EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: JANE MASTER HUNT P/113

                                                                Read Part One HERE

In this post I focus on a woman named Jane Hunt. She lived from 1812 - 1889. Jane was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Quakers William and Mary Master. At age 33 Jane married Richard Hunt and moved to Waterloo, New York.

Jane and Richard opposed slavery and their home served as a station on the Underground Railroad.

Traditional Quakers tenets held that men and women should meet separately when making religious decisions. In 1848 the Hunts and other Quaker families formed a more radical Quaker group known as the Yearly Meeting of Congregational Friends, or Progressive Friends. They intended to further elevate the infuence of women in affairs of the faith. They introduced joint meetings of men and women, giving women an equal voice.

After a Quaker service on Sunday 9 July, 1848, several women decided to invite Lucretia Mott, a well-known Quaker minister and social reformer from Philadelphia, to visit Waterloo. Lucretia was most famous for her oral ability, which was rare during an era in which women were often not allowed to speak in public. Jane offered her home for the meeting.

Read Part One Hundred And Fourteen HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ABBY KELLEY P/112

                                                                Read Part One HERE

In this post I will continue to focus on a woman named Abby Kelley. She lived from 1811 - 1887.  In 1845, Abby married fellow abolitionist Stephen Foster, with whom she had a daughter Paulina. She and her husband lectured together throughout Ohio. Their home became a station on the Underground Railroad.

In 1850, Abby was one of the many abolitionists who supported the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts. The ideals for freedom for slaves applied equally to the new women's reform movement. Early women's rights activists used the existing abolitionist networks for support. Abby became more active in the women's movement after the Civil War.

Abby believed that the problem of slavery was a moral one, and that only moral weapons would free the slaves.

Abby always struggled to balance her anti-slavery and women's rights work with her role as a wife and a mother. She devoted over 50 years of her life to fight for the rights of all humanity. 

Abby died in 1887.

Read Part One Hundred And Thirteen HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ABBY KELLEY P/111

                                                               Read Part One HERE

In this post I will continue to focus on a woman named Abby Kelley. She lived from 1811- 1887. In 1845, Abby receivd a request from the Ohio American Anti-Slavery Society, asking her to attend the annual meeting of the society and to present their program at conventions throughout Ohio during the summer.

On June 5, Abby arrived at the annual meeting, which was held in the New Lisbon's Disciples' Church. She lectured to an audience of 500 people, mostly Quakers and blacks, who filled the church to overflowing. Many people had to be content with sitting on benches outside.

Even those opposed to abolition of slavery often spoke of Abby's power as a speaker. In May 1845, the New York Herald, an anti-reform newspaper, praised her address at an American Anti-Slavery Society meeting.

In the summer of 1845, Abby attended an annual Quaker meeting at Mount Pleasant, Ohio. These were not abolitionist Friends, but were Orthodox Quakers. Abby waited for most of the day before speaking. She had hardly begun her lecture when she was ordered to stop disturbing the meeting. She tried to go on, but the men physically carried her out of the building.

Read Part One Hundred And Twelve HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ABBY KELLEY P/110

                                                               Read Part One HERE

In this post I will continue the story of Abby Kelley. She lived from 1811 - 1887. Abby's career as a lecturer began in 1838, when she gave her first speech for the American Anti-Slavery Society to an audience of men and women at Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia. She would go on to become one of its most popular speakers and its most successful fundraiser. Through her influence, many women became abolitionists and supporters of women's rights.

Frederick Douglass, a slave who escaped to freedom and fought to free his people from bondage, sometimes joined Abby on the lecture tours. She liked to work with black speakers, who could give first hand accounts of the horrors of slavery.

Abby went to Seneca Falls, New York, in 1843 to give an abolitionist lecture, and initiated a chain of events that founded a congregation and a host for the First Women's Rights Convention five years later.

Read Part One Hundred And Eleven HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ABBY KELLEY P/109

                                                                Read Part One HERE

In this story I will focus on a woman named Abby Kelley. She lived from 1811 - 1887. Abby was born in Pelham, Massachusetts. She was raised as a Quaker and in 1826, she was sent to the New England's Friends Boarding School. Then she worked as a teacher for a few years.

Abby began to read William Lloyd Garrison's paper, the Liberator, and became a devoted abolitionist.. She was elected secretary of the Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society, and she was one of the founding members of the New England Non-Resistance Society, which supported non-violent social reform.

At a time when society demanded that women be silent, submissive and obedient, Abby was vocal, assertive and headstrong. Despite harassment and ridicule, she never compromised her belief that all people are created equal and deserve to be free. 

Read Part One Hundred And Ten HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800; ELIZABETH BULTITUDE P/108

 

                                                      Read Part One HERE

In this story I will focus on a woman named Elizabeth Bultitude. She lived from 1809 - 1890. Elizabeth was born in Hardwick, Norfolk, England. She came from a large Wesleyan Methodist family and they were poor. She had a spiritual experience when she met Samuel Atterby, who was a Primitive Methodist. She joined that denomination in 1829.

Elizabeth's talents for preaching were spotted and she was given a "note" which gave her the church's authority to preach. She did not find it easy although she noted that in all her time of preaching she only failed to turn up on two occasions. In both cases it had been due to rain which meant that turnout would be poor and it was unwise to preach outside in torrential rain.

Male preachers were poorly paid and women preachers were paid just half that amount. When she was preaching at Soham in 1847 she was criticised for the poor quality of her dress. In reply she noted that even if she spent all of her money on clothes she would not be able to meet any standard of smart attire.

She retired in 1862. There were at least 40 itinerant women preachers and no one in the church gave them a senior position or paid them. Women did not stop preaching but Elizabeth is considered to be the last one who became itinerant to preach. After her the only authorised preachers were male. Elizabeth was the last of a group of women who preached with authority. Her church did not prevent women being preachers -  it just stopped authorising any more.

Elizabeth died in Heigham in 1890 after a long illness.

Read Part One Hundred And Nine HERE

 

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: BETSY MIX COWLES P/107

                                                      Read Part One HERE

In this story I will continue to focus on a woman named Betsy Mix Cowles. She lived from 1810 - 1876. Like many women who participated in the abolitionist cause, Betsy became interested in women's rights as well. While serving as principal and superintendent of a girls' school in Canton and Massilon, Ohio in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Betsy also served as the president of the first Womens' Rights Convention in Ohio at Salem in 1850, which reflects her prominence and the respect she had earned by this time.

Delegates learned that later in 1850, the state of Ohio was planning to convene a new constitutional convention, and the women wanted to have input into what rights women would be granted within the new Constitution of 1851. Later that year, Betsy attended the Akron Womens' Rights Convention and gave a speech about the inequalities in the wages of men and women and became a member of the executive committee of the newly formed Ohio Womens' Rights Association.

By the late 1850s, Betsy became interested in higher education for women teachers and normal schools, which specialised in educating women specifically for the teaching professsion. From 1856 through 1858, she was supervisor of practice teachers at the McNeely Normal School in Hopedale, Ohio. In 1858 she was an instructor at the Illinois State Normal School in Bloomington.

Betsy server as superintendent of public schools in Painesville, Ohio from1858 to 1860, then taught for two years in Delhi, New York.

In 1862, she retired to Austinburg, because of an eye ailment, end then completely lost sight in one eye in 1865, ending her careeer in education. 

Betsy died in 1876.

Read Part One Hundred And Eight HERE