BLACKWELL FAMILY LUCY STONE Subject File Tax Protest[*New Jersey - sale for taxes*] When mother & father lived in N. J. mother’s table & all the dining room pictures, Garrison & Chase & the rest, were sold for taxes. “Poor little Alice was a baby in my lap, and her father was away at the west.” Mother says that when the tax bill came, she felt just as the men did in the Revolution, she supposes. It seemed to her that it was as much robbery as [it] anything could be robbery. And she sat down with me in her lap and wrote to the collector that when women could vote they would willingly pay taxes, but till then it was sheer robbery. She sent off the letter without any idea that it would ever be printed, but the historical society did get hold of it and print it. This she told Mrs. Haggart of Indiana, March 21, 1882. On the same day a lettercame from Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell who was lecturing through Mass for us, telling how the minds of the people in Warren had been turned the wrong way by a lecture delivered there by Rev. Washington Gladden the night before hers, in which he talked against suffrage. He thinks it would promote divorce & make women unwilling to have children. And mother said, speaking pityingly of Mrs. C. Who has had rather a hard week of it, “ [No one will] The world will never know the uphill & crook & cranny work this poor suffrage cause has had to dig through.” Woman's Journal, Aug. 21, 1915 p.264 Lucy Stone Made Protest in 1858. Date of famous Tax Appeal shown by clipping in Jersey Scrape Book. The exact date of Lucy Stone's tax protest was mot remembered in her family, but it is shown by a press clipping pasted into the scrap- book of an old gentleman in New Jersey, Mr. Leroy Bauta, who lent it to Dr. Mary D. Hussey of East Orange. The clipping does not show the name of the paper, but does show its date -- Jan. 25, 1858. Under the heading, "Local Intelligence," it says: Lucy Stone and the Tax Collector -- Exhibition of Pluck. Lucy Stone is a woman of pluck. She does not shrink from suffering for opinion's sake. She practices what she preaches, and wears consistency like a jewel in her crown of her life. Jerome of Prague went to the stake in testimony of his faith in opinions; Lucy Stone would go to the block, unfaltering, in defence of hers. Recent events fully authorize such a belief. Lucy, it will be remembered, recently refused to pay her tax on the ground that, as women have no voice in the government, they should be exempt from taxation. This doctrine she has entertained for years, but it did not meet the approbation of the tax collector of Orange, and accordingly extreme measures were resorted to. On Friday afternoon, Constable Kynes of that place, proceeded to the residence of the refractory Lucy, and executed the duty imposed upon him in pursuance of the following notice, which was posted up at the railroad station." There follows the formal notice of the sale, which was advertised to take place on Jan 22, at 2 P.M. The newspaper goes on to describe thesale, which was carried out "on the piazza". Among the articles sold were "two steel-plate likenesses, one of S. P. Chase and the other of Wm. Lloyd Garrison". The sales came to a little more than the tax. The paper continues; "A small balance was paid to Lucy. She told the constable that 'next year, and the year following and every year, until the law was changed, the same thing would have to be done.' He replied that he would let somebody else have the job, as it was not a pleasant duty for him to perform. He then carried back into the house the articles of furniture which had not been sold, and seemed glad to get away, after vindicating the majesty of the law in so satisfactory a manner. "The public of Orange, we learn, will soon hear from Miss. Lucy Stone, on this subject, at a meeting she intends to call. She is not to be put down by one calamity, but above every misfortune will rise triumphantly, maintaining her principles to the end."p. 264 Woman's Journal, Aug. 21, 1915. Tax Protest by Lucy Stone Read Dr. Anna Howard Shaw Comments on the Famous Document at New Jersey Celebration. The letter written by Lucy Stone when she made her tax protest was read by Dr. Anna Howard Shaw at the recent celebration in Orange, N.J. She wrote to the tax collector: "Enclosed I return my tax bill without paying. My reason for doing so is that women suffer taxation, and yet have no representation, which not only is unjust to one - half the adult population, but is contrary to our theory of government. For some years, women have been paying their taxes under protest, but still taxes are imposed and representation is not granted. The only course now left us is to refuse to pay the tax. We know well what the immediate result of this refusal must be, but we believe that, when the attention of men is called to the wide difference between their theory of government and its practice in this particular, they cannot fail to see the mistake they now make by imposing taxes on women while they refuse them the right of suffrage, and that the sense of justice which is in all good men will lead them to correct it." p. 266. 1915 ---- Tax Protest Celebrated -----The New York Tribune said: "One thousand suffragists, crowded into the yard of the little house at 16 Hurlbet Street, Orange, to see the unveiling of the tablet in honor of Lucy Stone, who lived there in 1858, when she made her famous protest against "taxation without representation." The locality is changed since that day. The house is now shut in by ugly buildings, and the hot sun beat down mercilessly on the shadeless yard, but the crowd stood attentively through the ceremony. The house is now in the Italian quarter, in a neighborhood inhabited by the better sort of Italians. It is at present occupied by a druggist. . . . . Miss Blackwell unveiled the tablet, by lifting the Stars and Stripes which were draped over it. It is a fine piece of bronze, with an inscription composed by Oswald Garrison Villand; "In 1858 Lucy Stone, a noble pioneer in the emancipation of women, here first protested against their taxation without representation in New Jersey." . . . . Thus she "being dead, yet speaketh." A.S.B.