# Representative women of New England/Lucy Stone

​ LUCY STONE was born August 13, 1818, on a rocky farm on Coy's Hill, about three miles from West Brookfield, Mass. She was the daughter of Francis Stone and his wife, Hannah Matthews, and was the eighth of nine children. She came of good New England stock. Her great-grandfather, Francis Stone, first, fought in the French and Indian War. Her grandfather, Francis Stone, second, was an officer in the war of the Revolution and afterward Captain of four hundred men in Shays's Rebellion. Her father, the third Francis Stone, was a man of uncommon force and ability, as well as of much natural wit and brightness. He had been a successful teacher and afterward an exceptionally skilful tanner in North Brookfield. But the moral surroundings of the tan-yard were so bad for the children that his wife, a beautiful, pious, and submissive woman, rose in rebellion against them, and insisted that, for the children's sake, the family must move away. Her husband yielded to her appeal. He moved to Coy's Hill, and took up farming with his usual energy. It is said that, as he called the cows in the early morning, his fine, sonorous voice used to be heard by the other farmers for a mile around, and .served as a sort 'of rising bell to the whole neighborhood. Mr. Stone was kind to -the poor, and was much respected in the community; but he was fully imbued with the idea of the right of husbands to rule over their wives, as were most men of his gen(>ration. His wife obeyed him implicitly, as a religious duty. Lucy was born about a year after her mother had made, in behalf of her children, almost the only determined stand in all her gentle life; and it has been suggested that this fact, through heredity, may have had something to do with Lucy's remarkable character. Every one on the farm worked. The mother milked eight cows the night before Lucy was born, a sudden thunder-shower having called all the men into the hay-field. She said regretfully, when informed of the sex of the new baby, "Oh, dear! I am sorry it is a girl. A woman's life is so hard!"
Little Lucy grew up a healthy, vigorous child, noted for fearlessness and truthfulness, a good scholar, and a hard worker in the house and on the farm, sometimes driving the cows by starlight, before the sun was up, when the dew on the grass was so cold that she would stop on a flat stone and curl one small bare foot i) against the other leg to warm it. There was no task about the house or farm so hard but she would grapple with it with cheerful resolution, if it needed to be done.
In the same resolute way she set herself to subtlue the faults of her own character. She had a fiery temper. One day when she was about twelve years old her younger sister Sarah had angered her, and Lucy chased her through the house to inflict condign punishment. Hajjpening to catch sight of her own face in a looking-glass, she was .shocked by its whiteness and wrath. She said to herself, "That is the face of a murderer!" She went out and sat on a rock behind the barn, holding one bare foot in her hand and rocking to and fro, thinking what she could do to get the better of such a temper. She sat there till it was after dark, and her mother came to the door and called her in. From that time on she made a determined fight for self-control, and in her later life the serene gentleness of her face and of her whole aspect made it hard for people to realize that she had ever had such a temper. The little girl early became indignant at the way she saw her mother aad other women treated by their husbands and by the laws, and she made up her childish mind that those laws must be changed. Reading the Bible one day, while still a child, she came upon the text, "Thy tlesire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." At first she wanted to die. Then she resolved to go to college, study Greek and Hebrew, read the Bible in the original, ami satisfy herself whether such texts were correctly translated.
Her father saw nothing strange about it when his sons decided to go to college, but, when his daughter wanted to go, he said to his wife, "Is the child crazy?" He would not help her. The young girl had to earn the money herself. She picked berries and chestnuts, and sold them to buy hooks. For years she taught district schools, studying and teaching alternately. At first she was paid a dollar a week, and "boarded around." She soon be​came known as a successful teacher, and gradually received a higher salary, but could never rise above sixteen dollars per month, which was considered "very good pay for a woman." Once she was engaged to teach a winter school which had been broken up, the big boys throw-ing the master head foremost out of the window into a deep snowdrift. As a rule, women were not thought competent to teach the winter term of school, because then the big boys were released from farm work and were able to attend. In a few days she had this difficult school in perfect order, and the big boys who had made the trouble became her most devoted lieutenants; yet she received only a fraction of the salary paid to her unsuccessful predecessor.
She studied for a time at the Monson, Quaboag, and Wilbraham Academies. Generally, she and her sister Sarah did not board at the academy, but for economy's sake took a room and cooked their own food, bringing most of their provisions from home.
An old schoolmate recalls the fact that she was already deeply interested in the abolition movement, and her compositions were always about slavery. About 1838 Lucy went to Mount Holyoke Seminary. Years before she had heard Mary Lyon make an appeal for funds for this effort in behalf of higher education for women. The sewing-circle with which Lucy was connected was at that time working to pay the expenses of a young man preparing for the ministry, and Lucy was making a shirt. She was much stirred by Mary Lyon's presentation of the need of better educational opportunities for women, and by the thought of how much easier it was for any young man to earn his education than for a young woman to do so at a woman's low pay: and she ceased sewing upon that shirt, and felt in her heart the hope that no one would ever finish it. She spent less than a year at Mount Holyoke, being called home by the death of an older sister; but she always retained an affection for the institution.
Instead of the mite-boxes for foreign missions that were the fashion among the Mount Holyoke students, Lucy kept in her room one of the little yellow collection boxes of the Anti-slavery Society, which bore the picture of a kneeling slave holding up manacled hands, with the motto, "Am I not a man and a brother?" Into this she put all the pennies she could spare. She also placed William Lloyd Garrison's paper, the Liberator, in the reading-room of the seminary. For some time they could not find out who did it; but they suspected Lucy, because of her anti-slavery principles, and, when they asked her, she acknowledged it at once. Even the saintly Mary Lyon was doubtful about the wisdom of allowing it. She said to Lucy, "You must remember that the slavery question is a very grave question, and a question upon which the best people are divided."
At about the age of nineteen Lucy joined the Orthodox Congregational church in West Brookfield. Soon after, Deacon Henshaw was brought to trial before the church for having entertained anti-slavery speakers at his house and otherwise aided and abetted the abolition movement. When the first vote was taken, Lucy, who did not know that women could not vote in church meetings, held up her hand with the rest. The minister, a tall, dark man, pointed over to her, and said to the man who was counting the votes. "Don't you count her." The man said, "Why, isn't she a member?" "Yes," answered the minister, "she is a member, but not a voting member." His accent of scorn stirred her indignation. "Six votes were taken at that meeting, and I held up my hand every time," she said to her daughter, raising her hand above her head, with a flash in her eye, as she recalled the incident, while lying on her death-bed. Deacon Henshaw, Lucy, and a number of other members were later dropped from the rolls of the church for their activity in the anti-slavery cause.
On June 27, 1837, the General Association of the Orthodox Congregational Churches of Massachusetts met at Brookfield. There had been a great outcry against the anti-slavery speaking of Abby Kelley and the Grimke sisters; and a pastoral letter from the Association to the churches under its charge had been prepared, to be read at this meeting. The object of the letter was to close the churches against anti-slavery lectures, and especially ​to silence the women. It called attention to dangers now seeming "to threaten the female character with wide-spread and permanent injury." It claimed that the New Testament clearly defined "the appropriate duties and influence of women. The power of woman is in her dependence. When she assumes the place and tone of a man as a public reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary: we put ourselves in self-defence against her. She yields the power which God has given her for protection, and her character becomes unnatural." The letter especially condemned those "who encourage females to bear an obtrusive and ostentatious part in measures of reform, and countenance any of that sex who so far forget themselves as to itinerate in the character of public lecturers and teachers." This was the letter which Whittier called the "Brookfield Bull," and of which he wrote:—
"So this is all—the utmost reach Of priestly power the mind to fetter! When laymen think, when women preach,— A war of words—a 'Pastoral Letter'!"
Lucy went to the meeting. The body of the church was black with ministers, and the gallery was tilled with women and laymen. While the famous letter was being read, the Rev. Dr. Blagden marched up and down the aisle, turning his head from side to side and looking at the women in the gallery, as much as to say, "Now we have silenced you." Lucy listened in great indignation, and at each aggravating sentence she nudged her cousin, who said afterward that her side was black and blue. At the close of the meeting she told her cousin that, if she ever had anything to say in public, she would say it, and all the more because of that pastoral letter.
At the low wages received by women teachers it took Lucy until she was twenty-five to earn the money to carry her to Oberlin, then the only college in the country that admitted women and colored men. Among most New Englanders Oberlin was unpopular, partly because of its radicalism on the negro question and the woman question, but chiefly because the authorities of the college believed in the doctrine of "entire sanctification." It was regarded as a highly heretical place, and the feeling against it was strong. Deacon White, of West Brookfield, took the Oberlin Evangelist, but his wife would not touch the paper, and used to hand it to him with the tongs. Here or nowhere, however, Lucy had to get her collegiate education.
​Oberlin was a station on the "underground railway," a town of strong anti-slavery sympathies, and many fugitive slaves settled there. A school was started to teach them to read, and Lucy was asked to take charge of it. The colored men, fresh from slavery and densely ignorant, still felt it beneath their dignity to be taught by a woman. Without letting her know this, the committee took her to the school and introduced her to them as their teacher, thinking they would not like to express their objections in her presence. But there was a murmur of dissatisfaction, and presently a tall man, very black, stood up and said he had nothing against Miss Stone personally, but he was free to confess that he did not like the idea of being taught by a woman. She persuaded them that it would be for their advantage to learn from anybody who could teach them to read; and her dusky pupils soon became much attached to her. When the Ladies' Boarding Hall took fire, during her temporary absence, many members of her colored class rushed to the fire, bent on saving her effects. She was told on her return that a whole string of colored men had arrived upon the scene one after another, each demanding breathlessly, "Where is Miss Stone's trunk?"
Her first public speech was made during her college course. The colored people got up a celebration of the anniversary of West Indian emancipation, and invited her to be one of the speakers. The president of the college and some of the professors were also invited. She gave her address among the rest, and thought nothing of it. The next day she was summoned before the Ladies' Board (a sort of advisory board, composed of the professors' wives, who supervised the young women of the college). They represented to her that it was unwomanly and unscriptural for her to speak in public. The president's wife said: "Did you not feel yourself very much out of place up there on the platform among all those men? Were you not embarrassed and frightened?" "Why, no, Mrs. Mahan," she answered. "'Those men' were President Mahan and my professors, whom I meet every day in the class-room. I was not afraid of them at all!" She was allowed to go, with an admonition. She was repeatedly called before the Ladies' Board to answer for some departure from custom, but she always defended herself with modesty and firmness, and she generally came off victorious.
She was always ready to lend a helping hand to any fellow-student who needed it. She darned the young men's stockings, mended their clothes, and gave them sisterly sympathy and good counsel. Old men still living speak with gratitude of her defending them from ridicule and taking them comfortingly under her wing when they were uncouth country boys, new to the college and its ways. Many yellow old letters from her classmates, both men and women, testify to the deep impression her character made upon them, and the respect and warm affection that she inspired.
She was small and slender, with gray eyes, a lovely rosy complexion, and dark brown hair. Her fine health made her always look younger than her age. When between thirty and forty, she was sometimes taken for a girl of eighteen.
While Lucy was at Oberlin, a beautiful and gifted girl, named Antoinette Brown, entered the college, with the purpose, up to that time unprecedented for a woman, of studying theology and becoming a minister. In the stage-coach on her way to Oberlin she was cautioned against a singular and dangerous young woman named Lucy Stone, whose radical ideas were the talk of the college. In spite of this warning, Antoinette and Lucy contracted a friendship which was cemented in later life by their marrying brothers. These two girls and a few of the others wished to practise themselves in discussion, and asked leave to speak in the college debates. These debates were a regular part of the course, and the young women were required to attend them, in order to furnish an audience for the young men, but were not allowed themselves to take part. After a good deal of hesitation, permission was given for the girls to have one debate. They acquitted themselves finely; but the faculty felt that any public speaking by women was unscriptural and improper, and they refused to let it be continued. The young women then determined to have a debating society of their ​own. There lived in the village an old colored woman whose master had manumitted her and given her money enough to buy a small house. Lucy had taught her to read. The girls asked her if they might have the vise of her parlor occasionally for a debating society. At first she was doubtful, fearing that the society might be a cover for flirtation: but, hen she found it was to consist of young women exclusively, she thought it must be an innocent affair, and gave her consent. So on the appointed afternoons the girls would assemble, coming by different routes and in ones and twos at a time, that the faculty might suspect nothing; and then, shut up in the little parlor, they "reasoned high" on all sorts of profound and lofty subjects. Sometimes they held their meetings in the woods. This was the first debating society ever formed among girls. Later Antoinette Brown became the first ordained woman minister. At the end of her course Lucy was appointed to write an essay to be read at the commencement, but was notified that one of the professors would have to read it for her, as it would not be proper for a woman to read her own essay in public. Rather than not read it herself, she declined to write it. Nearly forty years afterward, when Uberlin celebrated its semi-centennial, she was invited, to be one of the speakers at that great gathering. So the world moves.
Lucy had an enthusiastic admiration and respect for the leading abolitionists, and helped to get up meetings for Abby Kelley, William Lloyd Garrison, and others, when they lectured at Oberlin. Mr. Garrison wrote from Oberlin to his wife, August 28, 1847: "Among others with whom I have become acquainted is Miss Lucy Stone, who has just graduated, and yesterday left for her home in Brookfield, Mass. She is a very superior young woman, and has a soul as free as the air, and is preparing to go forth as a lecturer, particularly in vindication of the rights of women. Her course here has been very firm and independent, and she has caused no small uneasiness to the spirit of sectarianism in the institution." Yet, in spite of all the uneasiness her progressive ideas caused them, she was a favorite with both faculty and students. As one of the professors said to her years after, " You know we always liked you, Lucy."
Lucy Stone was the first woman in Massachusetts to take a college degree. She gave her first woman's rights lecture the same year, in the pulpit of her brothers church at Gardner, Mass. Soon after, she was engaged to lecture regularly for the Anti-slavery Society. Public sentiment in New England at that time was intensely pro-slavery, and the idea of equal rights for women was even more unpopular than that of freedom for the slaves. Lucy shared the hard campaign experiences of all the other early apostles. Once she went to lecture at Hinsdale, away up among the hills. Samuel May, the agent of the Anti-slavery Society, who made the arrangements for her meetings, had written to the Unitarian minister, asking him to give notice of the lecture. When Lucy got there, she found that he was strongly opposed. He had not given the notice, and would not give it. So Lucy put up her own posters, as she often had to do, with a little package of tacks and a stone picked up from the street. Then she went from house to house, telling everybody about the meeting and asking them to come. She worked all day without food, not having time to stop to eat; and then, toward evening, toiled up the long hill to the tavern. The tavern-keeper's wife was tired and overworked, with two or three little children clinging to her skirts. Lucy said to her: "I must have some supper before my lecture. Get me whatever you can get most easily, for I am hungry enough to eat anything; and I will take care of the children for you meanwhile." The children were delighted to come to her, and she told them stories all the while that supper was preparing. The tavern-keeper's wife chopped up meat and potatoes, and made hash; but in her hurry she forgot to take out of the chopping-bowl the dish-cloth with which she had wiped it, and she chopped up the cloth with the hash. At the first mouthful that Lucy took, she found pieces of the dish-towef in it. This took away her appetite, and she could not eat any more; so she went to her lecture fasting. "The boys threw paper wads at first," she said, "but it was a good meeting, and I got some subscribers for the ​ Anti-slavery Standard there, who kept on taking it as long as it was published."
The next day she went on to tlie next little town, Dalton, and here again she had to jnit up her own posters. As she was preparing to post some of them on the bridge, she was fol- lowed by a lot of boys, who thought it a great "lark." They regarded it as a most irnprojier thing for a woman to be lecturing and putting up hand-bills; and, like the Unitarian minister at Hinsdale, they were filled with the bitter opposition to the abolition of slavery which then pervaded almost the whole of New Eng- land. So the boys came after her, intending to tear her posters down. But she turned around and told them what slavery was — mak- ing men work without paying them for it, and selling boys like them on the auction block — till she got them all on her side, and they vt her posters alone. The meeting that night was in a dirty and disagreeable town hall, with a great yawning fireplace, paper strewn about the floor, boys throwing wads, and men swear- ing. Rows of jeering faces confronted her when the meeting began; but, as usual, aftei' she hail spoken a few moments, she saw the mockery die out of them and attention take its place. The history of these two days may serve as a sample of the work she did for years. Once a hymn-book was thrown at her head with stunning force. Once in winter a pane of glass was removed from the window behind her, a hose was put througli, and she was suddenly deluged with ice-cold water while speaking. She put on her shawl, and continued her lect- ure. Pepper was burned, and recourse was had to all sorts of devices in order to break up the meetings, but generally without success. The work had also its pleasant side. There was cordial hospitality in anti-slavery homes, where all the children loved and welcometl her; and there was rich and inspiring comnuuiion with her fellow-reformers, the noblest spirits of that stormy time. When she visiter! the old home farm, in the intervals between her lecturing tri])s, it was always a day of rejoicing for her brother's children, who found "Aunt Lucy" the most delightful of playmates. She thoroughly enjoyed her work, ilespite its hard- ships. Looking back ujjon it in after years, she said, " I never minded those hard old tunes a bit."
She mixed a great deal of woman's righlswith her anti-slavery lectures. One night, after her heart had been jxarticularly stirred on the woman tjuestion, she put into her lecture so much of woman's rights and so little of abo- lition that the Rev. Samuel May felt obliged to tell her, in the most friendly way, that on the anti-slavery platform this would not do. She answered: "I know it, but I could not help it. I was a woman before I was an abolition- ist, and I mufit speak for the women." She resigned her ])osition as lecturer for the Anti- slavery Society, intentling to devote herself wholly to woman's rights. They were very unwilling to give her up, however, as she had been one of their most efTective speakers; and it was finally arranged that she should speak for them Saturday evenings and Sundays — times which were regarded as too sacred for any church or hall to be opened for a woman's rights meeting — and during the rest of the week she should lecture for woman's rights on her own responsibility.
Her adventures during the next few years would fill a volume. No suffrage association was organized until long after this time. She had no co-operation and no backing, and started out absolutely alone. So far as she knew, there were only a few persons in the whole countrj^ who had any sympathy with the idea of e(|ual rights for women.
She travelled over a large part of the United States. In most of the towns where she lectured, no woman had ever spoken in public before, and curiosity attracted immense audiences. The speaker was a great surprise to them. The general idea of a woman's rights advocate, on the part of those who had never seen one, was of a tall, gaunt, angular woman, with aggressive manners, a masculine air, and a strident voice, scolding at the men. In- stead, they found a tiny woman, with quiet, unassuming maimers, a winning presence, and the sweetest voice ever possessed by a public speaker. This voice l^ecame celebrated. It was so musical and delicious that persons who had once heard her lecture, hearing her utter ​ a few words years afterward, on a railroad car or in a stage-coach, where it was too dark to recognize faces, would at once exclaim unhesitatingly, "That is Lucy Stone!"
Old people who remember those early lect- ures say that she had a wonderful eloquence. There were no tricks of oratory, but the trans- parent sincerity, simplicity, and intense earn- estness of the speaker, adcled to a singular per- sonal magnetism and an utter forgetfulness of self, swayed those great audiences as the wind bends a field of grab's. (3ften mobs would listen to her when they howled down every other speaker. At one woman's rights meeting in New York the mob made such a clamor that it was impossible for any sj^eaker to be heard. One after another tried it, only to have his or 'her voice drowned forthwith by hoots and howls. 'illiam Henry Channing advised Lu- cretia Mott, who was presiding, to atljourn the meeting. Mrs. Mott answ ered, " W hen the hour fixed for adjournment comes, I will ad- journ the meeting, not before." At last Lucy was introduced. The mob became as quiet as a congregation of church-goers: but, as soon as the next speaker began, the howling recom- menced, and it continued to the end. At the close of the meeting, when the speakers went into the dressing-room to get their hats and cloaks, the mob surged in and surroundefl them ; and Lucy, who was brimming over with indignation, began to reproach them for their behavior. "Oh, come," they answered, "you needn't say anything : we kept still for you!"
At an anti-slavery meeting held on Cape Cod, in a grove, in the open air, a platform had been erected for the speakers, and a crowd assembletl, but a crowd so menacing in aspect and with so evitlent an intention of- violence that the speakers one by one came down from the stand and slipped quietly away, till none were left but Stephen Foster and I^ucy Stone. She said, "You had better run, Stephen: they are coming." He answered, " But who will take care of you?" At that moment the mob made a rush for the platform, and a big man sprang up on it, grasping a club. She turned to him and said without hesitation, " This gen- tleman will take care of me." He declareil that he would. He tucked her under one arm, and, holding his club with the other, marched her out through the crowd, who were roughly handling Mr. Foster and such of the other speakers as they had been able to catch. Her representations finally so prevailed upon him that he mounted her on a stump, and stood by her with his club while she addressed the mob. They were so moved by her speech that they not only desisted from further violence, but took up a collection of twenty dollars to pay Stephen Foster for his coat, which they hail torn in two from top to bottom.
When she began to lecture, she would not charge an admission fee, partly because she was anxious that as many people as possible should hear and be converted, and she feared that an admission fee might keep some away, and partly from something of the Quaker feeling that it was wrong to take pay for preaching the gospel. She economized in every way. When she stayed in Boston, she used to put up at a lodging-house on H:inover Street, where they gave her meals for twelve and a half cents and lodging for six and a quarter cents, on condi- tion of her sleeping in the garret with the daugh- ters of the house, three in a bed.
Once, when she was in great need of a new cloak, she came to Salem, Mass., where she was? to lecture, and found that the Hutchinson family of singers were to give a concert the same evening. They proposed to her to unite the entertainments and divide the proceeds. She consented, and bought a cloak with the money. She was also badly in want of other clothing. Her frienils assured her that the autliences would be just as large despite an admission fee. She tried it, and, finding that the audiences continued to be as large as the halls would hold, she continued to charge a door fee, and was no longer reduced to such straits.
She had three lectures, on "The Social and Industrial Disabilities of Women," "The Legal and Political Disabilities of Women," and "The Religious Disabilities of Women." In the early fifties she gave these three lectures at Louisville, Ky., to innnen.se auiliences, thereby clearing six hundred dollars, and was invited to stay and give another on temperance. ​ From these four lectures in St. Louis she cleared seven hundred dollars.
She headed the call for the first National Woman's Rights Convention, held in Worcester, Mass., October 23 and 24, 1850, and took a leading part in getting up the meeting. The report of this convention in the New York Tribune converted Susan B. Anthony to woman suffrage, and led John Stuart Mill's wife to write for the Westminster Rcrieir an article which was the starting-point of the equai rights movement in England. This convention was also the first that called wide public attention to the question in this coimtry, although the attention was mostly in the way of ridicule. Year after year Lucy took the laboring oar in getting up conventions and in printing and selling the woman's lights tracts at the meet- ings. She was "such a good little auctioneer," said one who remembei'ed her well.
On May 1, 1855, Lucy married Henry B. Blackwell, a yovmg hardware merchant of Cin- cinnati. His father, a sugar refiner of Bristol, England, highly respected for his integrity, had come to this country in 1S32, and in 1837 had gone out to Ohio, with the hope of event- ually introtlucing the manufacture of beet sugar and thus dealing a severe blow at slaveiy by making the slave-grown cane sugar un- profitable. Before he could carry out this plan, he died suddenly in Cincinnati, leaving his wife and large family of young chiUlren dependent on their own exertions. The mother and elder daughters opened a school. One of them studied medicine and became the first woman physician. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. The boys went into business. Henry had marked talent and energy, great eloiiuence, a kind heart, and an unparalleled gift of wit and fun. He was a woman's rights man and a strong abolitionist. In consequence of the active part he had taken in rescuing a little colored girl from slavery, a reward of ten thou- sand <1611ars had been offered for his head at a l)ublic meeting at Memphis, Tenn. In 1853 he hiid attended the Massachusetts Constitu- tional Convention at the State Hou.se in Bos- ton, when Wendell Philliixs, Theodore Parker, T. W. Higginson, and lAicy Stone s])oke in behalf of a woman suffrage petition headed b} Loui.sa Alcott's mother: and he had made up his mind at that tune to marry JiUcy if he could. Armed with a letter of introduction from Mr. (larrison, he sought her out at her home in West Brookfield, where he fomid her staiuUng on the kitchen table, whitewashing the ceiling. He had a long and arduous court- ship. Lucy had meant never to marry, but to devote herself wholly to her work. But he ])roniised to devote himself to the same work, and persuaded her that together they could do more for it than she could alone. The wedding took place at the home of the bride's parents at West Brookfield, Mass. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Thomas Went worth Higginson, who afterward left the ministry for refoim work and the army, and is now better known as Colonel Higginson.-.
On the occasion of the marriage they issued a protest against the inequalities then existing in the marriage laws. It was widely pub- lished, and helped to get the laws amended. Mr. Higginson sent it to the Worcester S])}/, with the following letter- —
" It was my privilege to celebrate May-day liy officiating at a wedding in a farm-house among the hills of West Brookfield. The bridegroom was a man of tried worth, a leader in the Western anti-slavery movement; and the bride is (^ne whose fair name is known throughout the nation, one whose rare intel- lectial qualities are excelled l)y the private beauty of her heart and lif(
"I never perform the marriage ceremony without a renewed sense of the iniquity of our present system of laws in respect to marriage — a system by which 'man and wife are one, and that one is the husband.' It was with my hearty concurrence, therefore, that the follow- ing protest was read and signed, as a part of the nuptial ceremony: and I send it to you, that others may be induced to do likewi.'^e." The protest was as follows : —
"While acknowledging our nuitual affection by ]nil>licly assvuning the relation.ship of husband and wife, yet, in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it our duty to declare that this act on our ])art im]:)lies no sanction of nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage as refuse ​ to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural suiHM'iority, investing liiin with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess. We protest especially against tlie laws which give the husband: —
"1. The custody of the wife's person.
"2. The exclusive control and guardianship of their children.
"3. The sole ownership of her personal and use of her real estate, unless previously settled upon her or placed in the hand of trustees, as in the case of minors, idiots, and lunatics.
"4. The absolute right to the product of her industry.
"5. Also against laws which give to the widower so much larger and more permanent an interest in the property of his deceased wife than they give to the widow in that of her deceased husband.
"6. Finally, against the whole system by which 'the legal existence of the wife is suspended during marriage,' so that, in most States, she neither has a legal part in the choice of her residence, nor can she make a will, nor sue or be sued in her own name, nor inhei'it property.
"We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited, except for crime; that marriage shoukl lie an ecpial and permanent partnership, and so recognized by law; that, until it is .so recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws by every means in their power.
"We believe that, where domestic difficulties arise, no aj^peal should be matle to legal tribunals under existing laws, but that all difficulties should be sulimitted to the equitable adjustment of arbitrators nmtually chosen.
"Thus, reverencing law, we enter oui protest against rules and customs which are unworthy of the name, .since they violate justice, the essence of law."
(Signed) Henry B. Bl.ckwell.
bucY Stone.
Wkst Rrookfield, M.^ss., May 1, IS55.
Lucy regarded the loss of a wife's name at marriage as a symbol of the lo.ss of her individuality. Eminent lawyers, including Ellis Gray Loring and Samuel E. Sewall, told her there was no law requiring a wife to take her husband's name, that it was only a custom and not obligatory; und the Chief Justice of the United States (Salmon P. Cha.se) gave her his unofficial opinion to the same effect. Accordingly, with her husband's full approval, .she kept her own name, and continued to be called by it during thirty-six years of faithful and affectionate married life.
The account of her later years must be con- densed into a few lines. She and her husband lectureil together in many States, took part in most of the campaigns when suffrage amend- ments were submitted to popular vote, addressed legislatures, published articles, held meet- ings far and wide, were instrumental in .se- curing many improvements in the laws of many States, and togetfier did an unrecorded and in- calculable amount of work in behalf of equal rights. A few years after her marriage, while they were living in Orange, N.J., Mrs. Stone let her goods be seized and sold for taxes. Among the things seized was the baby's cradle; and she wrote a j)rotest against taxation with- out representation, with her baby on her knee. In 1806 she helped to organize the American Equal Rights A.ssociation, which was formed to work for both negroes and women, and she was chairman of its executive committee. In 1869, with William Llojxl Garrison, George William Curtis, Colonel Higgin.son, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, .Mrs. .Mary A. I^ivermore, and others, she organized the American Woman Suffrage Association, and was chairman of its executive committee for nearly twenty years. She always cravetl, not the post of prominence, but the post of work. Most of the money with which the Woman' b -Journal was started in Boston, in 1870, was raised by her efforts. When Mrs. Livermore, who.se time was uiuler increasing demand in the lecture field, resigned the etlitorship in 1872, Mrs. Stone and her husband took cliarge of the paper, and ediletl it from that time forth. Since her deatli it has been edited by her husband and daughter. In her latter years she was nmch continetl at home by rheumatism, but worked for suffrage at her ​desk as diligently as she used to do upon the platform. To the end of her life, despite her infirmities, she did more public speaking than most younger women. Her sweet, motherly face, under its white cap, was dear to the eyes of audiences at suffrage gatherings, and it was said of her that she looked like "the grandmother of all the good children."
She was an excellent housekeeper, of the old New England type. She dried all the herbs, and put up all the fruits in their season. She prepared her own dried beef, made her own yeast, her own butter, even her own soap. She always thought the home-made soap was better than any she could buy. She was an accomplished cook, and her family were never better fed than during the occasional interregnums between servants.
All the purely womanly instincts were strong in her. Even in her old age her ideas about love were what most people would regard as romantic. She was as fond of a love story as any girl of sixteen, provided it were a simple and innocent love story. She was attracted by all children, dirty or clean, pretty or ugly. Her face always beamed at the sight of a baby; and on countless occasions on boat or train, during her lecture trips, she helped worried and anxious young mothers to care for and quiet a crying child. All children loved her. What she was to her own daughter no words can tell.
A friend writes:— "No one who was privileged to partake of Mrs. Stone's hospitality could fail to note her kindly concern for every one beneath her roof and for all the dumb creatures belonging to the household. But few knew how far-reaching was that spirit of kindliness, how many her motherliness brooded over. Flowers and fruits were sent from her garden, boxes of clothing went West, North, and South, a host of women who came to her in distress were helped to work or tided over hard places. She gave freely, and every gift was accompanied by thoughtful care and heart-warmth. She was never too busy to gladden the hearts of the children who came into her presence by gift of flower or fruit or picture, or by the telling of a story."
She took keen delight in all the beauties of nature. As a child, her favorite reward, when she had done well at school, was to be allowed by the teacher to sit on the floor, where she could look up through the window into the shimmering foliage of a grove of white birches.
She was the most perfectly fearless human being I ever knew. I have heard her say that in the mobs and manifold dangers of the anti-slavery times she was never conscious of a quickened heart-beat. In all the emergencies of a long life, in accidents, alarms of fire, of burglars, etc., we never saw her fluttered. "The gentlest and most heroic of women," was her husband's description of her. When, in 1893, her strength failed, and she found that she was suffering from an illness from which she could not recover, she was perfectly serene and fearless, and made all her preparations to go, as quietly as if she were only going into the next room. As long as she was able to think and plan at all, she thought for others, and planned for their comfort. As she lay in bed, too weak to move, she still tried to save everybody steps, to spare the servants, to see that guests should be made comfortable, and that a favorite dish should be prepared for the niece who had come to nurse her.
The beyond had no terrors for her. She said to her daughter, with her accent of simple and complete conviction: "I have not the smallest apprehension. I know the Eternal Order, and I believe in it." Something being said by a friend, who was a Spiritualist, about her possibly coming back to communicate with those she had left, she answered, "I expect to be too busy to come back." To another friend she said, "I look forward to the other side as the brighter side, and I expect to be busy for good things." To still another, who expressed grief that she should not live to see women vote, she answered: "Perhaps I shall know it where I am; and, if not, I shall be doing something better. I have not a fear, nor a dread, nor a doubt."
When a letter from the Women's Press Association was read to her, speaking warmly of her work, she said slowly: "I think I have done what I could: I certainly have tried. With one hand I made my family comfortable; with
​the other"—Here her voice failed through weakness. Undoubtedly she meant that with the other hand she had worked to get the women their rights.
To the last she went on with the same two-fold line of thought, planning for the comfort of her family and the carrying on of the household after she should be gone, and also planning for the carrying on of the suffrage work and of the Woman’s Journal "the dear little old Woman's Journal,'^ as she called the paper into which she had put so much of her heart and life.
The last letter but one that she wrote was to a prominent Colorado woman, commending Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt to her, and earnestly asking her to help the passage of the pending suffrage amendment. The last letter of all was written to her only surviving-brother, twelve years her senior. When he came to see her during her last illness, he said to her with tears, "You have always been more like a mother than a sister to me."
On October 18 she passed quietly away. On the last afternoon she looked at me and seemed to wish to say something. I put my ear to her lips. She said distinctly, "Make the world better." They were almost her last articulate words.
Always very modest in her estimate of herself, she had told her family that it would not be worth while to have the funeral in a church: there would not be enough people who would care to come. A silent and sorrowing crowd filled the street before the Church of the Disciples long before the doors were opened, and eleven hundred people listened to the tributes paid her by some of the noblest men and women of America. By her own wish there was nothing lugubrious about the funeral: every thing was cheerful and simple. By her own request, also, the service included the reading of two poems of Whittier's, containing the lines:—
"Not on a blind and aimless way
The spirit goeth,"
and
"I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care."
Even the newspapers, those that had always opposed equal rights for women, heaped praises upon her; and a lifelong adversary of hers said, "The death of no woman in America has ever called out so widespread a tribute, of affection and esteem."
She had not the smallest thirst for fame .. It has been hard to compile any adequate account of her life, because she kept no record of her work, never cared to preserve her press notices, and refused, almost with horror, all requests from publishers of books about "famous women" to furnish material for a biographical sketch of herself. She thought it hardly worth while that and account of her should ever be written. Yet this very fact, while it greatly increases the difficulties of her biographer, is perhaps in itself the strongest testimony to the spirit in which she did her work. During her last illness she took pleasure in the following lines, which she had clipped from some newspaper: —
"Up and away like the dew of the morning
That soars from the earth to its liome in the sun,
So let me steal away, gently and lovingly,
Only remembered by what I have done.
"My name and my place and my tomb all forgotten,
The brief race of time well and patiently run,
So let me pass away, peacefully, silently,
Only remembered by what T have done.
"Needs there the praise of the love- written record.
The name and the epitaph graved on the stone?
The things We have lived for, let them be our story;
We ourselves but remembered by what we have done."'
Alice Stone Blackwell.