USA > Ohio > Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state, Volume I > Part 6
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Later when peace was restored, Mrs. Colborn helped her husband in his efforts to write a history of Perry and Fairfield Counties. She not only helped to obtain data for this work but also copied the whole in long hand for publication. Considering that the combined histories ran to something over a thousand pages, this is in itself no mean task.
Mrs. Colborn reared a family of five daughters. She died in 1890.
Until only a year ago the home of CATHERINE COFFIN, wife of the famous Levi Coffin, was still standing, at Sixth and Elm Streets, Cincinnati. As in many other instances, records concerning Levi Coffin, "President" of the Underground Railway whereby negroes escaping from the south were dispatched on their way to free Canada, are voluminous, but references to his wife are very scanty.
It is stated definitely that she sympathized, heart and soul, in the cause to which he was devoting, very literally, his life. For Coffin was constantly in danger of physical violence from infuriated slavery sympathizers and also of the law as invoked by owners of the runaway slaves he assisted.
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Many and many a dark skinned, emaciated, terrorized negro, ignorant of locality, depending, in fear begotten flight, on almost animal instinct, lay hidden in the old Coffin home while the man who later accepted open leader- ship of abolitionists in his community, planned for their escape. Catherine Coffin knew all about this. She is pictured as "Rachel Holliday," the "Quak- eress" by Harriet Beecher Stowe in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and it is said that her characterization there, quiet, efficient, deploring force and violence but with courage equal to all danger in administering to the needs of the down trodden, is quite accurate.
Coffin himself was the original of "Simeon Holliday." Mrs. Stowe knew all about the Coffins. She was still living in Cincinnati when they came there, in 1847, from Wayne County, Indiana, where they had been active in their work of mercy.
They had aided the real "Eliza" to escape after she had crossed on the broken ice of the Ohio River.
The Coffins conducted a store in which was sold only goods produced by free labor. In connection with this they developed the almost unbelievable but, as it proved, altogether practical system known as the "Underground" of routing slave refugees on to Canada. The first "station" out of Cincinnati, College Hill, is now a part of the city. From there they were routed through Indiana to Michigan and via Detroit into Canada.
But Eliza was sent by the Sandusky route to Chatham, West Canada according to Henry Howe. The Coffins, on a visit to Canada years after the escape of Eliza, met her there, well established in her new world of freedom.
To all such services in the cause of human helpfulness Catherine Coffin is said to have contributed her full share.
Credit is due a Cincinnati woman of today for preserving a graphic record of the old Coffin home. Just before this was torn down, in 1937, Carolyn Williams, artist and newspaper woman, whose etchings provide a unique service for her paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, sketched the historie "Underground" building. The etching is one of about 100, most of them picturing ancient landmarks which have been reproduced in a book "The City on Seven Hills" published for Miss Williams in 1938.
Little is known of ESTHER DEMPSEY McGAHAN except that she gave to the world a son who has been known to the world for many years as "the Liberator of Bulgaria." We do know that: the mother of the liberator was born at Pigeon Roost or Five Points; that while still in her teens she married J. A. McGahan, a struggling and hardy pioneer; that she managed to teach her children at home since the nearest school was too far for them to attend; and that she found sufficient resources to send at least one of them to college; Janairus A. McGahan, the second son went to Notre Dame College, from which school he graduated.
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When he was twenty-one years old, young Janairus was a reporter and correspondent of a newspaper in Saint Louis. A few years later he went East and secured a position on the New York Herald, where he quickly arose to the front ranks among newspaper men. He was sent by the Herald to Europe as correspondent for the duration of the Franco-Prussian war; there he was with Bourbaki's army, went to Lyons and Bordeaux, and attracted much attention by his interviews with republican, monarchial and clerical leaders. He was the only newspaper correspondent in Paris during the whole period of the Commune, and he narrowly escaped death.
After the war he visited Russia as Herald correspondent, accompanied the expedition to Khiva, contrary to Russian orders, and later told of his experiences in "Campaigning on the Oxus" and "The Fall of Khiva." He had already reported the Alabama Conference at Geneva and accompanied General Sherman to the Caucasus. He reported the Carlist War in Spain and made a Polar voyage in 1875 which he described in "Under the Northern Lights."
Soon after the polar expedition, accompanied by the United States Com- missioner, Eugene Schuyler, he went to Bulgaria to investigate stories of Turkish atrocities. His articles telling of the sufferings of the people of Bulgaria at the hands of their oppressors stirred up so much feeling and resentment that the result was actually to help Bulgaria throw off the hateful yoke, and he came to be hailed as the deliverer of the land. When he visited the country afterward men, women and children smothered him with atten- tions, gathering around him so that he could scarcely make his way about, kissing the horse he rode; the spurs; the bridle,-anything that they could take hold of.
McGahan fell in love with and married a Russian lady of great rank. He continued to live abroad and was preparing to attend the International Congress at Berlin in 1878 when he fell ill in Constantinople, where he had been sojourning, and died there.
His remains were buried near the bank of the Bosphorus, but later in 1884, were brought back to this country and are buried in New Lexington, Ohio.
There on the same lot is buried his humble pioneer mother, Esther Dempsey McGahan.
Two years ago, when the late MRS. SUSAN TAYLOR of Marietta, Ohio was 99 years old and really did not expect to live much longer, she permitted her daughter to give to the newspapers the story of how during the Civil War, she had crossed a river near her then home, at Ellenboro, West Va. on the logs of a lumber jam.
Her exploit was not actuated by adventure. No-Susan was not like that. She had serious things to think of-for two years she had heard no word from her husband, a sharp-shooter in the Union Army. Finally there came a telegram to the post-office. It was the nearest post-office but it was
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20 miles away. Many a time Susan had risen at dawn, done her farm work and walked the 20 miles in rain.
This time there was news. Her husband, wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg, was in the hospital at Grafton. "Condition serious." Susan Taylor did not need the admonition-"Come at once."
She left her little daughter with her parents, started for the river on the other side of which she must take the train for Grafton.
But no boat could cross the river, it was full of lumber jams. Nobody was crossing. But the bumping, bucking logs did not stop young Mrs. Taylor. Eliza's feat had nothing on Susan's.
She leaped to the nearest vantage point; to the next; to the next and in this way skipping from log to log, she crossed the river. She arrived at the hospital safely, reached her husband's side-
No, he did not die. He recovered sufficiently to serve other soldiers in the hospital to the end of the war. Susan herself became a nurse. She was hospital cook as well. Her skill in both services helped to restore many a sick and suffering soldier.
She became "Aunt Susan" and the saga of her marvelous journey across the dancing logs of a lumber jam was passed from cot to cot throughout the big war hospital.
CHAPTER FOUR
Women Who Stepped Outside
CHAPTER FOUR
WOMEN WHO STEPPED OUTSIDE
The total female population of the present area of Ohio in 1800-three years before it entered the Union, was approximately 15,000. The total female population in 1930 (last Federal Census) was 3,285.556.
This total represented an increase of 15.4%, as compared with the total female population of 1920. A commensurate increase as from 1930 to 1940 would show a total female population for Ohio of 3,768,389.
In 1930 the number of Ohio women working in all classifications-totaled 539,606. An increase of 15% were this estimate justified, would make this total 619,546 for 1940. But since indications do not point to a total increase but on the contrary, to a possible falling off in female employment since 1930, it seems best to accept, as the closest estimate of female employment in Ohio at the present writing-March, 1939-the following group totals, which are as of 1930.
Women Clergymen (of Ohio)
212
Authors
826
Artists 1,005
Actors 578
Agriculturalists
8,064
Extracting Minerals (Inspectors)
44
66 Manufacturing and Mechanics
15,688
Trades
60,897
Public Service
1,045
Dentists
63
Designers
292
Lawyers, Judges and Justices
221
Musicians
4,711
Physicians
360
Teachers
42,468
66
Musicians
15,342
66
Domestic and Personal Service 157,898
66 Clerical Occupations 115,646
So now let us see what these Ohio women now employed outside the home. are doing; what their fore-runners did to pave the way; and what their Ohio sisters whose civic, social, educational and welfare service has been volunteer and part time, have been able to accomplish.
It would be hard to find a more intriguing story than that of REBECCA GALLOWAY of Green County, as this story of the near-bride of the great
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Tecumseh, Indian Chief, is told by VIRGINIA COOLEY, of Columbus, in the Ohio Nurses Review. It says in part-For the duration of a moon, at least, the fate of many Americans, British and Indians, later lost in the bloody wars of 1812-13, was suspended on the slender thread of romance between a pioneer girl and the great Indian chief, Tecumseh.
Rebecca Galloway was six in 1798 when her father brought his family to live in Greene County after the Greenville Treaty had made the Ohio frontier safe for settlers. James Galloway was influential among his neighbors, and trusted by the Indians. For many years, Tecumseh was a frequent visitor in the household, which charmed him with its gracious ways-family prayers, grace before meals, and all the courtesies and conveniences of affluent pioneer living.
A pretty, blue-eyed studious girl, Rebecca was often Tecumseh's com- panion. She taught him a splendid command of English and read to him from the Bible and Shakespeare. He particularly admired Hamlet, and was enthralled with the magnificent phrases intoned by Rebecca's voice. He gave her a little birch canoe and many lovely trinkets, including a silver comb. When she was sixteen, the tall, stately, copper-skinned chieftain, then more than twenty years her senior, asked her father for permission to marry her. James Galloway wisely left the decision to Rebecca. When she received Tecumseh's dignified proposal, she was naturally flattered; she had been honored by one whom she greatly admired, who was a rising power among his people, a man of destiny. His tribe, however, was polygamous, and Rebecca did not fancy herself as a squaw. When Tecumseh removed these objections, the girl promised to give him her answer on his next visit.
After his departure, the full import of the alliance occurred to the family. Tecumseh had long discussed the grievances of his people with them ; he had confided to James Galloway his desire for a great protective con- federation of all the tribes, that would save them from being cheated at the hands of the white men. War clouds were already rising in the north and west. If Tecumseh's statesmanship could be diverted toward peace under Rebecca's inspiration, the catastrophe might be averted.
When Tecumseh returned, Rebecca selected a lovely spot on the river and took him there in her canoe. She consented to be his wife if he would adopt the white man's mode of living and defend his principles. For a long time Tecumseh was silent. He would return, he said, in the next moon, with his decision. At that time he told her he could not turn from his people without losing their respect and his influence among them.
He left the Galloway home with mutual expressions of friendship. During the next few years Tecumseh pledged the separate tribes to a concerted effort for defense against white invasion. He fell in the Battle of the Thames in 1813. Rebecca married George Galloway from Pennsylvania and lived, it seems, quite happily ever after.
CHAPTER FIVE
Women In Education And Scientific Research
CHAPTER FIVE
OHIO WOMEN IN EDUCATION Introduction By EVANGELINE LINDSLEY (Executive Board Member, Ohio Education Association)
Teaching was the first professional occupation that took women of Ohio outside their homes. The first woman teacher of the state on record is BATHSHEBA ROUSE, daughter of John and Rebecca Rouse, who came from New Bedford, Mass. She taught at Belpre (a community which later became part of the state of Ohio) during the summer of 1790. For several subsequent summers she taught at Farmers Castle. Her schools included both boys and girls and the one at Belpre is believed to have been the first establishment for the edu- cation of white children within the present limits of Ohio.
In the almost 150 years between then and now, 167,527 different women, it is estimated, have devoted a large part of their time, often their entire working lives, to the education of other women's children. This estimate is derived from an aggregate of 1,675, 269 teacher years, by assuming that women teachers have averaged a service of ten years each. The figures include public and parochial schools, colleges and universities of the state.
It is estimated that the number of different pupils educated in the schools of Ohio since the beginning of statehood totals 11,774,827. This is on the basis of 82,423,790 pupil years, divided by seven, on the assumption that pupils have averaged, during the entire period, about seven years in school. This average is regarded as probably a little high, so that this a conservative estimate of the total number of different children who have been educated in the schools of Ohio.
Today we have 30,175 women employed in the public schools of Ohio, about 463 in private schools, about 3,642 in Catholic and other parochial and religious schools and approximately 862 in Ohio col- leges and universities.
The modern school is no place for temporary workers. On the contrary, teaching is a highly specialized business for which years of
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professional training are only one of the essentials. The average woman teacher of Ohio has a Bachelors Degree or is working toward it. Thousands are working for or have received their Masters Degree. Many have Doctorates.
Even so, successful teaching demands much more. It demands insight, kindliness, imagination, tolerance, courage, good health, a sense of humor, a personal hunger for knowledge and a constant urge to share this knowledge.
Women teachers of Ohio believe that these demands are justified. They believe this because they believe also that an efficient and en- lightened public school system is vital to the preservation of our free and democratic institutions-that good citizenship and good govern- ment cannot be achieved and maintained without sound public edu- cation.
We believe that the public school is in reality the foundation stone of our democracy and that the world does move forward, in good truth, "on the feet of little children."
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The Spirit of Eduration
I am the Spirit of Education.
I was conceived ere man beheld the miracle of the first dawn or marveled at the glory of the first sunset.
On the mystic banks of the Nile I dreamed when Egypt rose and flourished and decayed.
By the waters of the Tigres and Euphrates I walked with Babylonian and Chaldean and Assyrian, with Mede and Persian.
I beheld the pastoral Hebrew tending his flocks and herds on the purpling hills and in the silent vales of Canaan.
I solve the mysteries of the stars; I reveal the secrets of ocean depths. My habitat is land and sky and sea.
I know no nation, no race, no creed.
I am the Spirit of Education.
I am an envoy of the Prince of Peace.
I am an embassador of good will.
My offspring are the mighty planes whose motors sing among the stars; the marvelous feats of engineering; electricity, in whose magnetic grasp lies the power of life and death; structural miracles of stone and steel rearing their majestic heads toward the skies; radio, that makes as one the secluded hamlet and the busy marts of the world; science; invention; discovery; art; literature; music-such music as is rivaled only by the singing spheres-these are my offspring.
I open to childhood the magic byways of imagery, that in years to come he may walk the broad highroads of achievement.
In an era of unparalleled significance in the annals of history, I make articulate the increasingly complex role of youth.
I attune the minds of men and women to an appreciation of the in- herent value of living in a day like today. I bring to them au awareness of the high privilege of standing at the crossroads of the centuries and beholding the moving pageantry of human achievement.
I am the Spirit of Education.
-ESTELLE H. WILSON, Cincinnati, O.
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WOMEN OF OHIO
PIONEER TEACHERS OF THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY FIRST SCHOOL IN HAMILTON COUNTY
John Riley (also spelled Reily) a Revolutionary War soldier originally from North Carolina, taught the first school in Hamilton County (second county established in Ohio). Riley opened his school on June 21, 1790 and took as his associate, in 1791, another Revolutionary and Indian war soldier, Francis Dunlevy, a young man of such determination that despite the hard- ships of military life, he made time for study, acquired a classical education and fitted himself, in general, for what developed into highly important and distinguished service. Both Riley and Dunlevy had come to Columbia (now part of Cincinnati, Ohio, then the earliest settlement in Hamilton County) with the original group of 18 or 20 pioneers who arrived November 18, 1788 and laid out their village on the Ohio River, just below the mouth of the Little Miami.
Dunlevy later became a member from Hamilton County of the first constitutional convention, was elected a member of the first Ohio Legislature in 1803 and when the state judiciary was organized, he was appointed pre- siding judge of the first circuit. It is said that Judge Dunlevy was responsible for a very candid letter to Thomas Jefferson (then president of the U. S.) which removed General Arthur St. Clair from the governorship of the North- west Territory and established General William Henry Harrison in his place.
Dunlevy undoubtedly deserves that all these fine things be stated about him-but not in "Women of Ohio" unless there happened to be a lady in the case.
There was. Her name, before she married her first husband, James Carpenter, of New Jersey, was MARY CRAIG, born on the voyage of her parents from Scotland to America, in 1765. Mary had brave part, at her first home, Elizabethtown, N. J., in the Revolutionary War. She is said to have been highly skillful in "running" bullets for the Continental soldiers and equally so in nursing the wounded, comforting the dying. Mary was exactly the sort of person, when her husband suggested accompanying the first party setting out for the Symmes purchase, at the mouth of the Little Miami, to reply "Certainly, why not?"
And when Carpenter succumbed to the hard labor of clearing and build- ing their pioneer home, Mary was the sort of woman that knew how to carry on. There were children, of course. Two of them. Her cabin was outside of the blockhouse but she insisted on remaining there. She had dug a small cavern beneath the puncheon floor of her home. By lifting a loose piece of the flooring, she could hide the children. She managed a sort of bed for
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them in their safety dungeon and whenever there seemed special danger, she would sit up all night, watching.
Once the savages came, but they found the cabin door barred so securely that they went elsewhere, for speedier-and safer-depredations.
This brings us back to the establishment of Hamilton County's first school at Columbia, by John Riley with Dunlevy as his assistant. Did the clever, capable and cultured young educator fall in love with the brave, resourceful and attractive widow? He did. They did. They were married and there is no question but what the ability and prestige of his wife helped the husband to many of the successes which they shared.
ELIZABETH HARPER was employed in 1802 to teach the first school in northeastern Ohio, near what is now Unionville.
Elizabeth's pedagogical training was probably meager enough, she cer- tainly could not have qualified for a degree in a teacher's college of today. But she had what it took in her time. When her mother, realizing what hardships and privations her daughter was undergoing, wanted to send Elizabeth back to Pennsylvania, the girl refused point blank. Who would grind the wheat for the family? They had managed to bring some sacks of the precious grain with them. It was Elizabeth's special job to walk two miles with a peck of wheat, grind it, carry home the meal and make it into bread.
The small mill was owned by the community. It could grind but a bushel of wheat each day and three other families used it. Women did the grinding. The men were felling lumber, building, ploughing, hunting-or fighting.
After Elizabeth had taught school one winter, Abraham Tappan was appointed to the position. This did not bother Elizabeth because she also taught at the school from time to time. Besides, she married Tappan.
ANNA SPOFFORD, daughter of Major Amos Spofford, taught the first school opened at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1802. The school was held in the log cabin of Major Lorenzo Carter. Just about everything of consequence seems to have been sponsored, directly or indirectly, by this hardy pioneer, who came from Rutland, Vermont with the first settlers of the Western Reserve. The first ball ever given in Cleveland took place in 1801 the year before the school started. Of course it was held at the Carter cabin. They danced the double shuffle, scamper-down, western swing and half moon-and washed the dances down with honey sweetened whiskey.
Remember that the pioneer fathers of the Northwestern Territory were a husky and, in many instances, hard bitten lot. They drank heavily, swore heartily, knew nothing of the toothbrush and did not have to-a man, when he became a man, wore a beard. The boys were fathers to the men. They admired them, emulated them, imitated them.
Unquestionably it was raw material with which the pioneer mother and pioneer woman teacher had to deal. But there was one thing in her favor.
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This was the clause in the Northwest Territory Ordinance of 1787 which says, "Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."
They believed in education, these, for the most part, scantily educated men. Scantily, that is, if we apply the standard of what constitutes a fair education today. But are we, perhaps, somewhat too cocksure of our edu- cational "norms"? Many educators of authority seem to be stressing the belief that the purpose of education is to teach us how to live and that all the knowledge in the encyclopedias will not avail their possessor, should he or she fail to adjust education to life itself.
Men and women who built the foundation of what is now the educational program of the State of Ohio-long one of the best of the entire country --- knew little or nothing of educational psychology as it is crystalized and formulated today. But they knew, intuitively and instinctively, that edu- cation is something that must be used, as well as enjoyed. So they set to work with determination to acquire and to impart such knowledge as was within the academic scope of their day and age.
In this the early teachers of Ohio were decidedly in advance of the average village schoolmaster or schoolmistress of their day and age. The basis for pedagogic selection throughout New England was still, to a large extent, not special fitness but general unfitness.
The characteristic "dame school" was taught by a woman who had already failed to obtain what was then regarded as woman's first objective in life-a husband. The average male teacher of a little school is typified by Washington Irving's "Ichabod Crane"- inefficient - disappointed - out of touch with his own time-No, the early Ohio teacher was not one who had already failed in other lines of human endeavor.
On their part, Ohio pioneers realized that education to become general, must have general support. They approved heartily the first step in this direction in the contract made by Congress with the Ohio Company, whereby "Section 36" of every township was to be set aside for the support of schools. This provision was the beginning of public contribution to public education in what later was to become the State of Ohio. It was made 40 years before public education was really established.
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