The Women of the Suffrage Movement. Jane Addams
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dog sprung fiercely upon her. Her screams brought out the family and she was taken into the house, where it was found the only injury was a large piece bitten out of the new Scotch plaid cloak which she had gone to meeting on purpose to exhibit. The affair created considerable excitement, Mr. and Mrs. Anthony were very indignant, and it ended in the father's making a "request" that his children be made members of the Society, which was done.
Daniel Anthony was by nature a broad, progressive man, and his family were not brought up according to the strictest and narrowest requirements of Quaker doctrine; while his wife, remembering the liberal teachings of her Universalist father and her own girlish love of youthful pastimes, went still further in making life pleasant for the children. Through her influence the daughters secured many a pretty article of wearing apparel, and, when there was a party whose hours were later than the father approved, the mother managed to have them spend the night with girls in the neighborhood.
When the family first moved to Battenville the children went to the little old-fashioned district school taught by a man in winter and a woman in summer. None of the men could teach Susan "long division" or understand why a girl should insist upon learning it. One of the women maintained discipline by means of her corset-board used as a ferule. As soon as Mr. Anthony finished the brick store he set apart one room upstairs for a private school, employed the best teachers to be had and admitted only such children as he wished to associate with his own. When the new house was built a large room was devoted to school purposes. This was the first in that neighborhood to have a separate seat for each pupil, and, although only a stool without a back, it was a vast improvement on the long bench running around the wall, the same height for big and little. The girls were taught sewing as carefully as reading and spelling, and Susan was noted for her skill with the needle. A sampler is still in existence which she made at the age of eleven, a fine specimen of needle-work with the family record surrounded by a wreath of strawberries all carefully wrought in crewels. There is also a bedquilt, the pieces sewed together with the fine "over-and-over" stitch, and there are ruffles hemmed with stitches so tiny they scarcely can be distinguished. An early teacher was a cousin, Nancy Howe,1 who was followed by another cousin, Sarah Anthony, a graduate of Rensselaer Quaker boarding-school. Among the teachers was Mary Perkins, just graduated from Miss Grant's seminary at Ipswich, Mass., and a pupil of Mary Lyon, founder of Mt. Holyoke. She was their first fashionably educated teacher and taught them to recite poems in concert, introduced school books with pictures, little black illustrations of Old Dog Tray, Mary and Her Lamb, etc., and gave them their first idea of calisthenics. She loved music, and wished to attend the village singing-school. Lucy Anthony sympathized with this desire and interceded for her, but Daniel decided it would be setting a bad example to the children and they would be wanting to sing.2
Into this commodious home Lucy Anthony brought her aged father and mother, and carefully tended them until the death of both within the same year, aged eighty-four. In May, 1834, came the first great sorrow, the death of little Eliza, aged two years, and the mother was heart-broken. Her life was centered in her children, and she could not be reconciled to giving up even one. After her own death, nearly fifty years later, in her box of most sacredly guarded keepsakes, was found a little faded pink dress of the dear child's which many times had been moistened with the mother's tears.
The children continued to attend this private school, and as Guelma and Susan reached the age of fifteen, each in turn was installed as teacher in summer when there were only young pupils. The factory now was at the height of prosperity; there was only one larger in all that part of the country, and Daniel Anthony was looked upon as a wealthy man. He was much criticised for allowing his daughters to teach, as in those days no woman worked for wages except from pressing necessity; but he was far enough in advance of his time to believe that every girl should be trained to self-support. In 1837, writing to Guelma at boarding-school, he urges her to accept the offer of the principal to remain through the winter as an assistant:
I am fully of the belief that shouldst thou never teach school a single day afterwards, thou wouldst ever feel to justify thy course.... Thou wouldst seem to me to be laying the foundation for thy far greater usefulness. Thy remaining through the winter, must, however, be left solely to thyself, as it would be of little avail for thee to stay and not be contented. Thy home, Guelma, is just the same as when thou left it, and shouldst thou decide to spend the winter months away, we will try to keep it the same until thy return in the spring. Let me know if thou canst be content to remain away a few months longer from thy mother's kitchen.
In the winter of 1837, at the age of seventeen, Susan taught in the family of Doris and Huldah Deliverge, at Easton, a few miles from Battenville, for $1 a week and board. The next summer she taught a district school at the neighboring village, Reid's Corners, for $1.50 a week and "boarded round," and proud was she to earn what was then considered excellent wages for a woman. In the fall she joined Guelma at boarding-school. The little circular, yellow with age, reads:
DEBORAH MOULSON, having obtained an agreeable location in the pleasant village of Hamilton, in the vicinity of Philadelphia, intends, with the assistance of competent Teachers, to open immediately a Seminary for Females....
Terms, $125 per annum, for boarding and tuition....
The inculcation of the principles of Humility, Morality and a love of Virtue, will receive particular attention.
This was Susan's first long absence from home, and her letters and journals give a good idea of the thoughts and feelings of a girl at boarding-school in those days. She developed then the "letter-writing habit," which has clung to her through life. The letters of that time were laborious affairs, often consuming days in the writing, commencing even to children, "Respected Daughter," or "Son," and rarely exceeding one or two pages. They were written with a quill pen on foolscap paper, and almost wholly devoted to the weather and the sickness in the family. The amount of the latter would be appalling to modern households. The women's letters were written in infinitesimal characters, it being considered unladylike to write a large hand. The Anthonys were exceptional letter-writers. It cost eighteen cents to send a letter, but Daniel Anthony was postmaster at Battenville, and his family had free use of the mails. If he had had postage to pay on all of homesick Susan's epistles it would have cost him a good round sum. The rules of the school required these to be written on the slate, submitted to the teacher and then carefully copied by the pupil, so it is not unusual to find that a letter was five or six days in preparation. For the same reason it is impossible to tell how much sincerity there is in the frequent references to the "dear teacher" and the "most excellent school." The "stilted" style of Susan's letters is most amusing.3 A few extracts will illustrate:
I regret that Brothers and Sisters have not the privilege of attending a school better adapted to their improvement, both in Science and Morality; surely a District School (unless they have recently reformed) is not an appropriate place for the cultivation of the latter, although in the former they may make some partial progress. Deborah has not determined to relinquish this school, although she has not yet ascertained whether the income from it will be equal to the expenditures; but if it should continue I shall have a wish for Hannah and Mary to attend; as I think another one can not be named so agreeable on all accounts as is Deborah Moulson's at Hamilton.
One may imagine that Susan got several credit marks when her teacher corrected this on the slate. The lecturer on philosophy and science came up from Philadelphia, and Susan tells her parents that "he is quite an interesting man," and that "his lecture on Philosophy was far more entertaining than I had dared to anticipate." Of the science lecture she says:
He had a microscope through which we had the pleasure of viewing the dust from the wings of a butterfly, each minute particle of which appeared as large as a common fly. He mentioned several very interesting circumstances; but I must defer particularizing them until I can have the privilege of verbally communicating them to my dear friends at Battenville. Guelma joins with me in wishing love distributed to all.
Again she writes:
Beloved Parents: The second Seventh day of my short stay in