Volume III Part 46 (1/2)
[131] For summary of voting laws relating to women from 1691 to 1822, see ”Ma.s.sachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement,” by Harriet H. Robinson: Roberts Brothers, Boston.
[132] Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Lucy Stone, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and other speakers of ability, presented able arguments in favor of giving women the right to vote.
[133] This memorial was printed by order of the legislature (Leg.
Doc. Ho. 57) and is called ”Memorial of the Female Signers of the Several Pet.i.tions of Henry A. Hardy and Others,” presented March 1, 1849. The doc.u.ment is not signed and Mrs. Ferrin's name is not found with it upon the records, neither does her name appear in the journal of the House in connection with any of the pet.i.tions and addresses she caused to be presented to the legislature of the State. But for the loyal friends.h.i.+p of the few who knew of her work and were willing to give her due credit, the name of Mary Upton Ferrin [see Vol. I., page 208] and the memory of her labors as well as those of many another silent worker, would have gone into the ”great darkness.”
[134] The committee was addressed by Wendell Phillips, Julia Ward Howe, Lucy Stone, Rev. James Freeman Clarke and Hon. George F.
h.o.a.r.
[135] Two years before (1869), while sitting as visitor in the gallery of the House of Representatives, I heard the whole subject of woman's rights referred to the (bogus) committee on graveyards!
[136] It was perhaps intended to serve as a means of renstating Abby W. May and other women who had been defeated as candidates for reelection on the Boston school-board. The names of Isa E. Gray, Mrs. C. B. Richmond, Elizabeth P. Peabody and John M. Forbes led the lists of pet.i.tioners.
[137] At the first annual election for school committees in cities and towns in 1879-80, about 5,000 women became registered voters.
[138] Lucretia P. Hale, Abby W. May, Lucia M. Peabody, Mary J. S.
Blake, Kate G. Wells, Lucretia Crocker.
[139] This act, so brief and so _expressive_, is worthy to be remembered. It simply reads: ”_Be it enacted, etc., as follows_:
SEC. 1. No person shall be deemed ineligible to serve upon a school committee by reason of s.e.x.
SEC. 2. This act shall take effect upon its pa.s.sage. (_Approved June 30, 1874._)
By force of habit, the legislature said not a word in the law about _women_. There are now (1885) 102 women members of school-boards in Ma.s.sachusetts.
[140] See ”Women under the law of Ma.s.sachusetts,” Henry H. Sprague.
Boston: W. B. Clarke & Carruth.
[141] The authority for this old ”thumb” tradition, that ”a man had the right to whip his wife with a stick no bigger than his thumb,”
is found in an early edition of _Phillip's Evidence_. That book was authority in English common law and in it Phillips is quoted as saying, that according to the law of his day a husband ”might lawfully chastise his wife with a reasonable weapon, as a _broomstick_,” adding, however, ”but if he use an unreasonable weapon, such as an iron bar, and death ensue, it would be murder.”--[Chamberlin, p. 818.
[142] In an old will, made a hundred and fifty years ago, a husband of large means bequeathed to his ”dearly beloved wife” $50 and a new suit of clothes, with the injunction that she should return to her original, or family home. And with this small sum, as her share of his property, he returned her to her parents.
[143] The little actual gain in votes since 1874, in favor of munic.i.p.al or general suffrage for women, might cause the careless observer to draw the inference that no great progress had been made in legislative sentiment during all these years. In 1870 the vote in the House of Representatives on the General Woman Suffrage Bill was 133 to 68. In 1885 the bill giving munic.i.p.al suffrage was defeated in the House by a vote of 130 to 61. But this is not a true index of the progress of public opinion.
[144] Mrs. Ellen M. Richards was the first woman who entered.
[145] The Harvard Annex, so called, began its seventh year with sixty-five young ladies enrolled for study. The enrollment for the preceding six years was as follows: First year, 29: second, 47; third 40; fourth, 39; fifth, 49, sixth, 55. Some of the students come from distant places, but a majority are from the Cambridge and neighboring high-schools. The inst.i.tution occupies this year for the first time a building which has been conveniently arranged for its purposes. The endowment of the a.s.sociation which manages the work now amounts to $85,000.
[146] This lady was Lucy Downing, a sister of the first governor of Ma.s.sachusetts. She was the wife of Emanuel Downing, a lawyer of the Inner Temple, a friend of Governor Winthrop and afterward a man of mark in the infant colony. In a letter to her brother, Lucy Downing expresses the desire of herself and husband to come to New England with their children, but laments that if they do come her son George cannot complete his studies. She says: ”You have yet noe societies nor means of that kind for the education of youths in learning. It would make me goe far nimbler to New England, if G.o.d should call me to it, than otherwise I should, and I believe a colledge would put noe small life into the plantation.” This letter was written early in 1636, and in October of the same year the General Court of the Ma.s.sachusetts colony agreed to give 400 towards establis.h.i.+ng a school or college in Newtowne (two years later called Cambridge). Soon afterwards Rev. John Harvard died and left one-half of his estate to this ”infant seminary,” and in 1638 it was ordered by the General Court that the ”Colledge to be built at Cambridge shall be called Harvard Colledge.”
Early in 1638 Lucy Downing and her husband arrived in New England, and the name of George Downing stands second on the list of the first cla.s.s of Harvard graduates in 1642. The Downings had other sons who do not seem to have been educated at Harvard, and daughters who were put out to service. The son for whom so much was done by his mother, was afterwards known as Sir George Downing, and he became rich and powerful in England. Downing street in London is named for him. In after life he forgot his duty to his mother, who so naturally looked to him for support; and her last letter written from England after her husband died, when she was old and feeble, tells a sad story of her son's avarice and meanness, and leaves the painful impression that she suffered in her old age for the necessaries of life.
It is hard to estimate how much influence the earnest longing of this one woman for the better education of her son, had in the founding of this earliest college in Ma.s.sachusetts. But for her thinking and speaking at the right time the enterprise might have been delayed for half a century. It is to be deplored that Lucy Downing established the unwise precedent of educating one member of the family at the expense of the rest; an example followed by too many women since her time. Harvard College itself has followed it as well, in that it has so long excluded from its privileges that portion of the human family to which Lucy Downing belonged.
Although women have never been permitted to become students of this college, or of any of the schools connected with it, yet they have always taken a great interest in its pecuniary welfare, and the University is largely indebted to the generosity of women for its endowment and support. From the records of Harvard College, it appears that funds have been contributed by 167 women, which amount, in the aggregate, to $325,000. Out of these funds a proportion of the university scholars.h.i.+ps were founded, and at least one of its professors' chairs. In its Divinity school alone five of the ten scholars.h.i.+ps bear the names of women. Caroline A.