USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume II > Part 30
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There is no intention of trying to show that Worcester County was espe- cially benighted as regards the education of girls, for actually it was in the van of the movement that produced institutions for the secondary and higher education of the sex and of co-educational schools. The historic Latin School for Boys (Worcester) founded in 1831, was consolidated with the Girls' English High School in 1845, to form the Classical High School of the city. If Worcester's colleges of the present are for men chiefly, it must not be forgotten that the State Normal School at Worcester was in 1915 turned over entirely to female students. One of the most interesting and pertinent features of this subject is illustrated by the old Oread Collegiate Institute, opened in 1849, which holds a place of distinction in national educational affairs as the pioneer of women's colleges. The history of this institution is given in another chapter; enough here that at the time of its inauguration "Oberlin was the only college open to women, and no college exclusively for women had been established." Oread's college courses was similar to those of Brown College, or University, Providence, Rhode Island, and its curricula was well in advance of its day and generation. Beloved Mary Lyon, a well- known figure in Worcester County, as elsewhere, had died that same year, 1849. She founded Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary, but it was not until two decades later (1875) that Wellesley and Smith colleges functioned. Worces- ter, city and county, have produced a long and worthy line of women educa- tors, and it is only for collegiate and professional training that girls must go outside of the county.
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In Professions and Arts-In the narrative chapters of this work and in some of the special chapters, the records of men and women in the profes- sions and allied activities have been mentioned without regard to sex. A writer upon the subject has said: "The achievements of women in the arts and professions probably do not parallel their inherent ability in these lines, and should not be judged without consideration of the handicaps imposed upon them by traditional prejudice and by the jealousy of the opposite sex." Massachusetts has the Portia Law School, Boston University, Northeastern University in which women may be educated in the law, and has such promi- nent women lawyers as Anna Christy Fall, Ellen Buckley, Sadie Lipner Shulman, Sybil Holmes, Edith M. Haynes, Jennie Loitman Barron, Emma Tousant, Clara Powers, Greta Coleman, Frances Brady and many others. In science it has been pointed out by Mrs. Frederick P. Bagley that Massachu- setts women have achieved international fame in astronomy, and names, among others in this field, Maria Mitchell, Anna Jump Cannon, Henrietta H. Swope, Adelaide Ames, and such distinguished assistants as Cecelia Helena Payne, Ph. D., Margaret Walton, Helen Howard, Emma Williams and Mar- garet Harwood. In connection with medicine, Mrs. Bagley notes that the prejudice against women as doctors is gradually giving way, but quotes from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, which in commenting upon women being admitted to the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1882, said : "Enshrouded in her mantle of science, woman is supposed to be endowed with power to descend from that high pedestal upon which we men have always placed her and to mingle with us unscathed in scenes from which her modesty and esteem of the other sex has hitherto protected her." Mrs. Bagley comments: "The editor seems to have forgotten that women had long mingled in those 'scenes' as patients and as nurses. It was only as phy- sicians that they were protected from them." Although there have been notable women members of the medical profession in the Commonwealth, a perusal of the chapter on physicians in this volume indicates that Worcester County has hardly provided its full quota in the past. The reader is referred to this chapter, but more particularly to the reviews of the lives of Clara Barton and Dorothea Dix, and others, in other chapters. If these interna- tionally famed persons entered upon their great careers by way of the hos- pital rather than the medical school, it was, after all, by a most natural method. In no sphere of medicine have the women of the county shone more brightly than in nursing, in the establishment of hospitals, and in the never failing and faithful support they have given these institutions.
Literature and Art-Worcester County women have long been accorded a place among the literati of our country-they have written early, often and well. The ninth and tenth chapters of this history are almost in
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their entirety, quotations from that treasure of Americana, "Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson." "Written By Her Own Hand for Her Private Use. And now made public at the earnest desire of some friends, and for the benefit of the afflicted." This precious leather-bound volume, published in 1682, has a value in history and for its literary quality that its rarity does not diminish. The author was the wife of the first minister of the frontier village of Lancaster.
Miss Harriet E. Henshaw of Leicester was a "writer of distinction in the Revolutionary years," and the historian would be without much valuable town and county material were it not for the numerous local histories compiled by or sponsored by women. Mrs. Harriet E. Henshaw has given us "The Hundredth Town," a study featuring Westborough, and "Early New Eng- land Diaries." Alice Morse Earle and her sister, Frances Cary Morse have presented vivid pictures of New England life, the former in "The Sabbath in Puritan New England," and the latter in the "Furniture of Olden Times," a joy to the collector. Lucy Stone Blackwell wrote concerning slavery both before and after the Civil War. Jane G. Austen of Worcester ranks high among the American authors of historical fiction, as witness her Standish of Standish, Betty Alden, and others.
Eva Marsh Tappan's juvenile books and fairy tales are "almost unriv- alled." Martha Downe Tolman of Fitchburg: Mrs. Olive Higgins Prouty, the Misses E. T. Dillingham and A. B. Emerson; Mrs. Marvin M. Perry, Mrs. Claire M. Coburn Swift ; Mrs. Homer P. Lewis; Mrs. Chetwood Smith; Fannie Stearns Davis Gifford, are some of Worcester County's novelists and poetesses. Caroline Atherton Mason of Fitchburg was a gifted writer of prose and poetry. Frances P. Mckeon, Marietta Knight and Annie Russell Marble, are known for their compilation of classics for school use. Dr. Amy E. Tanner, of Worcester is the author of the study in psychology, The Child; Miss E. W. Curtis wrote Dramatic Instinct in Education. Isabel Hornibrook is widely known by boys and girls for her numerous and thrilling tales of camping and scouting. Lucy Heals and Margaret Getchell Parsons have established Worcester's reputation in drama. Mrs. Annie Russell Marble, Mrs. Amy Coburn Lyseth, Mrs. Oscar P. Tabor, Jr., Mrs. C. A. Vaughn, and the Misses Jennie G. Waite, Miriam Abbott and Jessie Dell Lewis, will be recalled with appreciation for their historical educational and Bible pageant plays.
In art women once met with many obstacles, for they were barred from many early schools, particularly if sketching from the nude was a part of the curriculum. It was many years before the male artist could be convinced that the other sex might be interested in something more than lace work and
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china painting. Both as regards exhibits and exhibitors in the various art organizations of Worcester, the women usually outnumber the men. Further comparisons dare not be made. To sculpture, to the stage, and to the con- cert and opera stage, Worcester County and city have made few notable contributions, as regards performers, but in the promotion of the drama and of music, women have been the power behind the outstanding movements and societies, although usually being content to have the males hold official positions while the ladies did the work.
Clubs-Closely allied with women's advancement in education and the arts is the club movement and clubs, which latter of course include not only the social and the literary, but the political, economic and humanitarian. It must be granted that the male of the species came upon the stage of social life as a "joiner," natural or cultivated, long before the ladies began to get together in anything that approached the modern club. From the time the men had to associate for mutual benefit and protection before they could settle districts and towns, and even earlier, if the fraternal orders are taken into consideration, they have enjoyed a wide variety of organizations. Between the church and their own work and the care of their husbands and children, the pioneer women found no time to exploit their get-together spirit. Out of their religion and maternal impulse came the missionary societies, Female Tract Society and the Daughters of Temperance, and other early organizations. The Civil War taught women the advantages of cooperation, and brought about the rise of groups to aid the soldier before and after the conflict and especially while in the hospitals. No one could wish to deprive the women of our land of the honor of founding the forerunner of the Red Cross Society, of which our own Clara Barton was so long the head. In the early 'eighties there seems to have been a general impulse in the county to start "literary" societies. In general the purpose of these was "to stimulate intellectual and moral development and to strengthen individual effort by organization." It seems odd that so few of the ladies' organizations survived the Civil War in forms, social or cultural. Even the ladies auxiliaries to veteran's associations were a growth of later decades. The New England Women's Club is the chief exception, founded in 1868; perhaps the reason for its vitality lies in the fact that it began and continued a social work which covered so wide a field.
The modern women's club movement while it may be said to have started in 1868, historically, waited at least two decades before making much head- way. In the winter of 1867-68, Charles Dickens, after a reading tour through the United States, was banqueted in New York City. Jennie Croly (Jennie June), noted journalist and others of her clan, asked for tickets to
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the dinner and were refused, since it was to be given by the New York Press Club, a male organization. Jennie Croly's reaction to the rebuff was-why not a woman's club? In the same month, March, and the same year as the birth of the New England Woman's Club, 1868, the Sorosis of New York was born. When the Sorosis Club celebrated its majority in 1889, and all women's clubs known to exist were invited to attend the celebration, sixty- one out of the ninety-seven known women's clubs in the United States, attended. Two delegates represented Worcester. Not until the last two decades of "that century which stands forever a monument to the abolition of slavery and a new attitude toward women (the association of these two ideas are those of the orator)" was there any spontaneous movement in the direction of women's clubs in Worcester, or the State, and the years just prior to and after 1890, were the most prolific in the formation of the most of the larger woman's clubs cultural societies, ancestral and patriotic organi- zations. In 1889 the Sorosis Club suggested the organization of a National Federation of Women's Clubs. It was done a year later, and in 1891 was functioning fairly well, although with few members. State Federations were a part of the scheme and the Worcester County clubs were quick to join with the Massachusetts body. In 1930 there were in the county ten thousand women connected with the general confederation together with a large num- ber of societies not so affiliated.
Among the women's clubs of Worcester are: The Worcester Women's Club, founded on December 9, 1880, with its first officers, Frances M. Baker, president ; Harriette P. Draper, Mary P. Jefts, vice-presidents ; Alla W. Foster, secretary ; Melora F. Pratt, treasurer. It is one of the strongest clubs in the city, its membership always being up to the limit established. Since October 6, 1902, it has occupied its present fine club house. The Catholic Women's Club, organized in 1906, is similar in purpose to the Worcester Women's Club. The Worcester Girls' Club is also large and active. The Worcester Branch of the Woman's Department, National Civic Federation, was established in May, 1912, by Mrs. George Crompton, and has done a great deal of useful service since. Mrs. Emma D. Harris was the donor of the Girls' Club house. The Levana Club, an association of teachers, founded in 1905, with Emma A. Porter as president, was a forerunner of the mod- ern parent-teachers associations, although itself radically different. There are several strong college clubs, such as the College Club of Worcester, organ- ized in 1897 by twenty-two women college graduates, and the Worcester Smith College, founded in 1894; the Wellesley College Club, also of 1894; the Cornell Women's Club, of Worcester, dating from 1912. The Mount Holyoke Alumnae Association, one of the oldest in Worcester, was started in 1875, with forty members.
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In Fitchburg the woman's club movement had its inception in the temper- ance movement, more especially in 1875, when the Fitchburg Women's Tem- perance Union was formed; the Young Women's Temperance Union was born just a decade later. The Fitchburg Women's Club has a large member- ship, and the Fitchburg Teachers' Association plays more than its customary rôle. The city has the Fitchburg and the Betsy Ross chapters of the Daugh- ters of the American Revolution, and other patriotic and humanitarian soci- eties. It will serve no good end to attempt to list the many female organiza- tions in the cities or the towns of the county, since practically all the major societies and clubs of national note, whatever the kind, are represented.
The Political Phase-The history of the political phase of the woman's movement in Worcester County is a thrilling story of women strug- gling to gain political and legal privileges. This tale, while a part of the gen- eral annals of politics and government, needs further study to disclose the evolution of suffrage, of women's place in political parties, of partisan and non-partisan leagues, of customs and law concerning woman's eligibility to hold public office, and of the gradual extension to women of equal legal rights with men. Women's voting power in the State was negligible until a limited school suffrage was permitted them in 1881, although in many religious organizations they enjoyed a practical equality in management. In the early Congregational and Unitarian Church, however, the ladies were supposed to listen and leave the government of the church to the men. The first appear- ance of women as leaders in what might be called political affairs, dates from about a hundred years ago, when feminine agitators against slavery and intemperance appeared.
Properly the promotion of temperance and the destruction of slavery are parts of the humanitarian phase of the woman's movement, but what was accomplished in both these movements was reached, to an important extent, through the polls. It may be of interest to note that Millbury was one of the first towns in America to form a Temperance Society. This was in 1808, the same year as a similar one was founded in New York State. Women were responsible in Millbury for the passing of a resolution in town meeting, in 1831, which put the town on a prohibition basis. It was not until fifty years later that the ladies were able to place on record : "Voted that the town ask the Legislature to extend to women who are citizens the right to hold town office and to vote in town affairs, on the same terms as male citizens." Worcester women were especially prominent in the Washington Benevolent Society, one of the earliest of temperance societies, which operated in the county from 1813 to 1836. The Temperance Crusaders was organized in 1874 for the express purpose of destroying saloons by force or otherwise.
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The Woman's Christian Temperance Union was established in the city in 1878, and in most of the towns of the county about that time.
The anti-slavery movement was another of the means by which women were drawn from the shelter of the home into the larger currents of human affairs. Lucy Stone Blackwell, author, of West Brookfield, and Abby Kelley, Quaker, of Worcester, wrought valiantly for abolition. Abby Kelley resigned her position as a school teacher in 1837 to lecture at anti-slavery meetings, and "was the first of the many women to address mixed audiences in favor of abolition. For a quarter of a century she spoke and worked for the cause in all parts of the country."
The agitation for equal suffrage made haste slowly, although such a movement had been coeval with that of anti-slavery, and its first leaders were . drawn from abolitionist and temperance speakers. The first national women's rights convention was held in October, 1850, at Worcester, a fact and a date that are memorable. The growth of both the idea and its promotion was nevertheless slow ; particularly in Worcester, Fitchburg and the larger places of mixed populations and religions. There were too many forces opposed and too few women emancipated enough to form a substantial following. The order of progress toward equal suffrage was first in the churches, then in a few school elections, and later in town affairs where the fair sex were permitted to vote. On January 28, 1870, the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association was formed, with Julia Ward Howe as president. On October 4, 1886, the Worcester Woman's Suffrage League, non-partisan, was formed with Mrs. Mary C. Harris as president. Among the members were the Mrs. A. H. Briggs, Joseph A. Howland, M. A. Wheelock, Kate C. Taft, and the Misses Sarah Earle, Sarah Henshaw, Sarah E. Wall, and fifty others. Miss Henshaw succeeded Mrs. Harris a year later and served until her death in 1902. She was followed by Mrs. Edwin H. Marble. The Worcester Woman's Suffrage League early affiliated with the Massachusetts State Suffrage Asso- ciation, and in 1917 disbanded, turning over its funds to the major associa- tion. The Worcester Equal Franchise Club was formally organized on Jan- uary 13, 1913, although temporarily formed during the preceding year. Dr. Myrtle Smith was the first president, and Miss Mary Allen, Miss Ellen Cal- lahan, Mrs. Emile Landry, Mrs. Herbert Johnson, Mrs. Hartley Bartlett, and Miss Katherine Forbes were the other officials. On April 14, 1913, the club joined the Massachusetts Woman's Suffrage Association. The Equal Suf- frage Club undertook the active work of making an educative campaign for suffrage before the referendum of 1915, and was remarkably successful. It was but the first of a number of lively campaigns. Worcester, in which the first National Suffrage Convention was held in 1850, was the eighth State to
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ratify the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919. In 1920 the last woman's suf- frage convention was held.
The Economic Phase-The story of the gradual development of the Worcester woman's activities in economic life differs but slightly from that of the more populous and industrial counties. Like the political rights of which the women had none in the early part of the nineteenth century, so their economic rights have progressed from an almost irreducible minimum to the height and breadth of the present day. Outside of the home, and often in it, woman's first employment was as teacher with a low standing and pay that has already been indicated. It was very late in the century before the average wage of the female teacher approached equality of the male. "Between 1840 and 1890" writes Mrs. Frederick P. Bagley, "developed a woman-operative system under which thousands of the women were employed in the mills-nearly all of them in monotonous manual labor. Alongside this class was a growing and numerous group of saleswomen, presently flanked by the professional typists and secretaries. The definite contribution of women to the wealth of the State, their employment in gain- ful occupations, their success in many of the arts and sciences, gave impetus to the demand that they should be put on a political equality with men. The number of self-sustaining and independent women in 1890 was a hundred times as great as it had been in 1790. Hence the forty years from 1890 wit- nessed the enfranchisement of women from an inferior status as workers, and recognized them as human beings of equal capacity with men, who might share in the making of laws and the dispensation of justice." The percentage of women workers in industrial establishments during the last three decades, nearly thirty per cent., has made their protection as wage earners a matter of deep concern. Two organizations have been prominent in this work, the Woman's Educational and Industrial Union, and the Massachusetts Con- sumers' League.
The Humanitarian Phase-Women have always been leaders in many of the humanitarian organizations and reforms in Worcester as in other counties and states. They have been keenly interested in the anti-slavery and temperance movements, in war relief and Red Cross activities, and in social welfare work. The county has produced such international leaders as Clara Barton of the Red Cross, and Dorothea Dix, advocate of the humane treat- ment of the insane. Of these much has been written, although they are but two of many. War seems to bring out the best in women while often it brings out the worst in men. Worcester County's women's Red Cross work, and their prominence in all manner of war relief and humanitarian organi-
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zations has been given credit, inadequate perhaps, in the chapters on war, particularly the World War. After the end of the World War, the Worces- ter chapters and numerous feminine organizations of that period did not dis- band, but began a peace-time program of inestimable worth. Social welfare work has, in the limited sense of "settlement work," naturally been confined mainly to the four cities of the county and the large industrial centers. The Young Women's Christian Association in the county, and like organizations, Catholic, Hebrew, and others, are themselves social welfare organizations and promoters of social reforms. The Worcester Young Women's Christian Association was conceived on June 13, 1885. Under the presidency of Mrs. Charles G. Reed, rooms were opened on February 1, 1886. Four years later the main part of the present fine headquarters was erected, in 1890, at a cost of more than $87,600 ; the educational and gymnasium equipment was started in 1916, at a cost of nearly $75,000. Social legislation has been sponsored by a variety of woman's organizations.
CHAPTER XLIX
Education and Educational Institutions
Lord Macaulay, in a speech before the English Parliament in 1847, paid his compliments to Massachusetts and the Puritans for subscribing to the principal that "the State should take upon itself the charge of the education of the people." He continued his argument with "In the year 1642 (1647?) they passed their first legislative enactment upon this subject." The law, to which Lord Macaulay refers, read as follows :
It is therefore ordered, that every township in this jurisdiction after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall forthwith appoint one within the town to teach such children as shall resort to him, to write and read, whose wages shall be paid, either by the parents or masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in general, by the way of supply, as the major part of those that order the prudentials of the town shall appoint, pro- vided, those that send their children shall not be oppressed by paying much more than they can have them taught in other towns; and it is further ordered, that, where a town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct the youth so far as they may be fitted for the university, pro- vided that, if any town neglect the performance hereof above one year, that such town shall pay five pounds to the next school, till they perform this order.
In 1683, October 10, the following law was added : "The Court doth order that whenever a town has five hundred families, it shall support two grammar schools and two writing schools." Manual training may be said to have been introduced by an act of June 14, 1642, whereby the "prudential" authorities of a town should "have the power to take account, from time to time, of all parents and masters, and of their children, especially of their ability to read and understand the principles of religion, and the capital laws of the country, and to impose fines." Trades were to be taught those children ; materials such as hemp, flax, etc., with the tools with which to work them to be sup- plied by the towns. One other article of this law should be noticed, "for
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