About seven years ago, I read Joelle Million’s Woman’s Voice, Woman’s Place, a scholarly biography of Lucy Stone, for a Book Club discussion, so I was excited to hear that the author would be speaking at West Brookfield’s Merriam-Gilbert Library this evening. At 6:30, some two dozen of us crowded into the small upstairs meeting room, and Ms Million began her talk.
Partly due to the slow seep of academic trends into popular culture over the past half-century or so, by which I mean the increased interest in women’s stories and local history, Lucy Stone is now a household name in our part of the world: we know she was a trail-blazing public speaker and writer who advocated for both abolition and women’s suffrage. However, we don’t often link her life’s work to her upbringing, to her family and village environment. Some twenty years ago, Ms Million became interested in what influenced Lucy Stone’s choice to defy custom and live as an independent woman, and to this end, she immersed herself in the details of Lucy’s childhood and early adult life.
In 1818, Lucy Stone was born in a farmhouse on Coy’s Hill, West Brookfield; she lived there until she married in the farmhouse front parlor in 1855. The house remained in the Stone family until 1936; it was destroyed by fire in 1950. The Stone family was close-knit: Lucy lived with her parents, her six siblings, and her Aunt Sally, who when her husband left her could not manage on her own. She was a spunky and adventurous child; we know she played at the Rock House, a prominent geologic formation about a mile from the farmhouse, which is now preserved as part of the Rock House Reservation. She found comfort and solace in nature, and we know she eventually brought both her fiancé and her daughter to visit the Rock House.
Lucy had a happy childhood and respected her father, but she also noticed and could not ignore the legal and civil restrictions placed on women. In the case of the aforementioned aunt, Lucy realized that the dissolution of her aunt’s marriage meant that she lost security and status and that even though she was an adult, she was as dependent as a child on any family that would take her in. Lucy also understood that although her mother was a talented cheesemaker, she had no control over household finances and was not entitled to any compensation for her labor. In Lucy’s immediate family, all the children went to primary school, but only the brothers could have hoped to continue their education by attending college; higher education was not intended for women.
However, Lucy was bright, capable, and hardworking. In fact, she substitute-taught classes for her brother in 1835-36 and was quite upset when she did not receive equal pay. Two other events during this time period also influenced her life’s direction. In 1836, Mary Lyon visited the local sewing circle, and Lucy was inspired by her as a single woman and an educator of women. The following year, the state convention of Congregational Church ministers met in the North Brookfield Congregational Church (right here in my hometown) and passed a resolution condemning public speaking by women. Sitting in the upper gallery, Lucy was incensed and resolved not to be silenced by anyone; like William Lloyd Garrison and the Grimké sisters, she would speak whenever she had something to say, no matter who was in the audience.
About a year and a half after Mary Lyon opened the Mt Holyoke Female Seminary, which was not a college but more like a high school, Lucy decided she wanted to continue her education. However, she only stayed for one term at Mt Holyoke, from March to July of 1839; for one thing, she disagreed with Mary Lyon’s philosophy, which was that women should be educated in order to better help men. Instead, Lucy enrolled in the more liberal Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, which was co-educational, then a year later, she attended Monson Academy, also co-educational; she and her younger sister enrolled in the Ladies Course. Then in 1841, she heard that three women had graduated from Oberlin College and resolved to matriculate there. First, she need to learn Greek and Latin; thus in 1842, she enrolled in the Classical Course at the newly founded Quaboag Seminary in Warren. When she was ready to enroll at Oberlin, she traveled by train to Ohio, passed the entrance exams, and studied and worked so hard that her health was jeopardized.
Another incident occurred during this time which demonstrated how uncompromising she had become in her defense of equal rights for women: she had joined the West Brookfield Congregational Church in 1839, but her vote in the 1843 church disciplinary hearing of Deacon Josiah Henshaw was not counted, because women were not allowed to participate in church affairs. She voted anyway! (In 1851, Lucy was excommunicated by this congregation due to her public criticism of the church’s complicity in slavery.)
At Oberlin, Lucy continued agitating for the full participation of women in public affairs and for their equal treatment in the workplace. For example, when she taught for the Ladies Course, she asked to be paid at the same rate as her male colleagues. When the school director refused, she went on strike. Her students protested, and eventually, she was hired back at the lowest rate paid to a man. At Oberlin, she discovered that women were still treated as second-class citizens; in fact, in order to participate in debates, the women had to form an off-campus club. Women were not even allowed to recite their own graduation speeches; to Lucy, this was outrageous and unacceptable.
By the time of her graduation from Oberlin in 1847, Lucy had settled on her life’s work: she would become a public speaker and agitate in support of equal rights for women. Back home in Massachusetts, she did speak publicly; she first lectured at the Evangelical Congregational Church in Gardner, where her brother was the pastor. Even at that early point in her career, her reputation was such that the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society hired her as a speaker; she worked for them for three years before returning once again to work full time for women’s suffrage. Even Lucy Stone’s marriage to Henry Blackwell was unconventional; she kept her own name, and both she and Henry agreed beforehand that it would be a marriage of equals.
Lucy Stone lived to see the end of slavery but not the constitutional amendment which guaranteed women the vote. She died in 1893 and was the first person in Massachusetts to be cremated; her ashes are kept in an urn at the Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, along with those of her husband and daughter Alice.