EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ELIZABETH HOBBS KECKLEY P/144

                                                                                    Read Part One HERE

In this post I continue the story of a woman named Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley. She lived from 1818 - 1907. At fourteen, Elizabeth was sent to North Carolina to work for Col. Burwell's son, Robert. Robert  and his wife's estate in Hillsborough, NC, was not financially successful and they hired Elizabeth out to a white neighbour That neighbour brutally and frequently beat Elizabeth and forced her into a sexual relationship for four years. The non-consensual relationship resulted in the birth of Elizabeth's only son, George, in 1842.

That same year, Elizabeth and her son were sent back to the Burwell plantation in Virginia. Col. Burwell then gave Elizabeth, her son George and her mother Aggy to his daughter (and Elizabth's half-sister) Ann Garland, as a wedding gift.

Around 1847, the Garlands moved to St Louis to make a new start. Elizabeth, her son and her mother had to accompany them. To make money, the Garlands decided to hire out Elizabeth's mother Aggy to clean other white families' houses. Elizabeth was afraid this would be too hard on her aging mother, and she begged to make money in her mother's place. She used the skill her mother had taught her: sewing. Elizabeth quickly earned a reputation as one of the best dressmakers and received orders from some of the wealthiest women in the city.

As an enslaved woman, Elizabeth's earnings went to her owner, but Elizabeth made enough money to keep her mother from being hired out. In 1850, Elizabeth married James Keckley. However, the marriage was not successful and the couple formally separated in 1860.

In 1852, Elizabeth asked the Garlands for her freedom. They initially refused, but later told her they would emancipate her and her son George for US$ 1,200. However, this price was impossible. As she searched for ways to raise the money, her plight caught the attention of some of her wealthy clients. They raised the money for Elizabeth to purchase her and her son George's freedom on November 15, 1855.

Read Part One Hundred And Forty-Five HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800; HANNAH MARIA CONANT TRACY P/142

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Read Part One HERE

In this post I will continue to focus on a woman named Hannah Maria Conant Tracy. She lived from 1815- 1896. While Hannah lived on the farm, she got involved in various activities such as spinning, weaving, knitting, tailoring, baking, dairying, basket weaving, shoe-making and hat-braiding. She, furthermore, homeschooled her children and wrote what would become a famous article, "The Una," which focused on differences between men and women and examined how these differences created a rationale for giving women the right to vote, as differences create a more diverse voting outcome.

Although Hannah did not attend the first three National Women's Rights Conventions, she did attend the 1853 convention, held in Cleveland as well as the 1854 convention, in Philadelphia, where she was a speaker. She served as the president of the American Women's Suffrage Association (AWSA) from 1870- 1871.

After her second husband died in 1886, she remained active in the American Women's Suffrage Association (AWSA). In 1887, she was appointed to lead the task force charged with merging the American Women's Suffrage Association (AWSA) and the National Women's Suffrage Association (NWSA) to create the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). That merger took place in 1890.

After serving the NAWSA for 6 years, Hannah died in 1896 at 80 years old while on a trip to Ocean Springs, Missouri. 

Read Part One Hundred And Forty-Three HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800; ELIZABETH HOBBS KECKLEY P/143

                                                                                    Read Part One HERE

In this post I will begin to focus on a woman named Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley. She lived from 1818 - 1907. Elizabeth was born in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. Her mother, Agnes (Aggy) Hobbs, was an enslaved woman on Colonel Armistead Burwell's plantation. Col. Burwell was also Elizabeth's biological father, and it is likely that Col. Burwell and Aggy's relationship was non-consensual. The Burwells never recognised Elizabeth's parentage and frequently beat her as a child. 

Aggy's husband, George Pleasant Hobbs, was an enslaved man on a nearby plantation. George was devoted to Elizabeth and regarded her as his daughter. Elizabeth, likewise, regarded George as her father. As a form of resistance to enslavement, Aggy gave Elizabeth George's last name.

As early as age four, Elizabeth assisted her mother with chores in the Burwell household, including cleaning, sewing and watching over the Burwell's young children (Elizabeth's half-siblings). Unlike many enslaved people, Elizabeth was allowed to learn to read and write.

At some point, George was permitted to live with his wife and daughter on the Burwell plantation. However, the family's unification was short lived. When George's owner decided to move west, George was forced to leave, he had only two hours to say goodbye to his family. Elizabeth and her father kept in touch by letter, another rarity for enslaved people at that time.

Read Part One Hundred And Forty-Four HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800; HANNAH MARIA CONANT TRACY P/141

                                                                       Read Part One HERE

In this post I will continue to focus on a woman named Hannah Maria Conant Tracy. She lived from 1815 - 1896.  Hannah enrolled full time at Oberlin College and joined a women's debating society with Lucy Stone, a famous abolitionist, suffragist and orator and also the first woman in Massachusetts to receive a college degree. During her time at Oberlin College, she also ran a boarding house and continued to write for newspapers.

Following her college career, Hannah became the matron of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum in Columbus, Ohio, where she met abolitionist Frances Dana Barker Gage. In 1849, Hannah became the principal of the "female department" in the Columbus public high school. In 1852, she spoke at the Free Soil Convention in Massillon, Ohio, where she was elected president of the Ohio Women's Rights Association. 

That same year, Hannah, met widower Colonel Samuel Cutler, who she married soon after. They then moved to a farm in Dwight, Illinois.

Read Part One Hundred And Forty-Two HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800; HANNAH MARIA CONANT TRACY P/140

                                                                        Read Part One HERE

In this post I will focus on a woman named Hannah Maria Conant Tracy. She lived from 1815 - 1896. She was born in Becket, Massachusetts. Her parents were John and Orpha Conant. In 1831, the family moved to rochester, Ohio. Two years later Oberlin College, opened its doors to women, prompting Hannah to beg her father to pay for her tuition. However he was staunchly opposed to do-education and refused to pay her education.

Not easily denied, Hannah married Oberlin College theology student John Martin Tracy in 1834. Studying her husband's theological and law texts, Hannah discovered the extent to which women had limitations placed on them through common law. These discoveries prompted her husband to become an abolitionist speaker and activist.Their collaborative work ended when her husband died.

Following his death, Hannah began writing articles for the Cleveland Herald under the male pseudonyms "Cassius Marcellius Clay" and "Josiah A. Harris." At the same time she began teaching and helped create the Women's Anti-Slavery Society as well as a temperance society.

Read Part One Hundred And Forty-One HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800; MYRTILLA MINER P/139

                                                                           Read Part One HERE

In this post I will continue to focus on a woman named Myrtilla Miner. She lived from 1815 - 1864. Despite hostility from a portion of the community, the school prospered, but was forced to move several times in its first few years. Within 2 months of its opening the enrollment grew from 6 to 40, and Myrtilla moved her students into another residence with larger acommodations. Threats from white neighbours to set fire to the house forced Myrtilla to leave after only one month.

With aid from her supporters, she was finally able to purchase a three-acre lot with house and barn on the edge of the city. Though the environment of this home was most pleasing, Mytilla and her pupils were frequently assaulted with stones and other missiles.

In 1860, the school had to be closed. However, on March 3, 1863, the US Senate granted the Coloured Girls School a charter as the Institution for the Education of Coloured Youth and named Myrtilla as one of its directors. However, she was never able to return to the school when it reopened.

Myrtilla died from injuries sustained in a carriage accident on December 17, 1864, aged 49.

Read Part One Hundred And Forty HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800; MYRTILLA MINER P/138

                                                                           Read Part One HERE

In this post I will continue to focus on a woman named Myrtilla Miner. She lived from 1815 - 1864. With the support of prominent Quaker Reverend Henry Ward Beecher and a contribution of $100 from a Quaker philantrophist, Myrtilla was encouraged to open a school for African American girls in Washington, D.C. in 1851. This was only one year after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, when freedmen and runaways were beaten, bound and cast into prison and abolitionists were incarcerated for their anti-slavery activities.

District of Columbia Mayor Walter Lenox argued against the school in an article in the National Intelligencer, stating that "it was not humane to the coloured population, for us to permit a degree of instruction so far beyond their political and social condition.... With this superior education there will come no removal of the present disabilities, no new soures of employment equal to their mental culture; and hence there will be a restles population, less disposed than ever to fill that position in society which is allotted to them."

Despite all that, on December 6, 1851, in a rented room about fourteen feet square, in a framed house then owned and occupied as a dwelling by African American Edward Younger, Myrtilla with six pupils established the Normal School for Coloured Girls, the first normal school in the District of Columbia and the fourth one in the US. 

Read Part One Hundred And Thirty-Nine HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800; MYRTILLA MINER P/137

                                                                           Read Part One HERE

In this post I will focus on a woman named Myrtilla Miner. She lived from 1815 - 1864. Myrtilla was born near Brookfield, New York of humble parentage. Though always frail in health, she earned enough by working in the hop fields near her home to further her education. She received a year's training at Clinton in Oneida County, New York under the most adverse circumstances of ill health and lack of funds.

Myrtilla then taught at various school, including the Clover Street Seminary in Rochester, New York and Newton Female Institute in Whitesville, Missisippi. There she learned through horrible experiences the evils of slavery, boldly protesting against the cruelty of the slaveholders.

When she innocently requested permission to teach the slaves of the planters whose daughters she was then tutoring, she was told that teaching slaves was a crime in Mississippi. That experience awakened in Myrtilla a determination to return to the North and found a school for girls of colour.

Read Part One Hundred And Thirty-Eight HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800; PRISCILLA BRIGHT MCLAREN P/136

                                                                     Read Part One HERE                                                                   

In this post I will focus on a woman named Priscilla Bright Mclaren. She lived from 1815 - 1906. She was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, UK. Her father, Jacob Bright had risen from weaver to bookkeeper to wealthy cotton manufacturer. Her mother Martha took an equal part in her husband's business concerns and created essay societies and debating clubs for her children. Priscilla's parents were Quakers who believed in educating women.

When growing up Priscilla kept house for her brother, John. However, she eventually married an Edinburgh widower Duncan Mclaren. She and her husband worked together on many campaigns and were described by contemporaries as "equal partners."

She was a member of the Edinburgh Ladies' Emancipation Society, and after serving on the committee, became the president of the Edinburgh Women's suffrage Society.

Priscilla died in 1906.

Read Part One Hundred And Thirty-Seven HERE