[Letter to] Dear Anne
Contributors: Weston, Anne Warren, 1812-1890, recipient
Series: Deborah Weston Correspondence (1830-1879)
Published: 1840
Place of publication: New Bedford, [Mass.]
Language: eng
Format: [manuscript]
Subjects: Correspondence; Women abolitionists; Benevolent Society (New Bedford, Mass.); Antislavery movements; History
Notes: Holograph, signed with initials.

Deborah Weston begins the letter by informing Anne Warrren Weston that "yesterday afternoon I went petitioning as usual." She tells of a prediction that "violence and bloodshed must be the end of it [slavery]." Old Mrs. Rodman refused to sign a petition, saying that she would never petition "such a set of men as there are in Congress..." The newly organized Benevolent Society requested the local ministers to read the notice of a meeting. Deborah quotes a conversation between John F. Emerson and a local minister who didn't want to read the notice of a meeting. Mrs. Emerson told Deborah about her trouble with her churches. She describes John Briggs, deacon of Mrs. Emerson's church, as a "grand inquistor general." Deborah went to the meeting of the Benevolent Society and signed the constitution. The Society is Morrison's "thunder." Ephraim Peabody addressed the Society. Mr. Morrison told Deborah that Dr. Channing was "surprised that Mrs. Follen dwelt so much upon the outward, the wreck and the fire and the cotton bales..."