EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: BETSY MIX COWLES P/106

                                                      Read Part One HERE

In this story I will continue to focus on a woman named Betsy Mix Cowles She lived from 1810 - 1876. Betsy became actively involved in a number of abolitionists organisations, often serving in leadership positions. Beginning in 1835, she served as the secretary of the Ashtabula County Female Anti-Slavery Society, which was one of the largest in the state with more than four hundred members. In 1846 and 1847 Betsy helped produce anti-slavery fairs and attended anti-slavery fairs and meetings in Boston, Massachusetts.

Betsy began speaking in public about the evils of slavery, and gained a reputation for her ability to articulate the importance of the anti-slavery cause. Not everyone approved of her popularity, however, Many people believed that women should not speak in public, and she was openly criticised for her speeches. Despite this concern, she continued to participate in the anti-slavery movement and opened her home to fugitive slaves as a station on the Underground Railroad in Ohio.

African American were not treated as equals to white people in the new state of Ohio (1803). Enacted in 1804 and 1807, Ohio Black Codes were meant to discourage Blacks from moving to Ohio. One of these laws required Blacks to pay a $500 bond signed by two White men within 20 days of arrival in order to remain in the state. Betsy spoke out against the Black Laws, and resigned one teaching position when the school at which she was working refused to admit black students.

Read Part One Hundred and Seven HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: BETSY MIX COWLES P/105

                                                      Read Part One HERE

In this story I will focus on a woman named Betsy Mix Cowles. She lived from 1810 -  1876. Betsy was the eighth child of Giles Hooker Cowles and Sally White Cowles. In 1811 the Cowles family settled in the town of Austinburg in Ashtabula, the most norteastern county in Ohia, where her father was a minister.

In the later 1820s, Betsy and her sister began opening infant schools, advocating the creation of programs to instruct the very young. In 1827 she began teachig in area schools, and in 1832 she studied in New York City, as part of the infant school movement. When Betsy was 28, she was one of the first students in the Ladies Course at Oberlin College and a member of the third graduating class in 1840.

Betsy did not marry and supported herself as a teacher and principal, and as one of the first women to serve as a school superintendent, which was very rare in the mid-19th centurty. She was involved in establishing a number of public schools and normal schools in the Ohio towns of Austinburg, Massillon, Canton, Hopedale and Painesville, as well as in Bloomington Illinois.

Read Part One Hundred And Six HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: SUSAN PAUL P/104

                                          Read Part One HERE

In this post I will focus on a woman named Susan Paul. She lived from 1809 - 1841. Susan was the youngest daughter of Baptist minister Thomas Paul and his wife Catherine Waterhouse Paul. Her father was an outspoken social activist who introduced his daughter to the anti-slavery movement and many of the movement's most prominent leaders, including David Walker and Lydia Maria Child.

Susan was a primary school a teacher and began her abolitionist career in 1833 with the New England Anti-Slavery Society, a group that was significantly more receptive to women than other anti-slavery societies.At that time she was invited to participate in a meeting of that sociey. She did not speak at that meeting but led a group of about 30 African American childdren from her school in song.

That same year, an assembly of men from the New England Anti-Slavery Society, led by William Lloyd Garrison, visited Susan's classroom, and were overwhelmed by the musical performances that Susan's students provided. Known as the Juvenile Choir of Boston, Susans African American students ranged from ages three to ten and sang patriotic and anti-slavery songs. By teaching her students songs about slavery, Susan was able to inform young African American children about Northern abolitionism and expand the African American anti-slavery movement.

After the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society was formed as an auxiliary of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, Susan became one of the first African American members of the group.

In 1837, she was one of two black women delegates at the Anti-Slavery Convention in New York

Susan, together with Jane Putnam and Nancy Prince founded a temperance society in the 1830s.

Unfortunately, Susan died of tuberculosis at the age of 32, in 1841.

Read Part One Hundred And Five HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: MARTHA STEARNS MARSHALL P/103

                                                      Read Part One HERE

In this post I wil focus on a woman named Martha Stearns Marshall. She lived from 1726-1793. Martha and her husband Daniel Marshall converted to Christianity during the First Great Awakening. The couple migrated from New England to Virginia, where they were introduced to Baptist beliefs. Concluding that Scripture taught believers' baptism, Martha and her husband were soon baptised and joined a Baptist Church, and Daniel was licensed to preach. But both Martha and her husband were preachers and Martha's zeal apparently equalled that of her husband. In 1755, Martha and her husband, together with her brother Shubal Stearns and his small congregation in Virgina, moved to North Carolina. The group settled at Sandy Creek and established a Baptist Church, which became the most influential Seperate Baptist Church in the South, and Martha often stood alongside her brother Shubal to preach at church meetings. Around  1760 Martha and her husband moved to nearby Abbott's Creek and founded a new church, and in 1771 they moved to Columbia County, Georgia, where they establised in Kiokwee Creek, Richmond County, the first missionary Baptist Church. In all these churches Martha provided excellent leadership.

Martha died in 1793.

Read Part One Hundred and Four HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: SARAH MAPPS DOUGLASS P/102

                                                               Read Part One HERE

In this story I will continue to focus on a woman named Sarah Mapps Douglass. She lived from 1802 - 1882. Sarah repeatedly stressed the need of African American women to educate themselves. In 1831 she had helped to organise the Female Literary Society and on the eve of the Civil War she founded the Sarah M.  Douglass Literary Circle.

After the passing of her husband in 1861, Sarah devoted her time to anti-slavery activities and continued teaching. Throughout her abolitionist career she gave as well numerous lecturers.

After the Civil War Sarah became a leader in the Pennsylvania Branch of the American Freedman's Aid Commission, which worked to protect and provide services to the former slaves in the South.

Through the 1860s and 1870s Sarah continued her work of reform, lecturing, raising money for Southern freedmen and women, helping to establish a home for elderly and indigent black Philadelphians and teaching at the Institute for Coloured Youth. 

Sarah died in 1882.

Read Part One Hundred and Three HERE

      

                                         

 

                                       WISHING YOU A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS

                                               AND GOD'S BLESSINGS FOR 2024

 

 

                                                              🔔🔔🔔

                                           

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: SARAH MAPPS DOUGLASS P/101

                                                              Read Part One HERE

In this story I will continue to focus on a woman named Sarah Mapps Douglass. She lived from 1802 - 1882. In 1852, now reconciled with the Quakers, Sarah closed her school and accepted an appointment to supervise the Girls' Preparatory Department of the Quaker-sponsored Institute for Coloured Youth. From 1853 - 1877 she served as principal of that department. 

During this time, she also  acquired basic medical training at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania and at Pennsylvania Medical University, where she studied female health and hygiene.

In 1855 Sarah married the Reverend William Douglass, Rector at St Thomas Episcopal Church, a widower with nine children. Her husband died in 1861.

A cause Sarah had long championed was the education of women on health issues. In 1858 she embarked on a career as a lecturer, confronting topics that would have been considered unseemly for an unmarried women to address. Her illustrated lectures to female audiences in New York City and Philadelphia drew praise for being informative and "chaste."

Read Part One Hundred and Two HERE