USA > Ohio > Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state, Volume II > Part 34
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That this recognition, when and if it came, seemed to strengthen, not weaken, personal ties and to increase, not decrease, personal re- sponsibilities, is the final impression gained by this research in this special field of literary achievement.
Ohio women writers enjoyed in some instances, notable careers. Few, if any, became careerists.
Of none is this more true than it is of the woman who held and perhaps will always hold the all time record for success of a single book-the woman novelist whose name still leads all the rest, Harriet Beecher Stowe. In recognition of this great achievement, we waive alphabetic order to the extent of placing her story first.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE was born in 1811, in Litchfield, Conn., but nobody is likely to dispute Ohio's claim to nearly twenty years of her life, the years which provided material for "Uncle Tom's Cabin". In its influence on human history this novel is said to have been exceeded by only one other book, the Bible.
Literary, political, historical and sociological authorities have often taken issue from their varied viewpoints, with this unique piece of work. They have criticized the characterization, the technique, the political implications and the historic facts, as set forth in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Doubtless with good reason. It was written by the mother of six children, who started it with a baby on her knee and all the cares of a minister's wife in the immediate foreground. It had no sanction of cold and careful research, no statistical studies, no streamlined stylization. To these and other excellencies many novels by other authors can lay just claim.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" changed-that is, did most to change-an entire economic system. Yet it is doubtful if its author knew-as we know today- what an economic system meant.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" caused-that is, did most to cause-a major war, still classed, because of its intensively internecine nature, as the most terrible
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civil war in history. Yet it would have been hard to find a gentler, tenderer, more sympathetic woman than Harriet Beecher Stowe.
More-this novel, written out of the fullness of a woman's heart and the force of her indignation with the phases of human slavery which came under her personal observation during the years she lived in Cincinnati-from 1832 to 1850-outsold in its day, every other book ever written by an American.
It was translated into more than 30 foreign languages. This was true at the time of no other book in the world except the Bible-a record which probably still stands.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" accomplished its purpose-of arousing public in- dignation to the evils of negro slavery-far beyond the wildest hopes of the woman who wrote it in the "leisure" permitted her by six children, a pro- fessor husband and a professor's household.
It lit the moral fires that burnt out an immoral human institution, one fortified, moreover, by the power of great wealth and great social prestige.
Let us look closer at the woman who did this thing. Let us satisfy our- selves as to the fact that her 20 years residence in Ohio caused her to write what many-this editor among them-still regard as the most important novel ever written by any woman, of yesterday or today.
When Harriet Beecher was 21 years old she came to Cincinnati with her father, the Rev. Lyman Beecher, a Congregational minister born in New Haven, Conn. His eloquence and power, enlisted in the cause of all that was good and against all that was evil, as he saw good and evil, had attracted wide attention. Lane Theological Seminary had been established on Walnut Hills, then the outskirts of Cincinnati. Strong financial support was pledged to this new religious training center provided Dr. Beecher was made president. So he was appointed and came west, bringing his family with him. Dr. Beecher married three times and had, in all 13 children. Of these seven sons became clergymen, very notably Henry Ward Beecher, said to have been the greatest pulpit orator of his day.
Each of Dr. Beecher's four daughters inherited the strong literary and sociological strain that distinguished this great American family. But no one seems to have considered Harriet as clever, in her youth at home. as. for instance, her sister CATHERINE BEECHER who for a time headed a female seminary.
In 1833, a year after her family settled in Cincinnati, Harriet Beecher made a visit to Kentucky, in the course of which she had opportunity of observing more than one slave plantation. She pushed her inquiries as best she could-undoubtedly her father, strongly anti-slavery, was able to help her with many tragic details. Meanwhile there had been danger of a mob attack on Lane Seminary by pro-slavery sympathizers. Only the muddy roads, deep with clay, saved it. But the board of trustees got worried-they ruled
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that there must be no discussions on slavery. Dr. Beecher was away at the time or this could hardly have happened. Many of the student body left Lane Seminary because of this ruling. But it's an ill wind that blows no good. Oberlin College, it is said, owes its early impetus to this withdrawal from Lane Seminary.
All these things deeply impressed Harriet Beecher, despite other import- ant matters on her mind. For in 1836 she married Calvin E. Stowe, a professor at Lane Seminary and during the ensuing dozen years, six children centered responsibility.
But in 1850 something very terrible happened. The Fugitive Slave Act, which required citizens of FREE states to AID in catching and in returning escaped slaves, became the law of the land. This was too much for Harriet Beecher Stowe.
That same year her husband joined the faculty of Bowdoin College and the whole Stowe family moved to Brunswick, Me. But this did not stop Harriet. Nothing could have stopped her then. She began writing all the material she had gathered while living on the slave states border, into one book. It's name was "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and it was published in 1852.
The great highlight of the story-Eliza's escape over the ice-Mrs. Stowe had obtained right in Cincinnati. Levi Coffin, known wherever slavery was talked of as "president" of the "Underground Railway" was the original of "Simeon Holliday" benevolent Quaker who helped "Eliza" and little "Harry" make their getaway.
Of Levi Coffin and his wife Catherine other characteristic stories are told in another chapter of this history. Except for a few details, most of the story of Eliza Harris' escape and the circumstances back of it have been validated. Henry Howe, in his Historical Collections, gives that portion of the Ohio River between Ripley, Ohio and the Kentucky shore as the scene of the exploit, dramatized, probably, more than any portion of any novel ever written.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote other stories, some of them rated, from the technical and literary point of view, much higher than "Uncle Tom's Cabin". She was, without question a facile and able fictionist, her "Dred, A tale of the Dismal Swamp" would alone have established this.
But quibblings over the quantity and quality of literary skill possessed by the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin' seem a trivial and tiresome waste of time.
She had what it took.
She had what it took to tell the world that, exaggerated or not exag- gerated, general or local, the evil of a system which placed the entire life of one human being altogether within the power of another human being, was an intolerable evil. That humans, all fallible, however fine, were not adequate to such responsibility and certainly not entitled to it by purchase of the bodies of other humans.
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Several other gifted women have written cleverly and convincingly on ante bellum and post bellum themes. They have stressed strongly evils at- tendant on emancipation. They have told their stories well and, in their immediate application, truly.
But the story that this mother of six children told the world had in it, although fiction, a deep and basic truth, inseparable and undisputable. It can never be untold.
MAY ALLREAD BAKER
MAY ALLREAD BAKER, writer and poet of Lewisburg, has had verse articles and short stories published in national magazines and journals.
Miss Baker was awarded a prize in 1938, which appeared in a leading farm magazine and was widely reprinted.
She has completed her first non-fiction book and has another in the making.
EMMA S. BACKUS
EMMA S. BACKUS could and probably should be listed as literary first aid to her city and fellow citizens. Even before her first full length novel "The Career of Dr. Weaver" was published, Cincinnatians had gotten into the habit of calling on her for expert assistance in presenting to the public civic and social enterprises to which her literary and dramatic skill gave color and vitality.
"Dr. Weaver", based on the author's own experiences as private secre- tary of a famous physician, soon ran into 10,000, was listed as a best seller in Cincinnati and soon brought the author advance contracts for two more books. "Rose of Roses" and "A Place in the Sun".
This was fine for Emma Backus, the writer. But for Mrs. Henry Backus. wife of a Cincinnatian deeply interested in the progress of the city and active in numerous movements for public health, social welfare and civic betterment, it was not so good, for Mrs. Backus shared her husband's interests so deeply and lent her talent to public movements so enthusiastically that there seemed never a moment when she was not involved in one such project or another.
Then again there were the Backus children. And the Backus home, "Belfry Lodge", rebuilt from an old school house in the restoration of which a real community interest was aroused. This led to other civic undertakings. There must be a community center in which this re-awakened interest could be kept alive, broadened and intensified.
Even so, Emma Backus managed to make time for creative writing that revealed an unusual gift for revivifying history as well as a strong bent for painstaking and accurate historical research.
Long before the Sesquicentennial Celebration of the Northwest Territory was projected, Mrs. Backus had centered interest of innumerable readers on
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various characters of this period, notably George Rogers Clark, whose services to his country she pictured in numerous stories, articles and plays.
"The Border Line" a full length play with this historic theme, was featured in a radio program during the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial. When the one hundredth anniversary of Cincinnati's city charter was celebrated, Mrs. Backus wrote the pageant. When a committee of Kentucky tobacco growers, with the late Robert Bingham, former ambassador to England, as chairman, wanted a pageant, Emma Backus wrote "The Princess of the Pool". Then there were operettas, "Twilight Alley" with music by Paul Bliss, "The Singing Soul", a Chinese play adapted from Lafcarie Hearne's "The Bell" and a brochure "Cornelius Sedam and His Friends" written for the Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society.
Sandwiched in between such writing were-and are-civic duties, club duties, family duties. Time-there is never enough of time. But there never was. That the hurried and harassed life of today was not shared by men and women of yesterday is one of the mistaken notions about our forebears which Mrs. Backus has helped, through her research, to disclose. Men and women who do things have always been the men and women with too many things to do. So all that is really important-and this is perhaps the heart of the philosophy of Emma Backus- is just to keep on doing.
REBEKAH COLLIDGE BERGER
REBEKAH COLLIDGE BERGER, wife of F. L. Berger, a professor of mathematics and science in Ohio Northern University, is a writer of excellent poems, many of them thought compelling, for instance :
LET ME GROW TIRED "Toil is sweet: let me grow tired- Let me look on a task well done, At close of day :- no eve more blest. When God gave Eve and Adam toil, 'Twas a blessing they knew not of- A home, a love, to compensate- Sweet hours of rest when tired."
Ada, Ohio-Dec. 7, 1938 -Rebekah Berger.
FLORENCE SCOTT BERNARD
FLORENCE SCOTT BERNARD (Mrs. Ebbert L. Bernard), Toledo writer, was born at Clyde, Ohio the daughter of Frank and Dora Scott. She attended Toledo University, was married to Ebbert Louis Bernard in 1906 and was for a period treasurer of the Toledo Writers Club. Mrs. Bernard is author of "Through the Cloud Mountain", "Diana of Briarcliffe" and of short stories published in national magazines. Her home is at 4014 Wetzler Rd., Toledo, O.
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SUSIE M. BEST
When one thing is remembered out of thousands forgotten, be sure that there is good reason for this indelible impression. Nearly 25 years ago atten- tion of the writer of this biography was challenged by a Christmas poem given a two page display in the then leading literary monthly of the country.
The poem "Miracle Dreams" was signed with a name then virtually unknown except to the fellow teachers of SUSIE M. BEST in the Cincinnati public schools. It ran-
That night when in Judean skies The mystic Star dispensed its light, A blind man stirred him in his sleep, And dreamed him he had sight.
That night when shepherds heard the song Of hosts angelic hovering near,
A deaf man stirred in slumber's spell And dreamed him he could hear.
That night when in the cattle stall Slept Child and Mother cheek by jowl,
A cripple turned his twisted limbs, And dreamed him he was whole.
That night when o'er the new-born Babe The tender Mary rose to lean,
A loathsome leper smiled in sleep And dreamed him he was clean.
That night when to his Mother's breast The little King was held secure, A harlot slept a happy sleep And dreamed her she was pure.
That night when in the manger lay The Sanctified who came to save, A man moved in the sleep of death And dreamed there was no grave.
And did recognition of the gifts which enabled Miss Best to write with such beauty and simplicity cause her to abandon her work as teacher? Not at ill. For to Susie Montgomery Best what seemed most important, then and how, was not appreciation by grown ups of her own poetry but appreciation
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by children of the classic stories of the ages, told and retold, but not, she felt, in such fashion as to grip the interest and fire the imagination of the average child.
This had become, to a large extent, her special work as teacher in the upper primary grades in various schools, notably at Dyer School, where her "story telling" technique was given opportunity for development. Stories of early English history-Miss Best is herself a direct descendant of that Earl Robert Montgomery who fought with William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings-stories of early Egypt and early Greece and early Rome -these came to fit so definitely and practically into the teaching of good English to children that presently there came a real demand for their publication.
Four volumes were gotten out by a leading firm of publishers and presently these were followed by another, "Steer for New Shores." All these are now widely used as supplementary readers in schools throughout the country. They brought with them numerous requests for lectures and for articles in national and educational magazines and juvenile publications.
The demand for her literary work grew and finding it impossible to continue both writing and teaching she gave up her regular school work, with which, however, she has remained in close touch. Miss Best finally found time to get out a volume of verse, "Altar Candles." It is quite a slender volume but all the more impressive for this reason.
It would be hard to find a more searching question than is deftly asked in the two short stanzas of the final poem, "The Riddle":
"We met upon the windy ways A new born soul was she And I was one whose light was blown- Seeking eternity.
I gave her hail. She cried God speed ; She said, 'How sad to die'; I smiled, 'It's sadder to be born' AND NEITHER ONE KNEW WHY."
Miss Best has been awarded many prizes in poetry contests and is an active member of the National League of American Penwomen, of the Cincinnati Women's Press Club, of the Greater Cincinnati Writers League and of various civic and educational organizations.
SUSIE M. BEST poet and former teacher, Cincinnati
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KATHERINE K. BURTON
KATHERINE K. BURTON (Mrs. Harry Payne Burton), author of "Sor- row Built a Bridge," one of the 1938 best fiction sellers, was born in Cleveland and graduated in 1909 from the College for Women, now Flora Stone Mather College. She was married in 1910 to Harry Payne Burton.
Katherine Burton has been assistant, later associate, editor of McCalls Magazine, assistant editor of the Red Book and is now one of the staff of editors of "The Sign."
She has written many articles, poems and stories for leading magazines.
LILLIAN CAHEN
LILLIAN CAHEN (Mrs. E. B. Zevin), editor and assistant secretary- treasurer of the World Syndicate Publishing Company, of Cleveland, was born in that city, the daughter of Alfred and Charlotte Cahen.
She is a writer of children's stories, the author of "Best Baby Book" and "My Pets"; also of articles on related topics. Her home is at 2818 Washington Boulevard, Cleveland Heights.
LILY B. CAMPBELL
LILY B. CAMPBELL, nationally known authority on Shakespeare, was born in Ada, Ohio. She was the daughter of the Presbyterian minister, Z. B. Campbell.
Her mother, Anna Barrington Campbell, who came to Ada as a bride in 1882, is still remembered for her social grace and civic helpfulness. She organized the Presbyterian Missionary society in the local church, and was a charter member of the Current Events Club.
Dr. Campbell is a full time Professor of English in the University of California at Los Angeles, since 1922. She had previously been Dean of Women and English teacher in the University of Wisconsin.
She lectures in the English Departments of many colleges.
Among her published works are "Scenes and Machines of English Stage," 1923. "These Are My Jewels," 1929. "Shakespeares Tragic Heroes," 1930, and numerous monographs on "History of the Theatre."
ALICE AND PHOEBE CARY
If two famous sisters, ALICE and PHOEBE CARY, could have known before they died that their father's big brick farm house at Mt. Healthy- about eight miles from the heart of Cincinnati-was one day to become the now widely known Clovernook Home for the Blind, it would probably have reconciled them to what was their greatest early hardship.
Their problem, when they began writing, Alice in her early twenties, Phoebe a few years younger, was how to obtain light for their literary labors.
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These had to wait, of course, until nightfall. Their days must be devoted to household work, there was lots to do in the big house-which still stands as center of the Clovernook structures-and besides, for girls to waste their time in writing and such like fol-de-rol would have been wicked nonsense in the opinion of their stepmother. She meant no harm, many good housewives of that era felt that way.
Robert Cary, father of the Cary sisters, who came to Ohio from New Hampshire in 1803, may have felt differently but could probably do little about it. His first wife, Elizabeth Jessup, had herself definite literary tastes and doubtless encouraged her young daughters. But she died in 1835, when Alice was 17 and Phoebe only 13 years. And two years later the father married again.
But the "Cary Sisters" were not easily daunted. When their stepmother held out on candles, they improvised ways and means-a saucer full of lard, with a bit of rag for a wick, was better than nothing.
Alice began writing verse at 18 years of age. What's more, her poems found publication promptly. They were printed in newspapers of Cincinnati, in the "Ladies Repository" of Boston and the "National Era" of Washington.
What's still more, the poems were read-and by no lesser literary lights than John Greenleaf Whittier and Edgar Allan Poe. Whittier wrote to the Cary girls, told them how excellent was the note of simplicity and how metrical the rhythmic beauty of their work. And Poe, then at the heighth of his fame, pronounced Alice Cary's "Pictures of Memory" to be "One of the most musically perfect lyrics of our language."
So literature flourished despite lack of candle-power and in 1852 Alice realized that the time had come to really do things about it. She went to New York and presently Phoebe joined her. They established themselves in a modest home, where, however, they could presently hold "Sunday Eve- nings." All went well-too well-perhaps. For Alice had never been very strong and presently she fell sick, an illness prolonged for years.
Phoebe nursed her-how tenderly there are no words to tell. And although she herself was by nature of robust health, she sickened after her sister's death-in 1871-and Phoebe followed Alice Cary within five months.
Phoebe was fortunately very sure of what she would find on the other side of the dark river. Her assurance rings triumphant in one of her most famous poems-for she too, had a real gift. This poem was set to music- you can hardly ruffle the pages of a good hymn book today without finding it. The poem says :
"One sweetly solemn thought Comes to me o'er and o'er I'm nearer home today, today Than I have been before."
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"Nearer my Father's house Where the great mansions be Nearer the great white throne Nearer the crystal sea."
MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
Luray, Ohio, was the birthplace and home during her youth of MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD, whose fame as writer of historical tales of Canada and the great Northwest became widespread in the Nineties. She was born in 1847 and died in 1902, when her stories were at the height of their well deserved vogue. Among them were "A Woman in Armour"; "The Romance of Dollard"; "The White Islander"; "A Story of Mackinac" and "Lazarre."
CHARLOTTE REEVE CONOVER
Writer, lecturer and historian of many phases of Dayton's life, CHAR- LOTTE REEVE CONOVER has been a familiar figure in this city for many years. She was born at Dayton in 1855, a daughter of Dr. J. C. and Emma (Barlow) Reeve, and acquired her preliminary education in the Dayton schools. Following her graduation from Central High School in 1874, she continued her studies at Geneva, Switzerland, and after her return to America she married Frank Conover.
Mrs. Conover is well known as a contributor to various magazines and as a lecturer on many platforms. From 1909 to 1912 she conducted two departments of the Ladies Home Journal. She has been on the staff of Dayton newspapers on several occasions, serving for three years as editor of the woman's page of the Dayton News and for four years at different times she has been a special writer of the Dayton Journal. Her contributions to the Sunday edition of the Daily News are entitled Mrs. Conover's Corner. She is the author of many published volumes, including among others: "The Story of Dayton," "Concerning the Forefathers," "Some Dayton Saints and Prophets," and a number of monographs and pamphlets of historical interest. Her largest work is "Dayton, Ohio and Intimate History." Another which she has in preparation is a story of Dayton for use in schools, entitled "Builders in New Fields," being a contribution to the great Northwest, with especial recognition of several members of the Patterson family in Ken- tucky and Ohio. She has letters of appreciative recognition of her work from Booth Tarkington and others distinguished in the field of letters.
As a lecturer, Mrs. Conover is best known for her weekly talks on current events given in Ohio cities and on the Pacific coast. She is regarded as an authority on the history of the Dayton section of Ohio. Her interests, however, have not been purely historical. After four years of research in libraries of the United States and France, she prepared a series of five in-
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terpretive lectures on the great French dramatist Moliere. These she has given at Brooklyn Institute, Western College for Women, at Oxford, at the Western Reserve University and at Mills College in California, the Chautauqua Assem- bly in New York and in many other higher educational institutions, in private schools, at clubs and in homes in various American cities.
Mrs. Conover has traveled widely and in 1904 spent a summer at the Cours de Vacances of the University of Geneva, Switzerland, studying French language and literature, but most of all she has made a definite donation to cultural progress in her native city of Dayton and the state in which she has always resided.
MARY BEATRICE CORWIN
MARY BEATRICE CORWIN (Mrs. Edward M. Corwin), Cincinnati, writer and editor, was born at Eddyville, Kentucky, the daughter of David Strauss and Anna Maria Holman; graduated from the Xenia High School; took special studies at Antioch College; at Cooper Institute, Dayton and at the National Normal University, Lebanon, Ohio.
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