Blackwell Family
Lucy Stone

Subject File

Biographical Papers (Account by
Henry Blackwell)[*1*] [*Doc*]

Reminiscences of Lucy Stone
by H.B. Blackwell   [*written 1898*]

The first time I ever saw or heard 
of Lucy Stone was in or about 1849.    In 1848, 
with my brother Samuel C. Blackwell and two 
other young men, I became a partner in the 
wholesale hardware firm of Coombs, Ryland and 
Blackwells.  We bought out the stock and 
rented the store No. 18 Main St., of Christian 
Donaldson & Co.   Mr. Christian Donaldson 
was one of the small band of Cincinnati abolitionists.  
One day a young lady, accompanied by a 
friend called at the store to see Mr. Donaldson, 
in order to collect a small draft drawn on him 
by Mr. Samuel Brooks, of Cleveland, as treasurer of 
the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society.  In the absence of Mr. 
Donaldson I talked with her and was struck by her
brightness and charm of manner, and the wonderful 
melody of her voice.  She was thin and pale, of slender 
figure, evidently recovering  slowly from a severe
illness.  With her sister-in law, Mrs. Phebe Stone
widow of her brother Luther, she was staying at the
house of Mr. Guild, one of my neighbors, on Walnut 


Hills.  I promised to bring or send to her next morning 
at Mr. Guild's the amount of the draft, and 
asked my brother Sam . to carry her the money, 
advising him to cultivate her acquaintance.  It
seems that Lucy had gone out, the previous summer, 
to visit her brother Luther, who kept a country store 
at Hutsonville, llls., a town on the banks of the Wabash, noted for its malarious 
climate.  During her visit, Luther was suddenly 
carried off by cholera after a few hours illness,
leaving his business affairs in an unsettled condition. 
Lucy attended to his funeral, the sale of his 
property, and the collection of his debts.  She and 
Phebe set out together on their return, by stage, from 
Terre Haute to Cincinnati.  At Plainfield, a little 
village on the National road near Greencastle, Ind., 
Lucy was taken down with typhoid fever, became 
delirious, and was expected to die.  She was nursed 
by an old couple living in a log-cabin.  The old
lady, "Aunt Ann," was very kind and helpful.  Years 
afterward I called on them and they told me the 
doctor had despaired of her recovery.  On resumingmaking their journey, Lucy and Phebe had come as far
as Cincinnati on their way back to New England.  On 
their way to Mr. Guild's they passed the little house 
adjoining the Lane Seminary grounds (formerly the 
home of Professor Calvin Stowe & his wife Mrs. 
Harriet Beecher Stowe, and adjoining the residence 
of old Dr. Lyman Beecher, president of Lane Seminary.  
It belonged to my mother and was the home of my 
sisters Elizabeth and Emily and Ellen, Mary and 
three brothers and myself.  Lucy has since told me 
with what interest and reverence she looked at the
little house as the former home of my sister Elizabeth,
then a young physician just graduated from
 Geneva Medical College, who was the first 
woman to go through a regular course of study and 
secure a physician's diploma.
    I afterwards heard of Miss Stone through 
my sisters Marian and Ellen, who visited Boston 
in 1851, and attended the National Convention
at Worcester.  They were very pleasantly impressed by
her.  Lucy took the leading part in getting 

up the Convention and was one of the speakers, but
in the Annual Report, which she compiled and 
published in pamphlet form, her addresses, being made extempore do not appear.  This was the Convention 
which made the first powerful impression, being 
reported in the New York Tribune & attracting in 
England the attention of Mrs. John Stuart Mill, who soon
after published  an article in the Westminster Review
on the Enfranchisement of Women, inspired by the
reports of that convention.
    The second time I saw Miss Stone was,
I think, at the annual meeting of the American
Anti-Slavery Society in New York, held at the
Chinese Museum hall at Broadway near 
Broome St., in 1852, or 3.  She there made a 
thrilling and touching speech in which she depicted
a slave mother fleeing from her pursuers
with a baby on her shoulder and a bullet from
the pursuers killing the baby and scattering
its brains over the poor mother as she ran.
It was a recent occurrence that sheIt was a recent occurrence that she described,
and the story was told with such graphic language
and intensity of feeling that the audience was
melted into tears. The beautiful motherliness
which was characteristic of her fairly glowed in
her tones.
Soon after, I think in the same month,
May, 1853, my sister Ellen and I spent some 
weeks in Boston and attended the Anti-Slavery
Convention. There I became acquainted 
with many leaders of the movement -- Messrs.
Garrison, Phillips, Walcutt, Henry C. Wright, 
Parker Pillsbury, Francis Jackson, and others.  
Stephen S. and Abby Kelley Foster  I had already 
met & heard, years before, in Cincinnati, 
when they spoke night after night there in the 
old Millerite Tabernacle, in denunciation of 
Liberty Party.
I attended a hearing about the same time 
in Representatives Hall of the State House on 
Woman Suffrage, before the Constitutional 


Convention then in session. Amasa Walker was 
chairman of the Committee.  The speakers were 
Mr. Garrison, Lucy Stone, and either Wendell
Phillips or Theodore Parker.  Charles C. Burleigh
was there with his long auburn ringlets and 
hair parted in the middle which gave him 
a striking likeness to the pictures of Christ. He
was a very intimate friend of Lucy's and leaned
affectionately forward as he sat in the seat immediately 
behind her, arousing a little feeling of 
jealousy on my part as I was already captivated 
by her charming personality, moral elevation, 
and singularly sweet and winning eloquence.   
(I had been somewhat attracted previously by a
young and beautiful widow, Mrs. Nancy Clark, who
was studying medicine but soon afterwards married 
a rich and conservative man and never practiced; 
but Lucy's larger mental and moral 
and affectional nature put an end to that 
affair.)  A day or two afterwards I called 
upon Mr. Garrison at the office of the "Liberator"on Cornhill St, and asked him whether Lucy was 
thought to be engaged.  He thought not; said 
that Mr. Samuel Brooke of Cleveland O., and
several others had made advances, but that
Lucy was fully resolved never to marry and 
to devote herself exclusively, body and soul, to 
the woman's rights reform. He did not think 
that she was likely to change her mind. However, 
he kindly gave me a letter to Deacon 
Henshaw of West Brookfield, one of Lucy's 
friends and neighbors, who was the center of 
the abolitionists of that town, who would be able
to tell me whether Miss Stone was at home.  She 
lived at this time in the farm house where she
was born, with her aged parents on Coy's Hill; 
coming and going on frequent lecturing trips.
Her brother Bowman and his family lived
in the other half of the house and carried 
on the farm.  So off I started to introduce
myself to Lucy.  It was a beautiful summer
morning in June.  I walked out to Deacon


Henshaw's and found him with his men hoeing
corn in his fields. The Deacon looked at me
with a quizzical air as if he suspected my errand
told me that Lucy was absent, but was expected
home that day, and invited me to dinner.  I
had with me a volume of Emerson's Essays, so I
walked back to the South Shore of Quahog pond,
and spent several hours in reading and listening
to the rippling of the water.  After dinner I
walked up to the old farmhouse, which I reached
about 3P.M.  I found Lucy in bloomers, mounted
on a table in her mother's living room, white-washing
the ceiling. She greeted me very kindly
and her sister-in-law, Phebe widow of Luther,
whom I had seen in Cincinnati, came
in and welcomed me. Lucy soon took me
out  for a walk, and I think, went with me
to the "Rock House," a romantic mass of
granite boulders surmounted by birch trees,
rising out of the rocky pastures.  I was
charmed by Lucy's frank simplicity. Asa friend of Mr. Garrison, and a brother of Elizabeth
she received me as a friend. I forget
whether I then and there proposed to her, but I 
think I did. At any rate the purpose of 
my visit was pretty well understood. I returned
to Boston that evening quite determined to
marry her if I could. Then and there
began a correspondence and friendship which 
continued until the time of our marriage,
May 1, 1855.
Lucy told me that she had resolved
never to marry; that she thoroughly despised the 
subordinate and dependent position in which 
the law placed a wife, that she did not think
herself by heredity good enough to be the mother
of children, that she felt that she had a 
mission to secure equal rights for women,
that she was devoted to the woman's rights
cause and was happy and useful in her
work as a lecturer, etc. 
I urged that marriage need not 

hinder her work; that I would do all I could
to aid her in it, and that by uniting our lives
we could do more for the cause than she could
do alone. I invited her to lecture in the 
West and proposed to arrange a course 
of lectures there for her. This I did. During
the following two years I arranged courses
of lectures for her in Cincinnati, Louisville,
St. Louis, Madison, Indianapolis, Terre Haute,
Lafayette, Columbia, Xenia, etc. Those lectures
were wonderfully successful. The largest
halls could not contain the audiences that
flocked to hear her. From there she cleared
over and above expenses, $5000, which with characteristic
generosity, she loaned to our firm, 
on interest, and which, after our marriage, I 
repaid her in Western lands which turned out
profitably by an exchange for real estate in
Montclair, New Jersey, which so far unsold,
she bequeathed to her daughter Alice and 
myself. These lectures I arrangedby correspondence; in many cases enlisting the
aid of business connections, engaging the halls,
printing and mailing the hand bills and 
flyers, advertising in advance in the local
papers. This I did while closely engaged in 
business as the head of the sales department of
our firm, and without any complaint of neglect
of my duties from my partners.
Those years from 1847 to 1857 were the
most active, and in a large sense the most
influential of Lucy's life. No woman ever had
before or since, so wide a hearing, or has created
so profound an impression on the public mind
in the country. Many things conspired to produce
that result. The conscience of the country was 
aroused by the agitation of the slavery question.
The claim for the equal rights of women was a 
cognate question and urged by the most of the
leading Garrisonian abolitionists. Woman's 
claim was endorsed by Garrison, Phillips, the
Fosters, Emerson, Parkers, the Burleighs, and 

almost all except Edmund Quincy and James
Russell Lowell. Lucy's peculiarly graceful and 
winning manner, her profound conviction and
absolute sincerity, her pathos, wit and repartee
her slight figure, her wonderful voice, her unselfishness
and simplicity , even her bloomer dress which
seemed less obtrusive in her than in any person
who wore it—all conspired to giver her a wide 
hearing and to stir discussion and disarm
prejudice. The seed she sowed all through
the Eastern, Middle, and Western States was
so general that even now, after the lapse of 
nearly half a century, the elderly friends of 
the cause from Maine to California very
generally ascribe their conversion to some
meeting of hers which they attended during
those and subsequent years and which 
they have never forgotten.
When Lucy visited Boston in the
spring of 1848, after her return from 
Oberlin in 1847, she was almost withoutmoney and was forced to practice an economy 
which in our present day would seem almost 
impossible. During that, and subsequent 
years while in the city she boarded with a 
family named Crosby on Hanover St., paying
for her food and lodging 25 cents a day, sharing
room and bed with the daughters of the house. 
Later she became the invited guest and an 
occasional inmate of the comfortable house of
Francis Jackson, 31 Hollis St. Mr. Jackson
was one of the leading abolitionists of Boston,
a plain, strong, substantial man of few words
and excellent common sense, who had risen 
to wealth and social position by his force of
character and admirable business qualities.
Originally a poor boy, apprenticed to a soap
maker, he used to say that his sense of 
smell had been permanently impaired by
the noisome odors of the fat which he had been
obliged to collect and purify. The home as 
I remember it, was a charming one, exquisitely 

clean and neat, with a beautiful flower 
garden on the east side, which was the especial 
delight and care of young James Jackson, the
only son. But it was not without its shadows.
Mrs. Eddy, the daughter, kept house, having with
her a daughter by a former marriage with
Mr. Merriam. But she was separated from her
second husband, Mr. Eddy, who was residing in
Europe and had taken with him two young
daughters of Mrs. Eddy, greatly to her sorrow.
The intense pain of the bereavement had made the 
whole Jackson family warm advocates of woman's
rights, which manifested itself in a bequest 
made at his death by Mr. Jackson to the 
woman suffrage cause (set aside by the Courts
as not being a legal charity) and by personal 
bequests to Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony,
made by will drawn up by Wendell Phillips
for Mrs. Eddy on her death bed, many years
later, and affirmed by the Courts.
Upstairs were the rooms of Mrs. Jacksonwhom I never met, she being insane and never 
leaving her room. In this cozy home
Lucy was always welcome, and her relation
with Mr. Jackson was almost filial in its 
warm cordiality. The family made their summer
home at City Point where they had a country
house and where James had afterwards, for many
years, his garden and greenhouse. Near Mr. Jackson
in a house on Dix Place, lived Mr. and Mrs. William
Lloyd Garrison and their family. Not far off on
Exeter Place lived Theodore Parker with his graceful
wife and intelligent friend, Miss Stevenson. On
Essex St. lived Mr. and Mrs. Wendell Phillips, all
within five minutes walk of each other. In this
intellectual and reformatory circle Lucy was like
a daughter, and I was welcomed for her sake.
The Anti-Slavery office and the Liberator
were upstairs on the north side of Barnhill.
In October 1853, I met Lucy at a Woman's 
Rights Convention in Cleveland, O., which was
very largely attended. By previous arrangement 

I joined her on the cars at Sandusky. She was
with her dear friends and co-workers, James and 
Lucretia Mott of Philadelphia, on their way from
Toledo to the Convention. As I joined them about 
9 a.m. I found Lucy standing beside the old people
reading the news aloud to them from the morning paper.
The vivid interest she manifested in all that was
going on evidently delighted them. At Cleveland we
met Stephen and Abby Foster, Frances D. Gage, Hannah
M. Tracy Cutler, William Lloyd Garrison, Rev.
Antoinette L. Brown, Rev. Mr. Nevins, and others.
Mrs. Caroline M. Severance and her husband were
the principal local promoters and entertainers. Lucy
as usual, was the inspiration and working head of
the affair. There I made my first woman's 
rights speech. It was a good one, as was natural 
under the circumstances. After the afternoon
session Lucy and I walked to the edge of 
the bluff overlooking Lake Erie and watched
the sun go down and the colors on the water.
It was a beautiful scene and we both feltengaged in heart though not yet in fact.  Next
morning by appointment the night before, Stephen
Foster and I rose early and bathed in the 
Lake. The air was sharp and the water was 
cold, but we enjoyed the plunge and the waves, 
and brought back to our boarding-house an appetite 
for breakfast.  During the convention Mr. Garrison's
theological radicalism came into sharp conflict with 
Rev. Mr. Nevins' orthodox bigotry, which resulted
in Rev. Mr. N. assaulting Mr Garrison 
on the platform and pulling his nose, for which 
Mr. N. afterwards had the grace to apologize. 
Lucy however, still held back from a positive 
engagement and I think did not fully decide 
in my favor until moved there by the odium 
which I incurred soon after by a singular occurrence.
It must have been, I think, in 
the following summer of 1854 that we met at a
Convention of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, in 
Salem, Ohio. There Marcus Robinson published
a weekly paper called "The Anti-Slavery Bugle,"


which took the radical Garrisonian ground of "No
Union with Slaveholders." There resided a a considerable circle of "come-outers", among them Charles
and Josephine Griffing an English family 
named Brooks, Joseph Barker,  Edmund Quincy
from Boston, and others.  I had prepared a 
poem for the occasion which I was in the act 
of reciting and was exclaiming with much fervor.
 
"Oh the soul that's profaned by the step of a slave
Can never be Liberty's home;
She brooks not dishonor, but chooses the grave,
And Tyranny triumphs alone!"

At this juncture the meeting was electrified 
by a telegram from Pittsburg announcing
that a little slave-girl from Baltimore was on 
the cars and would pass through Salem about 
2 P.M. in charge of a young couple on their 
way to Memphis, the child having been given 
to them as a nurse-girl for their baby.  Now
the political anti-slavery men of Ohio, led 

by Salmon P. Chase, then governor & afterwards 
Senator and Chief Justice, and by Samuel Lewis, 
claimed that slavery, being the creature of State
Law, a slave became free whenever voluntarily
brought by the owner upon free soil. It was 
desired to test the slaveholder's right of transit 
in the Courts. Here was a chance to do so. The 
Convention at once adjourned to the platform to
attempt a rescue of the slave girl. When the train 
arrived, we all rushed on board the cars. It so 
happened that I was one of the party that entered
the right car, and that I chanced to be the 
first to lay hold on the little slave girl, who 
was hustled off and driven away in carriage 
which stood in readiness. The incursion was 
quite unexpected. The passengers were indignant;
the wife cried "Murder!"; the women screamed; 
the men swore; and there was a great commotion. 
It was all over in a moment. But it 
so happened that there were some Cincinnati 
passengers on the cars and I was recognized.  


One "Dick Key", a young Kentuckian, 
denounced me and we had a brief conflict of 
words upon the platform. Then the train went
on. Next morning the Cincinnati papers were 
full of the affair; it was telegraphed all over
the country, and created an extraordinary 
excitement. When I got back to the City I 
found myself notorious. Suit was commenced 
against me, but the lawyers Taft & Mallon,
anti-slavery men, were personal friends, and
fellow members of a literary club, and took the 
case, I suspect, with the intention of letting the 
matter drop. It never came to trial. But
a mass meeting was held in Memphis to denounce 
the "outrage", and a reward of $10,000 
was offered for my capture "dead or alive." 
Of course my conservative business friends,
and especially my competitors in the wholesale
hardware business, were greatly scandalized.  
I had a large number of customers in southern 
and central Indiana and Illinois, natives ofKentucky. It was supposed that my firm would lose 
them, but to their credit be it said, that while they disapproved 
of my action, they generally stood by me. 
But the notoriety and abuse which I incurred told with 
Lucy in my favor, and I think she has since said
that it was this occurrence which settled the case 
in my favor, and gave me the noblest woman and 
best wife that ever man had.  Surely I was richly 
rewarded for an unpremeditated action by nearly 
forty years of domestic happiness.  But it is a curious 
evidence of the growing irritation of feeling on the 
question of slavery, that so trivial an incident 
should have aroused such bitter feeling. For months 
afterwards, southern men would call at my store
to see me, with the avowed object of being able to 
identify me if I ever crossed the Ohio river, and 
it would have been at the risk of my life had I 
done so.
During the period of two years between my visit 
to Lucy  at her home on Coy's Hill,  West Brookfield, 
and our marriage, May 1,1855, we kept up a 


frequent correspondence and met at various times 
and places east and west.  I visited her (I think 
it must have been in the summer of 1854, at her 
sister Sarah's house in Gardner, where we walked 
on "the Doctor's hill" and took tea together in the
little side entry, on milk and popped corn, and
simple country fare.  Once we met at Niagara 
Falls by appointment and spent a happy day 
together.  I made her also another visit at
the old farm-house, where we again went to the 
Rock House and sat together on the rock above
it, and during our walk she showed me the 
granite boulder with a cleft in it where her brother 
Luther and she, as young children playing together 
thought they had found a gold mine. Lucy 
also visited our house on Walnut Hills more 
than once during her lecturing tours, in the intervals 
between lectures. On one occasion she came 
from the East with her sister Sarah and her children, 
who came to join Sarah's husband Mr. Henry Laurence,
who was teaching in the House of Refuge at [Cumminsville?].Cumminsville.  On one of these visits in 1853 or 4, after
our engagement, Lucy went with me to the rooms
of a colored daguerrotype artist named Ball, in 
Cincinnati, where I secured two excellent likenesses 
of her in a small gold locket, which in 
1894 — forty years later — I have had enlarged 
photographs made, which show her at about 
thirty-five years of age.  I remember, too, driving 
her out in a buggy to the house of Mr. and Mrs. 
Ernst  on the hills near Cumminsville, where we 
met a daughter of Nathaniel P. Rogers, who afterwards 
married Victor Smith.  (Mr. Smith was a brilliant
young newspaper man, a devoted friend of Salmon P.
Chase, who in 1861 appointed him keeper of a light-house 
on Puget Sound. He was soon afterwards 
drowned in the Pacific ocean on his way thither from 
San Francisco in a steamer which foundered at sea.)  
Soon after our marriage, in the summer of 
1855, Lucy and I visited Victor and his wife in their 
beautiful woodland  home on a hill looking down upon
the Little Miami river near Lovelands, surrounded by


the primeval forest.  Another pleasant reminiscence
of our courtship during the two years which elapsed 
between 1853 and 1855 is of meeting Lucy in Boston 
on the day that Anthony Burns was returned to 
slavery, and going with her to Nahant, where we 
sat on the rocks overlooking the sea and and heard the
firing of cannons which, I suppose, indicated his delivery
to his southern master, and the sailing of
the ship from the harbor.
During the series of lectures which I arranged
for Lucy, I made several short visits to her at 
the towns where she was giving them.  They were given
in courses, three in number; from notes spoken
extemporaneously, never twice quite alike, entitled:
1.  The  Social and Industrial Disabilities of Women.
2.  The legal and political Disabilities of Women.
3.  The religious Disabilities of Women.   
She occasionally spoke on the Temperance and 
Slavery questions, but not in the regular series.
As half of my life during those two years was 
spent in business travel through the regions whereLucy's lectures were given, so far as arranged by me—
i.e. in Indiana, Ohio, and at Louisville, Chicago 
and St. Louis.  I found no difficulty in making 
such brief meetings.  During this time she lectured 
several times in Cincinnati, sometimes alone,
sometimes in connection with Lucretia Mott, 
Lydia Jenkins, and others.

We were married in the morning of May 1, 
1855 at the old farm house on Coy's Hill, by Rev. 
(afterwards Colonel) Thomas Wentworth Higginson. I 
came on from Cincinnati direct by rail, reaching 
West Brookfield on April 28.  As soon as I came 
through Western Massachusetts I was struck by the
greater lateness of New England Spring.  Snowdrifts
were still visible in the hollows of the hills. April 29
Lucy and I drove over to North Brookfield and 
visited Mr. and Mrs. Amasa Walker; also some 
connections of Lucy's named Johnson.  It was a 
cold, rainy day with a piercing east wind, and 
we had a chilly ride coming from the milder 
climate of Southern Ohio.  None of my own 

relatives were at the wedding.  The afternoon before 
the wedding, Mr. Higginson and his wife (a sister 
of Ellery Channing) came up from Worcester.  The day 
before, while the simple preparations for the wedding 
breakfast were being made, Lucy's father 
amused me by calling me aside and asking me 
what kind of meat I should prefer, beefsteak, veal 
cutlets or mutton-chops.   
 Lucy and I had prepared for publication,
a protest against the injustice of the legal marriage
relation, which then, even more than now, subordinated
the wife to the husband.  In it we pledged ourselves in 
case of disagreement, never to appeal to these unjust
laws.  After breakfast we all assembled in the sitting-room 
on the east side of the house.  There were
 present Lucy's father and mother, her brother Bowman 
and his wife Samantha, Bowman's three children,
 Frank Edward and Phebe; Phebe, the widow of
Lucy's brother Luther,  Rev. and Mrs. Higginson,
Jane Robinson and her two daughters Emily and 
Mary, Lucy and myself.  I read the protest aloudto the assembled party as a portion of the marriage
service.  Old Mr. Stone gave Lucy and me as his
parting advice: "Never both of you get angry at
 once."  And brother Bowman assured me with 
tears in his honest eyes, that "Lucy is a worthy 
woman."
Lucy knowing my tendency to oversleep myself,
came to my chamber and called me early, as
we were to start on our journey West via New 
York City, by the morning train from West Brookfield 
immediately after the ceremony.  We drove down 
to the village.  Mr. & Mrs. Higginson returned to 
Worcester, and Lucy & I took the cars to New 
York City, where we spent the night at the house 
of my sister, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, No. 49 East 
15th St.   Mr. Osborne M Daniel called on us 
during the evening.  His wife was a sister of  Charles 
A. Dana of the New York Tribune, afterwards of the 
Sun.  Lucy had a severe headache, to which at 
that period of her life she was subject, and 
retired early.  Next day we travelled via 


Erie Railway, as far as Corning, where we spent the 
night to break the fatigue of the journey, as 
sleeping-cars had not then been invented.  
The afternoon of May 4" (my birthday) we reached 
Cincinnati and spent that, my thirtieth birthday,
 with Mother and brothers Samuel and George 
and sister Ellen, at the little home on Walnut 
Hills, corner Montgomery Road And Church St, opposite Lane Seminary campus.  When we reached
my mother's little brick house, tired and languid
from the long railway ride, and the contrast between
the cool bracing air we had left in New 
England and the warm, advanced spring weather
of Southern Ohio in May, Lucy entered with frank cordiality
into our somewhat free and easy family life like
a daughter of the house.  Mother had entertained
her as a guest several times before, as she passed
to and from Cincinnati on her lecturing engagements.
A warm affection had grown up between
them, which continued ever after unabated, until
my mother's death in 1871.  With what sweetness
and patience both women bore the unavoidableinconveniences of a small crowded house with its
imperfect accommodations!  Mother cheerfully gave
Lucy and me her largest chamber, taking for herself
the room adjoining. [*#1*]
[*#2*] During that early summer, I remember taking
part in the formation of the Republican Party of
southern Ohio.  One morning I remember walking
with my friend Spofford across the hills at an
extremely early hour to be on hand at the opening
of the polls, at the voting place on the Reading road
some two or three miles distant to prevent their being
captured by the pro-slavery "Know Nothing," or "American"
element of the "anti-Nebraska" combination.  Also a
visit to Christian Donaldson at New Richmond, O.
where Lucy and I first spoke together as husband and
wife at a Woman's Rights meeting.
[*#1*] Of our life for the next few months I recall but
little.  I was very closely occupied with business.  Mother
was kindness itself and welcomed Lucy as a daughter
Mr. A. R. Spofford and his wife Sarah Partridge,
were living near us in a small house belonging


to Epaphrus Goodman. I think their eldest child, Charlie,
was a baby christened "Neogenos" by his father.  We used
to visit them.  Lucy visited the Harwoods, Ernsts,
Colmans, Donaldsons, Jolliffes. and other abolition
friends.  Gov. Chase took tea with us one evening
and presented us with his picture, which still hangs
over Lucy's desk in our dining-room, after a lapse
of forty two years.
[*2#*] When the heat of summer came on, I started with
horse and buggy on my usual collecting tour amongst
my customers in Indiana and Illinois.  Soon after
I left occurred  the Margaret Garner incident described
in Levi Coffin's memoir.  A negro family named
Garner had fled from slavery in Kentucky. It consisted
of father, mother, and several children, one a baby.
They were hiding in Cincinnati but were discovered
and discovered and arrested by their owner.  Resolved not to be
carried back, Margaret seized a knife, killed
one of her children and was about to dispatch the
others and herself when she was disarmed and
captured.  The affair caused great excitement.The slaves were brought before the U.S. Commissioner
Pendery, a tool of the slaveholders. John Jolliffe
acted as the slaves' counsel. Lucy was present at the 
trial. She had previously visited Margaret in 
the gaol.  Col. Chambers, the owner's counsel, 
charged that Lucy had advised Margaret to
take her life rather than be carried back. The
slaves were rewarded to their owner. Lucy asked
to be heard, and when Court adjourned she addressed 
the audience which crowded the room.
She justified Margaret's heroic resolution to choose
death in preference to slavery for herself and her
children in a speech of great power and eloquence.
Her plea created the wildest enthusiasm and the
fiercest indignation, according to the sympathies 
of her auditors. The sweat poured from the face of 
the slave-owner who was fairly cowed by the 
passion and pathos of Lucy's appeal, and promised
that the slaves should not be sent "down the 
river" until Governor Chase's requisition on 
the Governor of Kentucky for the return of 

Margaret Garner to stand trial for the murder of 
her child should be made. Of course he did not
keep his promise. All was in vain. The family was 
given up, carried over [the river] to Kentucky and sent
down the river, where Margaret's baby was drowned
by falling from its mother's arms when the boat lurched,
the mother making no effort to save it. Margaret
soon afterwards died. Her husband wrote the sad
details to Lucy some time years later.

The papers were filled with sensational details
which reached me at Charleston, Ills, a settlement
of Kentuckians, most of whom were my customers.
To their credit be it said that, though they disapproved
of Lucy's course and of my anti-slavery
attitude, they were thrilled by her courage and 
heroic spirit, and none of them severed their
business relations with me. I have always regarded
Lucy's actions, she being a comparative 
stranger in an intensely pro-slavery community,
as one of the finest incidents of her life.

During that summer, or in the fall of 1855Lucy went East to visit her home and resume
her lecturing. Soon afterwards my brother Samuel
and myself sold out our interest in the hardware
firm of Coombs, Ryland and Blackwell to Mr.
Ostrom and Mr. Hatch, and I spent a part of 
the winter in traveling with Mr. Ostrom and
introducing him to my customers. In the spring
before moving East, which was Lucy's preference
as well as my own, I arranged to meet Lucy in
Chicago and go out with her to spend the summer
of 1856 in Viroqua, the county seat of Bad Axe Co. 
(now Vernon Co.) in Western Wisconsin. About all 
I had was tracts of land in Illinois and Wisconsin.
Before going East I wished to examine
in detail some 6000 acres which I
had bought some years before from the State
on 30 years credit, and which I hoped 
to be able to exchange in the East for other
property by attaching to each 40 acre tract a
written description of soil, timber, surface, etc.
Lucy met me in Chicago at the time appointed

but some unexpected business complication compelled
me to postpone our trip for several weeks.
From motives of economy we drove out to a farm
a few miles from the City, where I left Lucy
with the horse and buggy among strangers. It 
was a lonely and uncomfortable delay for her, 
which she bore with generous forbearance and 
cheerfulness. Resuming our journey we 
crossed northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin
to Madison. It was beautiful weather.
We always remembered with delight the clover
fields waist high in full bloom on "Queen Anne's
Prairie," and passing a large frame building
which some enthusiastic reformer had erected
and christened "Humanity's Barn." He was
a land-reformer and socialist and wished 
to extend hospitality and fraternity to the 
whole human race. At Madison we met
Mr. Hoyt and his wife -- afterwards Governor
Hoyt of Wyoming. Thence we went down
Black Earth Valley to Arena, a town recentlylaid out by Dr. Brisbane, A south Carolinian slave-holder
who had freed his slaves and become an abolitionist;
thence through Richland Center and the
almost unbroken forest of Richland Center and 
eastern.  Bad Axe County, crossing the Kickapoo
River to Springfield, and thence to Virginia. We
stopped one night at the head of Black Earth
Valley with a family from Prince Edwards Island,
and in the Richland County forest with a family of
Dunkards from Pennsylvania, who had raised a
fine crop of wheat upon soil never ploughed,
"girdling" the huge trees and using a "brush"
instead of a harrow to cover the seed. The rich,
black, loamy soil was as mellow as an ash-heap.
At Virginia we boarded at first at
the "North Star Hotel", a frame building
with poor accommodations.  But Lucy, accustomed
to the exquisite, clean linen and
quiet of a New England farmer's home, found
this mode of living too uncomfortable, so we
rented a room and boarded ourselves.  While


there, Lucy spoke by invitation at a Fourth of July
celebration in a grove. While she was speaking, a
part of the staging gave way.  She waited quietly
until the alarm subsided and then completed
her speech, which is still remembered by the old
residents, improving the incident by saying:
"So will our government break down unless the
aggressions of the slave power are checked and the
principles of the Declaration of Independence applied
to women!"  I had to leave Lucy very much alone,
while I drove about with a surveyor, making out
my descriptions of lands upon the spot. We took
many pleasant rides together, eating bread ans
milk among Norwegian farmers in Coon Prairie,
from wooden bowls with carved wooden spoons, family
heirlooms.  We hired a young Norwegian named
Thron Hoverson – on of Carl Hover – to break
up the sod of 160 acres of beautiful land on
Coon Prairie, upon which next year 6000
bushels of grain were raised. Two beautiful
young, white birch-trees grew in the center ofthis tract in a cluster of rocks, which we called
"Harry and Lucy." I have never seen them 
since that summer. We also visited together
more than our "Sixteenth Section" south
of Viroqua, adjoining a Scotch farmer named
Stevenson, a beautiful tract of "oak openings," 
which we half wished to retain for its beauty.
Later in the summer we spent a few days in
La Crosse, where my brother George was then
residing, and where I had made some investments
on joint account with friends in Cincinnati.
We were amused at an ingenious 
device of our landlady who daily gave her boarders
apple-pie, though there were no apples to 
be had in that new country. The substitute for 
apple was cracker soaked in hot water to
a pulp and flavored with cream of tartar
and essence of lemon. My brother was
interested with a land company in the 
development of "La Crescent" opposite La
Crosse, in Minnesota. We rambled over


the majestic bluffs of the Mississippi Valley
back of La Crescent. I shall never forget Lucy's 
delight at seeing a deer leap up from the bushes
beside us and bound away across the prairie
slopes until lost to view. The wild freedom of the
creature appealed to her so strongly that her eyes
filled with tears

We spent the winter and spring of 1856-7
with my sister Elizabeth in New York at 49 East
15" St., where we were joined by my mother and
brother Samuel and his wife, Rev. Antoinette
L. Brown, recently married. During that
winter and spring Lucy and I visited various 
suburbs of New York in search of a country home,
complicated by the fact that I was looking for a 
business position and that all we had to offer
in exchange was unimproved western land. 
Among other localities we visited the farm of 
a Mr. Haight on the hills near White Plains,
also Dobb's Ferry, where we were hospitably entertained
by a Quaker friend named StephenArcher; also Lloyd's Heck, L.J. Fordham, etc.
But we were drawn to Orange, N.J., by an old
friend from Ohio, whom I had long known
and loved, Agustus O. Moore, formerly of Cincinnati.
He had married a daughter of William
Green Jr., of New York and made his home in
Orange and his business in the City. We succeeded
in buying in Orange, in my wife's name, a house
on Hurlburt St. Near Cone, paying for it $500. 
cash which we borrowed from "Aunt Hitty"
Haskell of West Concord, Mass, an old "come
outer" friend of Lucy's,— assuming mortgages
and giving a tract of Wisconsin land. We moved
in, furnishing it partially, and there began our
slender housekeeping.

About this time I bought an interest from C.M.
Saxton, Agustus O. Moore's partner, in the firm of 
C.M. Saxton & Co., publishers of agricultural books,
144 Fulton St., New York. This connection however, 
did not last long, as on investigation I found
that the business was not prospering. During this 


connection I went west to try to introduce these books
into the farmers' libraries, through the State Superintendents 
of Schools of Ohio, Indiana and other states, leaving 
Lucy alone with our baby girl and a young Irish
servant in the half-furnished house at Orange.
Her friends there were Agustus Moore and his 
wife living on Llewellyyn Park, Rowland Johnson
and wife, Ludlow Patten and wife; Theodore D.
Weld and his wife and Sarah Grimke at Belleville
N.J., and then, or later, Mrs. Andrew Jackson Davis,
wife of the "Seer of Poughkeepsie." During my 
visit to Columbia, O. I was kindly welcomed by 
Gov. Chase who invited me to tea, where I saw his
beautiful daughter Kate (afterwards Mrs. Sprague)
who presided at the tea-table.

On leaving the firm I took charge of the
books of D. Torrance, a son-in-law of Commodore
Vanderbilt, and manager of the Vanderbilt line of
steamers. A few months later, Mr. Moore having
bought out his partner, I rejoined him and in
concert with Mr. Powell, Illinois State Superintendentsuperintendent of Public Instruction, got up a series
of four district school libraries, composed in part 
of our publications. This took me to Chicago,
where I spent the greater part of two years.

It was September 14, 1857 that Alice was
born. My sister Emily was present at the confinement.
I was at home. After our marriage, and for
several years afterward we were in straightened
circumstances pecuniarily, and had to live with
extreme economy. I had sold out my Cincinnati
hardware business on credit, taking in
exchange a farm near Chicago, and owing a 
cousin in England for it. What Lucy had earned 
by her lectures, some $5000, she had placed
in the hands of my brother and myself, and held over
note secured by western land certificates. What little
property I had was also invested in western lands
which paid no income, but on the contrary were a heavy
load to carry. I had to live on such salary as I 
could earn. I had few connections or friends in the 
east. Having secured our home, we went to 


housekeeping with very little furniture, and at first without 
help. Having no bookcase, but between us a great 
many books, I arranged them in rows on the floor along
the sides of our parlor. Our house was only three minutes
walk from North Orange station. After breakfast
I took train for New York, not returning until evening. 
My brother Samuel and his wife, Antoinette Brown, 
a fellow-student of Lucy's at Oberlin, were living
in a small house at the head of Market St. in 
Newark, about 2 miles distant. It was a lonely
and laborious life which Lucy had to live from 1857.
About all day in New York, and during my frequent
business trips in the west, about for months at a time, 
the baby was at once her care and her consolation. 
During our first winter in Orange, as the property was 
Lucy's, the tax bill came in her name. She promptly
declined to pay it in a brief note to Mr. Maudeville, the
collector, on the ground that "taxation and representation
are inseparable." Of course, at attachment
was made on our household effects, and 
an auction sale was made on the lawn in frontabsorbed her time and thoughts. She was a most
careful and conscientious housekeeper, and 
was devoted to her child. Surrounded by strangers,
in a community almost wholly unsympathetic
with reform, and with the slavery question growing
ever more and more pressing and tempestous,
she bided her time.

In 1858-9 our firm organized a system 
of school-district public libraries in Illinois,
resulting in the introduction of some 1500 during
the following two years, taking in payment the obligations
of the district-school directors. This obliged me to 
remain for a year in Chicago, and my wife accompanied
me  thither, taking with us our baby daughter. 
When I first left home for the west after the birth 
of the child, Lucy went to a daguerreotype artist 
and had a likeness of herself and the baby taken
and rolled it up in my night-gown, wishing to
give me a pleasant surprise. It so happened
that I did not unroll the night-gown for several
weeks, and so did not discover the picture. My 


of the house. Among the various articles of furniture
sold by Mr. Tompkins, the auctioneer, was the
baby-wagon (cradle). Our friend, Rowland Johnson without 
any previous understanding, attended the
sale, bid in the property, and paid the tax-bill
with costs. The occurrence created much
newspaper comment, and drew from Mr.
Whitehead, of Newark, a prominent member of 
the New Jersey Historical Society, an interesting
but inadequate narrative of the early voting of 
women in New Jersey from 1776-1807, thus
revising the memory of a very important and 
honorable event of American history, until then
almost forgotten. 

After the birth of our daughter Alice, I 
think, that with the exception of a meeting held 
in Brooklyn at the Academy of Music, where
the speakers were Lucy Stone and Henry Ward
Beecher, my wife did no speaking in public
during that and several subsequent years.
Domestic and family cares and pre-occupationsletter making no allusions to the picture was a 
disappointment and surprise to Lucy, who naturally
felt hurt at my apparent indifference.

On our way to Chicago I remember, we crossed
the Detroit river on a ferry-boat in the middle of 
the night. I carried the baby into the cabin and
she looked about with baby-wonder. We queried how
much she could comprehend of what was going 
on around her. On reaching Chicago we
boarded for a few weeks with a Mrs. Johnston, where
among the boarders we met Mr. Stephen Higginson
and his wife recently returned from St. Croix, 
and other interesting people. Then we boarded 
for a time with a family named Cooke. Finally
we went to board with a family named Bryce at
Evanston. Soon afterwards, we became inmates
of the home of Mr. And Mrs. George Sherwood at 
Evanston. Mr. Sherwood was a manufacturer of
school furniture and I had a desk in his
office at Chicago. His wife's sister, and 
Mayor and Mrs. Merwin completed the household.


Mr. Merwin is now the editor of the St. Louis 
Journal of Education, and still, as ever, a staunch
friend of woman suffrage. During that pleasant
summer Lucy used to walk with little Alice to 
the railroad station to meet me on my return 
from Chicago. When I approached them Lucy
would let the little girl run to meet me, which
she always did with her head down, apparently
from a sort of shyness, to the amusement of the
bystanders. We build ourselves a bathing-house
in the grove on the shore of the lake, and my daughter
remembers the fact that some mischievous boys once
threw stones against the house when she was inside
dressing. During our stay in Chicago, Lucy greatly
enjoyed the acquaintance of Robert Collyer, then City
Missionary. Also Frank and Emma Newhall, old
friends of Lucy; and Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Harwood
and his wife, old abolition friends of mine in Cincinnati; 
and Paschal Matthews and wife and their
daughter Alice, distant connections of my wife's mother.
As I had to find an agent in every one of theone hundred counties of Illinois, I was often obliged 
to absent myself, but as a rule kept my office 
hours in Chicago, and spent my nights in Evanston.
I remember the delight with which we used to set a 
lamp with a colored shade upon the floor of our 
sitting room, and let the little girl crawl around 
and pick out for us the various colors on the shade.  
In 1860 we were back in Orange.  Mr. Moore's 
health having failed he sold out the agricultural
book business to Miller & Orton, and I had to
wind up the library business, which proved a very 
tedious and expensive process.  Mr. Moore, suffering 
from hemorrhages, went meanwhile to Costa Rica
where he seemed to completely regain his strength, but
later, being in the vicinity of a volcano in eruption,
the dust brought on a return of his complaint and
he came back to New York.  Meanwhile I had engaged
in the real estate business in Orange, encouraged 
to do so by Mr. Llewellyn Haskell of 
Eagle Rock, the proprietor of Llewellyn Park.  I 


had my office on Main St. near the corner of Day 
St.  We had traded meanwhile with. Mr. Charles 
Fairbanks some western lands for a new house 
adjoining Lucy's house on Hurlbut St., and moved 
into it.  Lucy had traded her house subject to a 
mortgage of $2100 with Mr. Charles G. Judson for a 
property in Montclair, subject to a mortgage of $1800 
which in part we still retain, a beautiful tract of 
18 acres with an old half-ruinous cottage which 
we repaired and afterwards occupied.
During. the two years I remained in the
real-estate business, I had an office in Orange 
near my house, on Main St. above Day St., which 
I rented from an old gentleman named Colonel 
Babbitt.  I also had an office on William St. 
near Cedar St. in New York.  My New York office 
hours were from 9 to 11 a.m.  Afterward I was at 
my Orange office.  Here again, as always,
I was most efficiently aided by my wife, who
would often take my place in my orange office
while I was away showing houses and countryseats, and in some cases went herself with our
customs to show there houses.  In addition to
selling and renting for others on commission, I was
engaged in trading off my western lands for mortgaged
properties.  As a result this involved large outlays
for taxes and interest and in order to meet them, I 
took a position as salesman for Bromhall, Deane & Co.,
manufactures of kitchen ranges at 440 Broadway.  
Later I took position as bookkeeper and salesman
with Dennis Harris, sugar refiner, who had been
my father's foreman in his sugar refinery from
1832 to 1837.  It was now soon after the breaking
out of the Civil War.  Lucy and I had moved three
times.  I went daily to the sugar-house, returning
at night.  This trip there occupied one and one-half
hours each way, and was quite laborious.  In winter 
the roads were deep in red New Jersey mud.
The period I joined the "Union League" of Montclair, 
a secret society with passwords, etc.; made
sunday political speeches, and took part in
"bonding the town" for a second railroad from


New York to Greenwood Lake, now a branch of the Erie
railroad.  It was the time of the draft, and I paid
$300 for a substitute.  I remember the deep interest 
we felt one Sunday, in reading a speech by Carl
Schurz, and the absolute breach of neighborly sympathy
between the the Union and Copperhead citizens
of our town.  Our attempts to make the marketing of
our fruit profitable had an amusing result.  We had
an immense crop of magnificent cherries.  We gathered
with great labor a wagon load and sent them next
morning early to Newark to market.  The result was a
profit of 45 cents.  We raised and dried a crop of
chickory, building a kiln for the purpose, which brought
us only $16.  Evidently, farming, for us, did not pay.
The inconvenience and isolation of a residence 
so far from my business and social advantages
made us decide, in the fall of 1862 or 3 to move
into New York.  Accordingly we engaged board with 
Mrs. Palmer, corner of Gramercy Park and Third 
Avenue, and there spent the winter.  During our
residence on the mountainside in Montclair,we owned a large property extending on both
sides of the Valley Road from the top of the mountain
almost to the Telegraph road, nearly a mile in
length.  It is an evidence of the cheery health and 
vigor of my wife, although she must have been 43 or
44 years of age, that on one occasion Lucy and
our little daughter Alice and myself started on
the child's hand-sled from under the cliff near
where Highland Avenue now runs, and went down
the mountain-side like a flash, passing south
of our house, crossing Valley Road into and over
the plain beyond, past the stone house, which I
had completed and rented to Mrs. Kortright.  It was
a daring and reckless deed which no one, it is safe
to say, ever took before and which is now physically
impossible, after the extension of Prospect, Mountain,
and Clifford Avenues, and that no one
will ever take again.
One of our cares and troubles while living
there, which seems small in the recollection, but
which was serious at the time, was in satisfying


the tenant who occupied the stone house below us
on the opposite side of Valley Road.  Mrs. Kortright
was a lady of dutch descent, with an imperious
temper, considerable wealth, entire leisure, and
an exacting disposition.  Her house was supplied
by a hydraulic ram worked by a spring near the 
house.  This ram was continually getting out of order,
and we were called upon to set it going almost
daily.  This, and other demands of so large a place
became a serious burden upon my wife's time and
patience.  The old tradition of careful New England 
farming and exquisitely neat housekeeping clung to 
her, and the attempt to make the land a source
of income with careless or unfaithful help, was
laborious and disappointing.  We had not learned
that it was cheaper to let the land lie untilled
and leave the fruit ungathered.
The winter spent at Mrs. Palmer's was early in the
War.  Our fellow-boarders included several interesting
characters.  one was an Irish gentleman, a 
Mr. Fitzgerald, a brother of the "Knight of Kerry."was boarding young Mr. Olcott, with his wife and
family.  He afterwards became an associate of
Madam Blavatsky and a leader of the theosophists.
I had known him as the author of one of
the agricultural books which had been published
by the firm of C. M. Saxton Co. during my connection
with it.  The firm, in connection with the U. S.
Agricultural Department, had first distributed
the seeds of the so-called Chinese and African
sugar-canes and brought to this country by an
Englishman, Mr. Leonard Wray.  That winter Lucy
was actively associated with Susan B. Anthony and
others in organizing the "Woman's Loyal League, and a
few years later in forming the "American Equal
Rights Association" which demanded the extension
of the suffrage alike for negroes and women.
In the spring we went for our summer
vacation to the old house in West Brookfield, and
to Chilmark, in Martha's Vineyard.  The following
winter we boarded for a time farther up town,
near the East River, but found the society so hope


he was, I believe a correspondent of the London Times,
a bitter copperhead, a thorough aristocrat, a man of
intense prejudices (especially against the Irish race).
He said he belonged to one of the only two "Norman"
families of Ireland.  Nervous and excitable and 
in poor health, he was delightful in social intercourse;
polished, genial, and aside from his hobbies,
one of the most amiable and agreeable of men.  His
only intimate associate was a quiet, middle-aged
New York bookseller, and he felt lonely and out of
spirits.  By most he was shunned as a "British
spy."  Soon after, by advice of his physician, he
went to live on the Long Island sea-shore, as a
climate more nearly resembling the west coast
of Ireland, and we met him no more.  He used to 
describe to us with enthusiasm the great rushing
currents of soft sea-air, the rocky coasts and
the stormy ocean of western Ireland, and the
light canvas boats in which the handy fishermen
went out for miles into the vast ocean swell
and tossing waves of the Atlantic.  Here, too,lessly prosaic and uncongenial that we bought a house
in Roseville, Newark, N. J. and resumed housekeeping.
There we continued to reside until our removal to
Boston in the fall of 1868.  My mother and sister Marian
lived near us on Roseville Avenue.  My brother George,
who had taken my real-estate business in Orange when
I gave it up some years before, boarded with my sister.
My brother Samuel bought a house near us.  My daughter
went to Mrs Trippe's school near by.  We adopted as a 
playmate for her an active, noisy, hasty-tempered,
impulsive, rollicking, affectionate young girl named
Annie Gleason, to whom my wife soon became
tenderly attached, but who did not prove a congenial
companion to Alice.  Later we placed Annie in a 
home in Boston with a family named Homer;
there in one at Greenland, N. H., and finally
with-Mrs. Mary Ann Blair of Warren, Mass., an
old friend of my wife's.  There she was very happy,
but a year or two later was suddenly carried
off by spinal meningitis.  It was a great grief
to my wife, who never ceased to regret her loss,
 

After leaving West Bloomfield (now
Montclair, N. J.) about 1862 or 3, Lucy to some extent
resumed her public work, so far as was
compatible with her domestic cares.  During the five
or six years that followed, I was part of the time
closely occupied in the sugar business with - Mr. 
Harris.  We spent three or four summers on
Martha's Vineyard, which we first visited in
1865, in a sail boat belonging to Captain Daniel
Flanders of Menemsha.  On this first occasion
we spent only a week or two days.  Our party
consisted of my old friend, Ainsworth. R. Spofford,
Librarian of Congress, Mr. Wilmer of New York; Mr.
Waltse of Newbrugh, brother-in-law of Mr. Spofford,
and an ardent sportsman; my wife, my daughter,
young Charlies Spofford and myself.  Failing to
find board on Menemsha, we secured accommodations 
at the Gay Head Lighthouse with
Captain Adams, (or his son-in-law Mr. Pease
who succeeded him.)  We enjoyed it so much
that the following summer we engaged boardwith Captain Mayhew Adams on the South road,
where we met Mrs Meline and her son and
daughter of Washington, D.C., friends of the Spoffords
also with us.  But not finding the place
satisfactory, my wife and I at the end of a 
month rented the "Cliff House," as we called
it on Wacobski Cliffs, a couple of miles to the
westward, and set up housekeeping with furniture
rented from the neighbors.  Soon afterward
my Mother in Roseville, was attacked with a 
terrible carbuncle, and a change of air
seeming imperative, she was brought to our
house on Wacobski Cliffs and my sister
Marian came with her as nurse.  The move
undoubtedly saved and prolonged my Mother's
life.  But it entailed great care and labor on my
wife, who though she bore it patiently and uncomplainingly,
suffered so much from overwork that
I have sometimes felt that it imposed upon her
a burden which she ought not to have been permitted
to assume.  I constructed a sort of


ambulance by a canvas ticking stretched upon a 
pair of wheels, and was in daily habit of wheeling
mother to the top of Wacobski Cliff where she would
lie for hours enjoying the sea-breeze and the glorious 
view.
During one of these early years in New Jersey,
probably in 1860 or '61, John and Portia Gage spent
some days with us in Orange.  They were looking for
a home and wished to secure a considerable tract
of land for development as a progressive town by reformatory 
people.  They finally went to Vineland, N. J., where 
they and their sons became active and leading citizens.
After the war, probably about 1865 to '67 woman suffrage
conventions were held by us in Vineland, Hammonton
Bridgeton, Newark, Rahway, Princeton, New Brunswick,
&c, and a New Jersey State Suffrage Association
was formed.  In February, 1867, Lucy addressed a 
petition to the Legislature then in session at
Trenton, asking for a hearing, which was granted
and on March 6, 1867 she addressed the Legislature
in an admirable speech which made a deep impressionimpression and awakened general newspaper comment
throughout the State.  This speech many years later
was printed in pamphlet form in Boston.  It called
renewed attention to the fact that women in New Jersey,
from 1776 to 1807 were voters on the same qualifications
(£50) as men, and were unconstitutionally disfranchised 
by the legislature, which also unconstitutionally
set aside the property qualifications for men and
limited suffrage to white men.  During the six
years we lived in Roseville we kept up an active
woman suffrage agitation with headquarters in
Newark, and auxiliary societies in Orange, Hammonton, 
Bridgeton &c.
Soon after my wife's address at Trenton, we
went together to Kansas, where we spent April and
May 1867, to help organize a campaign to eliminate
from the State Constitution the words "white" and
"male."  Our daughter Alice, in our absence was
left with my sister Dr. Elizabeth, at the Infirmary
on Second Avenue, New York.  I gave up my position
with Dennis Harris to go with my wife.  I had 'ere


3
this, converted most of my western lands with New
Jersey properties, which I sold at advanced prices
in greenbacks and invested the proceeds in government 
bonds.  The close of the War and gradual
return to a specie basis left me with a modest
competence.  The Kansas campaign was very laborious,
but very interesting.  We went directly
home of Governor Charles Robinson, a connection of
Lucy's.  Her brother, Rev. Wm. B.  Hill, had married
successively two sisters of the Governor, and the third
sister resided with Mr. Stone's family.  In the same
house lived Mrs. Jane Robinson (Widow of Charles
Robinson's brother Cyrus) and her two daughters.
Governor Robinson and his wife welcomed us
hospitably and he cooperated heartily with us.
S. N. Wood, a prominent politician joined us there.
A convention was called to meet in Topeka and
organize in behalf of the two Amendments, to strike
out the words "white" and "male."  Lucy and I
took part in it.  an Impartial Suffrage AssociationAssociation was organized with an influential list of
officers.  Governor Robinson lent us a team.  S. N.
Wood accompanied us. We held over 40 meetings at
as many county seats, visiting almost every county
then organized.  Unfortunately the Republicans who
were almost the entire population, had been divided
into two factions,—on headed by "Jem Lane," formerly
an Indiana pro-slavery Democrat, the other by
Governor Robinson.  Lane's faction had triumphed
and controlled the "machine." Lane had died
but the bitterness of the division remained.  Unfortunately 
Robinson and Wood were unpopular,
and their opponents saw an opportunity of assailing
them.  Soon after we left Kansas in the early summer,
an anti-woman suffrage association was formed.
Had the vote been taken June 1, when Lucy's course
of meetings ended, I have always believed that both
Amendments would have carried.  But the opponents
of woman suffrage organized.  Rev. Olympia Brown 
and Bessie Bisbee continued the work.  Later 
Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony followed. Unfortunately


they brought in a half-crazy, pro-slavery mountebank.
George Francis Train, who was a large owner of lots
in Omaha and interested in the Union Pacific
Railway, then controlled by Mr. Durant.  Train's
alliance intensified Republican jealousy and
alienated many of the anti-slavery free-state
men, while he did not succeed in enlisting the
active support of the Southern or democratic element.
His wild copperhead utterances aided the anti-slavery
combination, headed by Eskridge, Plumb,
Martin, &c.  The negroes, fearful that the woman
suffrage question would defeat negro suffrage,
were opposed.  The Germans and the saloon
element were hostile.  Unable to poll a united Republican
vote as we had hoped and expected, we were
defeated and so was negro suffrage—both Amendments
receiving less than 10,000 votes out of a total
of 30,000 cast.
Being very anxious as to the result, I went a
second time alone to Kansas in September, making
my headquarters at Lawrence and then mailingmailing great quantities of suffrage literature all over
the State under the franks of U.S. Senators
Pomeroy and Ross. Just before election, I visited
several Democratic precincts in Leaavenworth
County; carrying with me letters from leading Kansas
democrats and succeeded thereby in getting several
hundred votes which were cast against the negro
suffrage Amendment. Strange to say the word
"male" was supported by almost as large a vote
as the word "white," the difference being only a
few hundreds. Miss Anthony also made her 
headquarters in Lawrence, boarding with Rev. and
Mrs. Starrett, while Governor Robinson and Mrs.
Stanton made a tour of meetings together.
Soon after my return home we learned
through the newspapers that Train and Mrs.
Stanton and Miss Anthony were making a
tour of meetings together at the principal cities
of the country, preparatory to a union in the
publication of a weekly woman suffrage newspaper
in New York City, entitled "The Revolution" for


which Train promised to supply the capital. So
soon after the War, an alliance with a pro-slavery
democrat was extremely shocking to the friends
of woman suffrage, almost all of whom were abolitionists.
Repeated meetings of the Executive Committee
of the Equal Rights Association in New York
protested, but were disregarded. The breach was
widened by the fact that Miss Anthony, while in
Kansas, had incurred a large debt which she
wished the Equal Rights Association to assume.
On her return to New York, Miss Anthony created
additional ill-feeling by her peremptory and
dictatorial speech and action. The Brooklyn
Equal Rights Association sided with us, as did 
the friends in New Jersey, while the New York members
were disposed to sustain Mrs. Stanton and Miss 
Anthony. Mr. Tilton tried to concilliate both
sides but practically stood by "The Revolution"
movement.
The defeat of negro suffrage in Kansas
and the failure of the Republicans to carry asingle State, east or west, for the elimination of
the word "white" from the suffrage clause of their
constitutions, and the controversy with President
Johnson forced the Republican leaders to submit
a Fifteenth Amendment, and with infinite difficulty
as to ratification by three-fourths of the
State Legislatures was obtained-- in our case
a State election having to be carried in order
to reverse a previous negative vote of its former
legislature.
Meanwhile "The Revolution" newspaper was
issued, with its headquarters on 14th St., New York,
and the breach became complete. Parker
Pillsbury was later secured as assistant editor.
On May 1869, the American Equal Rights Association
held its last public meetings in New York
and Brooklyn. Mrs. Theodore Tilton was elected
president, in the vain hope of thereby conciliating
Theodore Tilton, then editor of the Independent,
who aspired himself to be the leader of the
Woman Suffrage movement. A board was 


chosen including both parties, but with a decided
majority of anti-Train members. Finding themselves
unable to control the management of the Equal Rights
Association, at the close of the Convention a
meeting was hastily called without public notice,
as the office of the Revolution newspaper. The same
evening a Board of Officers was elected with
power to fill vacancies, and a Committee appointed
to draft a Constitution, and a so-called National
Woman Suffrage Association started with Mrs.
Stanton as its president, and Miss Anthony
as chairman of its Executive Committee.
Of course, this made future union impossible.
Not wishing to set up two conflicting organizations
in New York City, and the colored men already
being enfranchised by the adoption of the Fifteenth
Amendment, the American Equal Rights Association
never held another public meeting.
The establishment of The Revolution newspaper
in New York intensified the preference which Lucy
Stone had always felt for her New England friendsand associations. There was no longer any business
necessity for our remaining near New York. In the
opening of 1868 I made a visit to Florida. On my
return my wife, my daughter and myself spent the
early summer with the family of Dr. Rogers in
Pomfret, Conn. Thence we went to Kennebunkport
where we joined our friends the Spoffords, and I
made with my sister Emily and brother George
an excursion to Mt. Desert. These now fashionable
watering places were then little frequented; and
the New England coast was still largely unoccupied
and in the hands of the original
farming population. From the coast of Maine
we came to Boston where for a time we occupied
a room at No. 3 Fremont place above
the rooms of the New England Women's Club. But
in the fall of 1869 I sold our Roseville house and
bought from Mr. Canter the property which was our
home for the following 24 years and which is still the
home of my daughter and myself. We took possession
Jan. 1, 1870, and have lived in it ever


since.
The summer of 1869 was to my wife a period of
great and engrossing activity. Feeling that the
woman suffrage cause needed an organization
representative of all localities and based upon
delegates chosen by local and State societies, and
that a mere mass-meeting held annually in Washington,
or anywhere else, was not in any wide sense
representative, and that State action and work were
primary, while a Fifteenth Amendment was for the time
being a secondary issue, my wife instituted a correspondence
with suffragists all over the country and
secured their signatures to a Call for a convention
in Cleveland, O., in Oct. 1869, which resulted in
the formation of the American Woman Suffrage Association,
with Henry Ward Beecher as its first
president, and Lucy Stone as chairman of the
Executive Committee. Then, as always, Lucy
sought the place of work leaving others the position
of official dignity. From this time forward
Boston became Lucy's center. On her returnfrom Cleveland she devoted herself to securing
capital for a weekly newspaper which should be
the chronicle and representative of the American
woman suffrage movement.  Personally she visited
and corresponded with friends and secured a paid-up
capital of $10,000, which was represented by 200
shares of $50 each. Mrs. Livermore was secured as
its editor at a salary of $1500.  T.W. Higginson
as a weekly contributor at a salary of $600.
On Jan 1, 1870 the first number appeared and it 
has appeared promptly on time every Saturday
since for more than 28 years.
With the publication of a weekly newspaper
has come a circle of care and duties more and
more onerous.  I recall a characteristic
occurence.  My little daughter and I went down to
the rocky shore to bathe and my wife went with us.
It so happened that the water was extremely cold.  My
daughter and I no sooner entered the water


than we left it again and ran for our clothes.  This
struck my wife as extremely pusillanimous, so she in
turn went in with the intention of administering to us
a quiet, practical rebuke.  But no sooner did she
feel the sting of that icy water than she too came
hastily out with a cheerful recognition that discretion
was the better part of valor. During our stay
on the Maine Coast we made several pleasant
excursions as far as Cape Porpoise and the
mouth of Saco river by row-boat.  On our return
to Boston we hired a carriage and drove down the
coast to Portsmouth, climbed Mount Agammenticus,

visiting "Ground Nut Hill" and the rocky cliffs
of Ogonquit.  On reaching Boston we took our meals
at Marston's and made the Woman's Journal office
our headquarters, while we looked for a permanent
home.  But this did not suit my wife's domestic
tastes and it was a happy change when by a double
change of properties we secured our present
lovely home (ours alas! no longer!) on Pope's Hill.
Here again, as on many occasions before, my
 own business judgment was supplemented and reinforced
by the tact and judgment of my wife.  The
trade had been agreed upon but was abandoned
owing to a difference of views in regard to the value
of some gas fixtures. Neither Mr. Carer nor I 
would yield. Then my wife quietly stepped in,
poured oil on the troubled waters and brought about
a compromise.
The American Woman Suffrage Association
was a practical alliance of the great body of
suffragists of the Eastern, Middle and Western States,
in protest against the Train alliance and the
"Revolution" newspaper.  Its leading representatives
among women were Lucy Stone of New Jersey, Mrs. Julia
Ward Howe of Boston . and Mrs. Mary A. Livermore
of Chicago.  The latter was editor of a Chicago woman
suffrage paper called "The Agitator" with a circulation
of about 800.  This Mrs. Livermore merged
in the Woman's Journal, when she and her
husband came to Boston after the Cleveland
convention of Nov. 1869.  Mrs. Livermore


nee Mary Ashton, was a Boston girl, brought
up a Baptist, her father being a sturdy and
influential member of that denomination.
In Massachusetts we had the support of almost
all the abolitionists (with the exception
of Edwin Quincy and James Russell Lowell.)
The Garrisons, Phillips, Sewalls, Bowditches,
Jackson, Mays (Abby W. and Samuel) Severances,
Miss Isa Gray, Mrs. Sarah Shaw Russell, the
Churches and Campbells of Springfield, Anne
Whitney, the Cheneys, Howlands and Fosters of
Worcester, Allens, Davises, and Waltons of
West Newton, the Aldriches of Fall River,
The Freeman Clarkes and Sargents, and
John Weiss and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In Maine we had John Neal and
the Packards and Mrs. Dennett of Portand,
and the Quimbys of Augusta.
In New Hampshire the Whites of Concord,
and the Worcesters of Nashua.
In Vermont Congressman C. W.
Willard of St. Johnsbury, and theHutchinsons of West Rudolph, the Reeds
of Montpelier, the Clarkes of St. Albans, Weeks
of Rutland.
In Rhode Island the Chaces, Aldrichs,
Burleighs, and Mrs. Elizabeth K. Churchill.
In Connecticutt Burrs and later the
Stowes and Hookers and Sheldons.
In New York Mrs. Anna C. Field, Mrs. 
Celia Burleigh, Mr. and Mrs. Geo William Curtis,
the Shaws and the majority of Henry Ward Beechers
Society, besides Lydia Mott of Albany, Samuel J.
May and Mr. Mills of Syracuse.
In New Jersey Francis D, Gage and the
Gages of Vineland. Oberlin Smith of Bridgeton, Mrs.
J.J. Davis, Mr. and Mrs. Rowland Johnson, the Wells
and Grimkes, Marcus Spring and wife, Mrs. R. C.
Browning, Isaac Stevens and wife, of Trenton,
and Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell.
In Pennsylvania Mary Crew, Passmore
Williamson, the Wildmans, the Pearces, the Motts
and Davises, the Pennocks and Coxes of Kennett
Square, Dr. Hiram Corson, Eliza Sproat Turner


of Chadd's Pond, the Hindman sisters of Pittsburg.
In Delaware Thomas Garrett, John
Cameron, The Puseys, Forbes.
In Ohio the Donaldsons, Colemans,
Coles, Ernsts, Harwoods, Rylands, Robinsons, Griffings
In Indiana the McKays, Thomases,
Boyds, Hamiltons, Amanda Way.
In Illinois the Bradwells, Waites,
Mrs. Tracy Cutter, Boyntons, Earles.
In Missouri the Hazards, Yeatmans,
Allens, Eliots.
In Wisconsin the Hoyts, Lillie Peckham,
the Desplaines.
In Kentucky the Clays, Dietricks,
Mrs. Eugenia Farmer, and Mrs. Avery.
In Kansas the Robinsons, Woods,
Larimers, Moonlights, the Ritchies, Hudsons,
In Michigan Mrs. Sibyl Lawrence
of Ann Arbor, the Stebbins of Detroit, the Stones
of Kalamazoo.
In Iowa the Coggeshalls, Callanans,
Hunters, Irish.
At first it was intended to hold an 
Annual Convention alternately in Washington
and at some important city east or west.
But in order to avoid the appearance of conflict,
Washington being the place of meeting of 
Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthonys society
which at first ignored State action, and 
limited itself to a demand for a Sixteenth
Amendment to the Federal Constitution.
The American Woman Suffrage Association
on the contrary, being composed of delegates
annually elected by auxiliary State Societies
mades its demand for amendments of both 
Federal and State constitutions and laid
special emphasis on State work.