EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: FRANCES ELIZABETH CAROLINE WILLARD P/170

                                                                     Read Part One HERE

In this post I will continue to focus on a woman named Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard. She lived from 1839 - 1898. Frances's suffrage argument also hinged on her interpretation of Scripture. She claimed that natural and divine laws called for equality in the American household, with the mother and father sharing leadership. She expanded this notion of the home, arguing that men and women should lead side by side in matters of education, church, and government, just as "God sets male and female side by side throughout his realm of law."

Frances's work took to an international scale in 1883 with the circulation of the Poly.glot Petition against the international drug trade. She also joined May Wright Sewall at the International Council of Women meeting in Washington D.C., laying the permanent foundation for the National Council of Women of the United States.She became the organizations's first president in 1888 and continued in that post until 1890.

Frances also founded the World WCTU in 1888 and became its president in 1893. She collaborated closely with Lady Isabel Somerset, president of the British Women's Temperance Association, whom she visited several times in the United Kingdom.

Frances died in 1898.

Read Part One Hundred And Seventy-One HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800; FRANCES ELIZABETH CAROLINE WILLARD P/169

                                                                    Read Part One HERE

In this post I will continue to focus on a woman named Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard. She lived from 1839 - 1898. In 1874, Frances participated in the founding convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) where she was elected the first Corresponding Secretary. In 1876, she became head of the WCTU Publications Department, focusing on publishing and building a national audience for the WCTU's weekly newspaprt, The Union Signal.

In 1879, she became president of the National WCTU, a position she held until her death. Her tireless efforts for the temperance cause included a 50-day speaking tour in 1874, an average of 30,000 miles of travel a year, and an average of 400 lectures a year for a 10-year period, mostly with the assistance of her personal secretary Anna Adams Gordon.

As president of the WCTU, Frances also argued for female suffrage, based on "Home Protection," which she described as "the movement... the object of which is to secure for all women above the age of twenty-one that ballot as one means for the protection of their homes from the devastation caused by the legalized traffic in strong drink."

Read Part One Hundred And Seventy HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800; FRANCES ELIZABETH CAROLINE WILLARD P/168

                                                                     Read Part One HERE

In this post I will focus on a woman named Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard. She lived from 1839 - 1898. Her parents were Josiah Flint Willard and Mary Thompson Hill Willard. They lived in Churchville, near Rochester, New York. Her father was a farmer, naturaliser and legislator. Her mother was a schoolteacher. 

In 1841, the family moved to Oberlin, Ohio, where, at Oberlin College, Frances' father studied for the ministry and her mother took classes. In 1846, the famiy moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, where the family joined the Methodist Church. In 1858, the family moved to Evanston, Illinois, where Frances attended the North Western Female College.

After graduating from North Western Female College, Frances held various teaching positions throughout the country. She worked at the Pittsburgh Female College andat the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in New York. In 1871, she was appointed president of the newly founded Evanston College for Ladies, a Methodist Institution closely associated with the Northwestern Unitversity When the Evanston College for Ladies became the Woman's College of Northwestern University in 1873, Frances was named the first Dean of Women and Professor of English and Art, until her resignation in 1874.

Read Part One Hundred And Sixty-Nine HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ELIZABETH MARGARET CHANDLER P/167

                                                        Read Part One HERE

In this post I will continue to focus on a woman named Elizabeth Magaret Chandler. She lived from 1807 -1834.

In her essays, Elizabeth emphasized the contradiction between slavery and the Declaration of Independence, the degrading effect of slavery on master as well as slave, and the need to destroy the economic base of slavery by refusing to use products which were produced by slave labour.

Elizabeth was also an early believer in the need for women to champion humane causes. In her essay "To the Ladies of the United States," she chided women for deceiving themselves when they protestested that they had no power to ameliorate the horrors of slavery: "American women! Your power is sufficient for its extinction! Ye are called upon for extertion of that potency."

In 1832, Elizabeth formed the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society together with her friend and neighbour Laura Smith Haviland; this organisation eventually resulted in the establishment of one of the main links in the Underground Railroad System to Canada.

Elizabeth died shortly before her twenty-seventh birthday in 1834.

Read Part One Hundred And Sixty-Eight HERE

 

 

 

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ELIZABETH MARGARET CHANDLER P/166

                                                        Read Part One HERE

In this post I will focus on a woman named Elizabeth Margaret Chandler. She lived from 1807 - 1834.She was the youngest child and only daughter of Thomas and Margaret Evans Chandler. Her family were Quakers. Elizabeth lost her mother in infancy, was orphaned at nine, and was raised by her grandmother and three Quaker aunts in Philadelphia. She attended a Quaker school until twelve or thirteen and was an avid reader all her life.

At an early age she showed her talents as a poet: at nine she produced a poem called "Reflections on a Thunder Gust," at sixteen she began to publish some poems in the public press. At eighteen "The Slave Ship" brought her a prize from the editors of Casket, in which it was published.

Benjamin Lundy, the anti-slavery publisher, noticed "The Slave Ship" and reprinted it in the "Genius of Universal Emancipation." Lundy recruited Elizabeth as a regular contributor, and two years later she became the editor of the "Female Repository," the womens' department of his paper.

Elizabeth was the first American woman to make slavery the principal theme of her writing. Half of her published essays dealt with slavery, African life, the emancipation movement, or the American Indian. "The Slave Ship" employed a poignant theme which she used repeatedly: the wrenching despair and horror experienced by proud and independent Africans snatched from their native shores and transported in chains to the Americas and lifelong slavery.

Read Part One Hundred And Sixty-Seven HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: AMANDA BERRY SMITH P/165

                                                                   Read Part One HERE                                                            

In this post I continue to focus on a woman named Amanda Berry Smith. She lived from 1837 - 1915.

In 1890, Amanda returned to the US, and after two years of preaching and related work in the East, she settled in the Chicago area. There, she continued to evangelise.

Amanda then began to raise money for her latest mission: the care of homeless black children. She published a small newspaper entitled "Helper" to publicise and support that cause. With the proceeds from her donations from supporters, she opened the Amanda Smith Orphans Home for African-American children in Harvey, Illinois in 1899.

The Amanda Smith Home was the first, and for some time, the only, orphanage for black children in Illinois. Over time, though it expanded both in the number of children served and in the size of its facilities. During the ten years between 1900 and 1910, the institution grew from twelve to thirty-three children. The Home was destroyed by fire in 1918, and never re-opened.

Amanda provided direction and care for the Home until illness forced her to retire in the autumn of 1912. George Sebring, a wealthy pottery manufacturer from Ohia, built his dream city in Florida. He had long admired Amanda's work, and he provided her with a lovely home and saw to it that she had no want or worries for the rest of her life.

For almost fifty years following the Civil War, Amanda followed paths which led her to prominence as a black woman in a society dominated by white males. She was one of the few African American women to gain visibility in the Women's Christian Temperance Union and was closely connected to the work of the Coloured Women's Clubs.

Amanda died in 1915, at the age of 78. 

Read Part One Hundred And Sixty-Six HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: AMANDA BERRY SMITH P/164

                                                                  Read Part One HERE

In this post I continue to focus on a woman named Amanda Berry Smith. She lived from 1837 - 1915.

After her husband's death, Amanda decided to try her hand at preaching in 1869, which met with some initial resistance from the African Methodist Episcopal clergy, but Amanda persevered. For the next nine years she preached in African Methodist Episcopalian churches, to gatherings of Methodists and at Holiness camp meetings in New York and New Jersey, becoming a popular speaker to both black and white audiences.

Amanda was a compelling speaker and singer, and wherever she travelled, people responded to her engaging personality and spiritual power. She became well known and opportunities to evangelise in the South and West opened up for her. Wherever she travelled, she wore a plain poke bonnet and a brown or black Quaker wrap, and she carried her own carpetbag suitcase.

By 1870, evangelism was Amanda's only vocation. By the end of the decade, she was known as far north as Maine and as far south as Tennessee. She received constant calls for her services at camp meetings, churches and gatherings.

Although Amanda was not ordained or financially supported by the African Methodist Episcopalian Church or any other organisation, she became the first black woman to work as an international evangelist in 1878. Friends suggested that she consider working with churches in England. She responded to this offer, and after a year in England, spent two years working with churches in India.

After returning to England in 1881, Amanda travelled to Liberia and spent almost eight years in West Africa.There she worked with churches and helped to establish temperance societies. Amanda emerged as one of the African Methodist Episcopalian Church's most effective missionaries and of the most remarkable preachers ever known. In the process she opened the way for other women to preach in the African Methodist Episcopalian Church.

Read Part One Hundred And Sixty-Five HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: AMANDA BERRY SMITH P/163

                                                                  Read Part One HERE

In this post I will focus on a woman named Amanda Berry Smith. She lived from 1837 - 1915. She was born a slave at Long Green, Maryland. Her father, a slave, worked for years at night and after long days of field labour, he made brooms and husk mats to earn enough money to buy the freedom of his family of seven.

The Berry family expanded to include eight more children, and they moved to a farm in York County, Pennsylvania, where their home became an Underground Railroad Station. Consequently their property was closely watched to see if they were harbouring fugitives. One night, slave trackers burst in, demanding to know where Amanda's father had hidden a runaway. The men beat Amanda's father and tried to stab her mother.

Amanda had only three months of formal education, and that at a school for whites, though a few coloured children were permitted to attend.

In 1854, at the age of seventeen, Amanda married Calvin Devine. The couple lived in New York City, and had two children, one of whom died in infancy. Amanda worked as a domestic servant, but life with Calvin, a drunkard, was fraught with misery.

Not long after the beginning of the Civil War, Calvin joined an African American unit in the Union Army. He was killed in battle in 1863. During this time, Amanda, always worked hard as a cook and a washerwoman to provide for herself and her daughter.

Amanda remarried a coachman named James Smith, and Philadelphia became her new home.She experienced a religious conversion, and joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She worshipped at the church where her husband was a deacon. However, Smith proved to be a disappointment as a husband, and the three children Amanda had with him died very young.

Read Part One Hundred And Sixty-Four HERE