Advocate for women’s education

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The information I could find on William Graham Brooke (without paying for access to articles) indicates that he was an advocate for education, particularly for education and university access for girls and women. A barrister, he worked on the reorganization of Anglican education for the Lord Chancellor’s office.

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Henry Rogers Selden

Henry Rogers Selden was a lawyer, judge and politician, serving in such positions as Lieutenant Governor of New York. But the reason I photographed his grave marker is that Selden defended Susan B. Anthony in 1873. Anthony and a number of her fellow suffragists decided to test the constitutionality of denying women the right to vote, and Anthony presented her research and arguments to Selden. He found them compelling and told her that he thought she had a right to vote. She voted in the national election of 1872 and was arrested for illegal voting. Selden defended her during the case pro bono, and was extremely disappointed at her conviction.

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Helen Pitts Douglass

Helen Pitts Douglass was the 2nd wife of Frederick Douglass. Douglass’ first wife, Anna Murray, died in 1882 after over 40 years of marriage. Helen Pitts, an advocate for women’s rights and a graduate of Mount Holyoke Seminary, met Douglass when he hired her as a clerk. After his first wife’s death, he married the white woman who was 20 years his junior, their interracial marriage exposing tensions with long time friends and colleagues. After Frederick Douglass’ death in 1895, his widow dedicated herself to the creation of the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association.

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Today I am thankful for women’s education…

For a little more than five years of my life, I supported myself, something I could not have achieved without the education I was able to receive. The past sometimes seems so distant that it is hard to remember that, had I been born just a century earlier in the same place, my sex might have prevented me from receiving any more than a rudimentary education. It is exceedingly unlikely that I would have been able to obtain a college education, let alone a master’s degree.

I stand on the shoulders of educators like Helen Peabody, Emily Jessup, and Caroline D. White, women who not only fought for their own right to be educated, but then taught the next generation after them. They lived in a time when women’s very capacity for learning was questioned. They inhabited a society that accused educated women of neglecting their natural destiny and damaging the reproductive systems merely by learning.

these women made what were probably in some case hard choices, choices that aligned them to their academic institution more closely that most women are today.  They paved the way for myself and countless other women. This post is but a small token of my gratitude.

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Emily Jessup

In Oxford Cemetery in Oxford, Ohio, you can find this monument to Professor Emily Jessup. The light is a little unusual in the photograph, so below I have typed for you the information on the tombstone:

Emily, daughter of William and Nancy O’Dell Jessup,
Born Wilton, Conn., Sept 3, 1824,
Died Oxford, Ohio, Sept 25, 1893.
Pupil, Teacher, Associate Principal, Mount Holyoke Seminary, 1843-1862
Teacher, Western Female Seminary, 1862-1893

Mount Holyoke Seminary, Jessup’s alma mater, exists today as the women’s institution Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Mary Lyon founded Mount Holyoke in 1837 to provide access to higher education for young women, against whom the doors of universities were generally closed. The seminary was the first college for women in the United States, and provided inspiration and practical guidance for other women’s colleges to follow. Mount Holyoke counts itself the first of the Seven Sisters: Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, and Radcliffe colleges; all institutions for the education of women.

According to Mount Holyoke’s records, Emily Jessup graduated with the class of 1847 and then taught at the institution for approximately fifteen more years. She, like many of her colleagues, then took that experience to Western Female Seminary, another women’s college.  Considering she graduated a year ahead of Helen Peabody (the first principal of Western Female Seminary) and then would have been her teaching colleague for about four years, it seems reasonable to assume that Peabody had a hand in convincing Jessup to move westward. We know what Professor Jessup looked like thanks to archival photographs on the web.  Despite health issues that necessitated the use of a wheelchair, Jessup instructed for 30 years at Western Female Seminary, until her death in 1893.

As we leave Emily Jessup today, I want you to look one more time at her tombstone, and reflect on the uniqueness and daring of her life.  In an era where women’s rights were severely circumscribed and American society prescribed a very rigid role for women of Jessup’s race and class, she defined herself by educational and professional accomplishments.

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The Anthonys of Rochester

As part of yet another roadtrip summer course on American Women’s History that looped through the New England and Mid-Atlantic states, we traveled to Susan B. Anthony’s home and gravesite in Rochester, New York.

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) was one of the most famous and influential 19th century women’s rights activists. Although she is most famous for her advocacy for women’s suffrage, Anthony was also involved in the abolition, temperance, labor, and education reform movements as well. Her family moved to Rochester, New York, when she was a young women, and she lived in the family home until her death. Her sister Mary Anthony, also an activist, remained in the house until her death in 1907.

The Anthony family plot is in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester. Although Susan B. Anthony is the most famous resident, her entire family was active in the progressive movements of the 19th century.

Lucy Read Anthony and Daniel Anthony attended a women’s rights convention in 1848 in Rochester, just weeks after the Seneca Falls Convention. Daniel Anthony was active in the temperance and abolitionist movements. All four of the Anthony sisters (Susan, Guelma, Hannah, and Mary) voted in 1872. Susan B. Anthony, as the leader, was arrested, convicted and fined for illegal voting. Mary Anthony, most of all, was an activist in her own right and instrumental to Susan’s ability to devote herself so entirely to her activism.

Although the world remembers Susan B. Anthony, her grave appropriately sits within the family fold, surrounded by those who loved and supported her so that she could become the activist she so desired to be.

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