BLACKWELL FAMILY
ALICE STONE BLACKWELL

SUBJECT FILE

Biographical PapersA.S.B.  Excerpt from diary:

March 1906.  I met Mr. E.H. Clement outside
the Transcript office, and told him how
grateful we were for all he did for suffrage,
and he said, "How grateful we are to you!
When you tackle anybody, something gives
way; you wipe the floor with him."In a letter dated Washington, D.C. Mar 3, 1895
A.S.B. write: "In the evening Mr. Spofford
proposed music....He spoke quite enthusiastically
of your singing (H.B.B's). Said
he could hear your voice still, ringing through
the room of the Literary Club at Cincinnati.
He said your singing of "The Old Field
Marshall" was fine."

Literary Club. Ninth Anniversary Oct. 29, 1858
-N.E. Soule write concerning the celebration;
"I am much obliged to you for your contributions
to the club paper. I am glad that you and your
brother do not find so many miles divide you
altogether from your old friends. He should
have been delighted to have had you both
at the celebration last Friday evening. We had
a good time. the meeting was in own room.
The supper was satisfactory and the paper
was well received. The music was better



than it often is, and the good fellowship and
kind feeling such as have always prevailed
with us. But I know that more than one
missed your faces, and would have rejoiced
to hear again the tramp of the "Old Field 
Marshall." Will he never come to muster
again?"
N. E. Brooks

    Alice Stone Blackwell was born September 14, 1857
at East Orange New Jersey, daughter of Henry B. Blackwell
and Lucy Stone.  She was reared in an atmosphere of progress.
Her aunt Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman in
modern times to take a medical degree.  Her aunt by marriage
Rev. Dr. Antoinette Brown Blackwell was the first woman in
the world to be ordained as a minister.  Her father had a reward
of $10,000 offered for his head at a great public meeting
in the South, because of his active part in the rescue of a
young slave girl.  Her mother, Lucy Stone, was called the morning
star of the woman's rights movement.  Susan B. Anthony, Julia
Ward Howe, and Frances E. Willard, all declared themselves her
converts.
    Alice took her A.B. at Boston University C.L.A. in 1881
and later received the Phi Beta Kappa.  She had been president of
the college literary and debating society, and an editor of
the Boston University Beacon.  Even before leaving college,
she had begun to help her parents in their work in woman
suffrage.  She prepared countless woman suffrage tracts and
wrote or editted most of the controversial literature of the 
movement.  She was an editor of the Woman's Journal from 1883 to
1917, first as assistant to her parents and after their death,
as Editor in Chief.  In 1917 the Woman's Journal was consolidated 
with two other papers to form the Woman Citizen, and she
continued as contributing editor.
    Chiefly through her efforts, the National and the2

American Woman Suffrage Associations, which had long worked
separately, were induced to come together as the National 
American Woman Suffrage Association, and she was secretary
of the united society for almost twenty years.  She was
president of the New England and the Massachusetts Woman
Suffrage Associations.  She always made the address of
rebuttal at legislative and congressional hearings upon
the question.  She is Honorary President of the Massachusetts
league of Women Voters, an Honorary Trustee of Boston
University, Vice President of the Boston Evening Clinic and
Hospital, and was President of the Massachusetts branch of
the American Association of University Women, then called the
Association of Collegiate Alumnae.  She had been Secretary of 
the first society of Friends of Armenia, and a member of the
first society of American Friends of Russian Freedom, and of
a league for the freedom of India.  She was a Presidential 
Elector for La Follette in 1924.
    She found recreation in putting foreign poetry in to
English verse.  Her works include: "Armenian Poems", "Songs
of Russia", "Songs of grief and gladness" (from the Yiddish),
"An Hungarian Poet; a study of Alexander Petofi", and "Some
Spanish American Poets.:  Her biographical works are:
"The Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution; life and
letters of Catherine Breshkovsky", and "Lucy Stone, Pioneer of
Woman's Rights."
    She was awarded the Ford Hall Forum medal for "service to
humanity", the Order of Melusine by Prince Guy de Lusignan for
her services to the Armenians, and the Jewish Rose by the
Jewish Advocate.  She is a Socialist in principle though not a 
[party] member.  She has written many letters to the press on the


3

unpopular side of various controverted questions.  She says
that in old age it adds much to the interest of life to
have a whole stableful of hobbies.Mrs. Maud Wood Park, Chairman
Mrs. Edna Lamprey Stantial,
    Secretary-Treasurer
Judge Florence E. Allen
Mrs. J. Borden Harriman
Mrs. Lewis Jerome Johnson
Miss Katharine Ludington

THE WOMAN'S JOURNAL
FUND COMMITTEE
21 ASHMONT ST., MELROSE 76, MASS.

MRS. MALCOLM McBRIDE
MRS. JAMES PAIGE
MISS MARY GRAY PECK
MISS FRANCE PERKINS
MRS. GIFFORD PINCHOT
MRS. F. LOUIS SLADE
MRS. HALSEY W. WILSON

September 10, 1957

Dear friends:
                      The enclosed article on our beloved Alice
Stone Blackwell is sent to you in the hope that it may
receive recognition in your publication on or after her
one hundred birthday anniversary on September 14th.
                                    Sincerely yours,
                                     Edna Lamprey Stantial
                                                Trustee
                                      Alice Stone Blackwell Committee

I would appreciate a copy of any script used
for our record. The Blackwell Family papers
are to be deposited in the Library of Congress
during this anniversary year 1957


Released Friday, September 13, 1957
From Edna Lamprey Stantial, Trustee
Alice Stone Blackwell Memorial Committee
Melrose, Mass.

ONE HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY ANNIVERSARY OF ALICE STONE BLACKWELL.
     September 14th marks the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of
Alice Stone Blackwell, champion of woman's rights and defender of minority
movements. The daughter of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, leading
figures in the anti-slavery and woman's rights movements, she was born into
a progressive atmosphere, and never throughout her lifetime did she
relinquish her passionate devotion to the cause of humanity.
     The first forty years of her mature life were given the cause of 
equal suffrage. With her parents she stumped from one end of the country
to the other