlaw of slavery and although firmly supportive of the Union cause, she was disappointed that Abraham Lincoln did not move immediately to abolish slavery

Elizabeth met and corresponded regularly with many of the most significant Anti-Slavery figures of that time; she associated personally with William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass and William Wells Bronwn, and hosted them frequently at her home.

In her later life, Elizabeth continued to advocate for the political rights of women and for prison and workplace reform. She and other women were involved in the creation of the RI State Home and School for Dependent and Neglected Children, which resulted in a bill in 1884 to create a home for them. The School was opened in 1885.

Elizabeth died in 1899. 

Read Part Ninety-Three HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE P/91

                                                           Read Part One HERE

In this story I will focus on a woman named Elizabeth Buffum Chace. She lived from 1806 - 1899. Her parents were Arnold Buffum and Rebecca Gould. The family lived in Smithfield, Rhode Island. They were Quakers. Elizabeth's parents were anti-slavery, her father being the president of the New England Anti-Slavery Society.

In 1828, Elizebeth married Samuel Buffington Chace, who was a Quaker as well. It was after her marriage that Elizabeth began to become truly influential in the anti-slavery movement. She and her husband opened their home in Valley Falls, Rhode Island as a Station on the Underground Railroad, at great personal risk, to help runaway slaves escape to Canada.

In 1835, Elizebeth helped to found the Fall River Female Anti-Slavery Society, after the original group struggled to intergrate the free black women who wished to join as members. She and her sisters held the point of view of working to end all racist practices, and not just working towards abolition as the original group intended.

Read Part Ninety-Two HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ANN CARROLL FITZHUGH SMITH P/ 90

                                                         Read Part One HERE

In this story I will continue to focus on a woman named Ann Fitzhugh Smith. She lived from 1805 - 1875.

In the fall of 1835, members of the anti-slavery movement in the state of New York announced that they planned to establish a state society. Notices went out for the first meeting which would be held on October 21 at the Second Presbyterian Church in Utica, New York. where six hundred anti-slavery advocates assembled. While the meeting was in progress, eighty or so men pushed their way into the church with cries of "Open the way! Break down the doors!"

The meeting came to an abrupt end, but Ann and her husband were in the audience and offered to host the meeting the following day in Peterboro. About three or four hundred delegates accepted their offer and made their way to Peterboro, but the trip was not easy. Slavery sympathizers placed logs across the roads, and they pelted the abolitionists with mud, eggs, clubs and stones.

Ann's home was a station on the Underground Railroad, and they played a crucial role in its operation during the 1840s and 1850s. She frequently travelled in an enclosed carriage and allowed her carriage to be used to convey veiled fugitives on their way to Canada.

Ann died in 1875. 

Read Part Ninety-One HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ANN CARROLL FITZHUGH SMITH P/89

                                                        Read Part One HERE

In this story I will focus on a woman named Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith. She lived from 1805 - 1875. Her father, William Fitzhugh, a colonel in the Continental Army, build a home near Chewsville, Maryland, which he called The Hive because of the many activities carried on by his twelve children and the work necessary to sustain life in the surrounding wilderness. William then left Maryland for Rochester, New York.

Ann married Gerrit Smith in 1822. They lived in a large frame house facing Peterboro Green, Gerrit's lifelong home. 

As a child growing up in Chewsville, Maryland, Ann had been given a slave, Harriet Sims, who was later sold to a slaveholder in Kentucky, with her spouse Samuel Russell. After Ann's marriage to Gerrit, they located the Russells; they purchased their freedom and settled them into a home at Peterboro.

Ann's husband was one of the most powerful abolitionists in the US. Scores of abolitionists received comfort and support at their home. They purchased the freedom of hundreds of African Americans and arraganged for the safe passage of many to Canada. After 1835, Ann and her husband would not serve food grown with slave labour.

Read Part Ninety HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800:PRUDENCE CRANDALL P/88

                                                    Read Part One HERE

In this story I continue to look at a woman named Prudence Crandall. She lived from 1803 - 1890.

When Prudence continued undaunted to teach her African American students, the Canterbury legislature passed its 1833 "Black Law" (repealed in 1838), making it illegal to run a school teaching African American students from a state other than Connecticut. Prudence was arrested and jailed. Her first trial ended in a hung jury; the second trial resulted in her conviction, which was overturned by a highter court. On the night of September 9, 1834, an angry mob broke most of the school's windows and smashed furniture. Fearing for her students' safety, Prudence finally closed the school.

In 1835, Prudence married Baptist minister and abolitionist Calvin Philleo. The couple left Connecticut, ultimately settling in La Salle County, Illinois, where Prudence ran a school and participated in the women's suffrage movement. After her husband's death in 1874, Prudence moved to Elk Fals, Kansas, to live with her brother. In 1886, prompted by repentant Canterbury citizens, Prudence received a small pension from the Connecticut legislature. She died in 1890.

Read Part Eighty-Nine HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: PRUDENCE CRANDALL P/87

                                                    Read Part One HERE

In this story I will focus on a woman named Prudence Crandall. She lived from 1803 - 1890. Prudence was born in Hopkinton, Rhode Island. Her parents were Pardon Crandall  and Esther Carpenter. Prudence moved with her family to Canterbury, Connecticut when she was ten years old. 

Prudence attended the New England Friends' Boarding School in Providence, where she studied arithmetic, Latin and science -  subjects not tyical for women but embraced by Quakers who believed in equal educational opportunities. She taught briefly in Plainfield, and in 1831 opened a private girl's academy in Canterbury, where she initially taught daughters from the town's wealthiest families. 

Ranked as one of the state's best schools, her rigorous curriculum provided female students with an education comparable to that of prominent schools for boys. 

Read Part Eighty-Eight HERE