It Happened Here -- The Physicians wore Petticoats

In the Fall semester of 1847 the faculty of the Geneva Medical School was confronted with a situation that had them in an uproar. A prestigious Philadelphia physician, Dr. Joseph Warrington   had recommended a candidate for admission to the medical college. Normally, such a recommendation would have been greeted with a sanguinary acceptance, both as it held forth the promise of gaining an excellent student, and because it flattered the college that it, as a small, upstate medical school should merit the confidence of an such an important physician.  But there was a problem--the candidate was a woman!  No woman in modern times had become a physician. Victorian morality generally frowned upon gentlewomen working outside the home, and in polite society, people were scandalized by the notion of a women studying the human body, examining patients and treating diseases. It would not be until the Civil War with its horrific medical demands, that women would  be commonly recruited even for nursing duties, outside of the home.

The faculty were loathe to offend Dr. Warrington by rejecting his candidate but could not imagine a woman at their institution, so touting the virtues of "republicanism" they offered to accept Elizabeth Blackwell as a student if the entire 129 all-male student body voted to accept her. When the vote was proposed to them, the "boys" treated the proposition with hilarity. Many thought it was a hoax, dreamt up by a rival medical school; others realized it for what it was, a ploy to shift responsibility for rejecting the candidate, because she was a woman, from the faculty to the student body.  So, whether in an act of high spirits to go along with the "joke", or in an act of the defiance, refusing to do the faculty's dirty work, the students unanimously voted to accept Miss Blackwell.*

Park Place, Geneva

Gradually with studied seriousness, modesty, tremendous determination, and a keen intellect, the newest student won the respect of her fellow students.  The school itself was transformed as the ribald humor and general disorderliness in lectures was curtailed in the presence of this young women.  Even the physician-faculty were inspired to greater professionalism.  At the end of two years Elizabeth Blackwell was awarded her degree, passing every course with honors and finishing at the head of her class.**

Elizabeth would continue to be challenged by a skeptical profession that was reluctant to employ her and by an incredulous public that was reluctant to accept her. To complete her residency she was forced to seek employment in Paris at La Maternite, a hospital that normally trained midwives. It was there that an accident intervened to prevent Elizabeth from pursuing her goal to become a surgeon. While treating a child with an infected eye some of the infected material splashed into her own eye. Her eye became so inflamed she lost sight in it and eventually had to have it removed. Later she worked in London before returning to the United States to establish her own practice. With her sister Emily (the 3d woman in the U.S. to receive a medical degree) and Dr. Marie Zakrzewka, a German woman physician,  she opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Within a decade it also had become a medical college offering training and medical clinical experience for women doctors and nurses entering the profession.

Church Street, Cortland

A few years after Elizabeth Blackwell received her degree in Geneva, NY,  Lydia Strowbridge received a medical degree in Cortland.  Unlike Dr. Blackwell who traveled to London and Paris and established her practice in New York City,  Dr. Strowbridge worked doggedly to establish herself in her own community, serving women and children.  In later years she became an outspoken advocate of a women's right to vote, traveling to conferences at Seneca Falls and heading the Women's Rights movement in Cortland.



*A lone student attempted to reject her but was forcefully prevailed upon by the others to change his vote.

**Even then, some of the faculty questioned if they needed to confer a degree upon her, but other faculty members came to her defense, reminding them she had paid her tuition, and completed all the required coursework with honors, and threatened that if they refused to matriculate her they would go to the medical journals and report their colleagues duplicity.

Marker of the Week -- 

With its quaint nickname, this little
stone cottage along along the
Hudson (Rte 9G, Clermont) looks
like it could have stepped out
of the pages of Knickerbocker's 
History of New York from the
Beginning of the World to the End
 of the Dutch Dynasty, ostensibly
 written by Washington Irving                   

Wait-- do I see old Deidrich K. skulking
around back there among the trees?

It Happened Here --In Precarious Positions, Part III*

(Isabella in Ulster)

Nineteenth century antebellum New York placed many blacks in "precarious positions."  Charles Nalle, born into slavery in the South, and escaped to New York and freedom a few years before the Civil War had his freedom nearly taken away from him by slave catchers operating under the U.S. Fugitive Slave Act.  Solomon Northrup, born a free black man, had his freedom stolen from him by a pair of kidnappers, nearly two decades before. And Isabella, a slave women battered physically and emotionally by domestic slavery in New York State, in the first decades of the nineteenth century would gradually forge a new identity for herself as New York incrementally freed its slaves, confirming her freedom, but keeping her children in bondage.

Isabella was born a slave to the wealthy Col. Johannes Hardenberg, one of seven he owned, around 1797.  Her parents were Betsey and James "Baumfree," nicknamed in Dutch, "the tree" due to his tall and lean physique. She would inherit these traits from her father. Isabella was the next to youngest of ten or twelve children. Most of the children had been sold away but she would hear the stories told by her parents of her siblings lost to them.  After Colonel Hardenberg died his son Charles kept Isabella, her parents and other slaves in the damp cellar of a hotel he ran until he died in 1806 when Isabella was sold off at age 9 with a herd of sheep for $100.

                " Sojourner Truth
             179? - 1883 Born into 
         Slavery in Swartekill, Then            marker on Ulster Co. Rte 25, Rifton  
        Hurley, She Rose to Become
            A Famous Orator and
         Champion of Human Rights "
               --George Pataki, Governor 

Isabella was purchased by a Kingston store owner and importer of West Indies goods, near the port on Roundout Creek, where it empties into the Hudson River. Growing up in a Dutch speaking household, Isabella could speak only Dutch.  When she didn't understand her new owner's orders, he regularly beat her. Two years later she was sold to a fisherman and tavern keeper, Martinus Schryer in what became Port Ewen. There she hoed his garden, carried fish and hauled jugs of spirits from the port to the tavern.

Rte 9W and River Rd, Port Ewen

"Isabella"

"Jug Tavern" River Rd. Port Ewen

In 1810 Schryvers sold Isabella for $105 to John Dumont, a fellow parishioner of the Klyne Esopus Reformed Dutch Church who lived a few miles south of Schryver.

      Coincidentally, this church replaced an older  church where Schryver and Dumont were members,  the year New York's slaves were freed

Isabella worked as a farm laborer for Dumont, plowing, hoeing and reaping, and he praised her for her hard work. Some biographers believe he may have sexually abused her. His wife disliked Isabella and may have sexually abused Isabella as well. Characteristically, she adored Dumont and when he "married" her off to Tom, one of his older slaves, after several years she expressed feelings of pride of having borne five children that increased her master's property.

Beginning in 1799, New York began planning for the emancipation of its slaves.  More concerned with the economic impact emancipation would have on slave owners, than the effect it might have on the families of enslaved blacks, the State enacted a phased emancipation. Slaves born before 1799 would be freed on July 4, 1827; Slaves born after 1799 but before 1817 would be "free" but would serve their masters as "indentured servants" for 21 years after 1827; Slaves born after 1817 and before 1827 would have to serve 25 years as "indenture servants".**

Several years before the 1827 emancipation date Dumont promised Isabella and Tom if they continued to work hard up to July 4, 1826 he would free them then-- a year early; but 9 months before the 1826 date Dumont reneged on his promise.  Isabella was incensed.  Working extra hard, to accomplish all the work she thought she would owe him in the extra year, she walked away from Dumont's farm on her promised release date, carrying the infant daughter she was still nursing. Tom, fearing to go, stayed behind to care for the other children who still faced years of indentured servitude. 

From a Quaker friend Isabella was given the name of a couple known to be opposed to slavery.  Issac and Maria Van Wagenen in the ancient Dutch community of Wagendaal gave her sanctuary and when Dumont came looking for her they worked out a settlement with him.  They would pay him $20 for her year's services, and $5 for the baby and she would repay them, working as their housekeeper. Isabella took their last name as her own, calling herself Isabella Van Wagenen.

Van Wagenen homes in Wagendaal

Wagendaal
On This Farm is Home of
Jacob Aarsten van Wagenen
Built 1669, First Settler
And Home of Johannes
Van Wagenen, Built 1775

State Education
Department 1932

                                                                           

Monument outside of the Ulster County Court

While living with her new employers, Isabella heard her 5 year old son, Peter, had been sold or given by John Dumont to the neighboring Gedney family and they had sold him to one of their kin who had taken him to Alabama.  Isabella was outraged, especially when she learned the new emancipation law prohibited slave owners from selling or taking their slaves or "indentured" children out of state to circumvent the law. She sought the advise of some Quaker friends who drove her to the Ulster County Court, in Kingston to present her case to the Grand Jury.  Unescorted, the illiterate former slave resolutely marched in and accosted the first man she determined appeared "grand" enough to be part of the jury.  Probably astounded and amused, he directed her to the Grand Jury room and they concluded she had a case.  Next, she hired a lawyer and his partner, by agreeing to work as his housekeeper. The lawyers pressured Dumont and the Gedney's to get Isabella's son returned to Ulster County, by threatening them with prosecution and the heavy fines provided for under the new law. But Gedney resisted summonses to bring the boy into court. As the months dragged on and her lawyers appeared unwilling or unable to compel her former owner's friend to appear in court with her son,  Isabella sought out a new lawyer who agreed to work for free but asked for $5 to engage a man to compel Gedney and her son to appear. Isabella took off walking to return to the Quaker community to go door to door to solicit donations. Soon she had the $5 and more, but refused to keep the surplus,  telling her lawyer "I only want my son.  If $5 will get him, more will surely get him."

Soon Gedney was in court with a small traumatized young boy who had been whipped and beaten from head to toe. He didn't recognize his mother and at first refused to go to her but the judge was affected and despite the law ordered the boy immediately released into the care of his mother.

Peter's trauma had lasting effects. As he grew he was constantly in trouble. He stole and gambled and whored and drank. He was supposed to be in navigation school but he didn't attend. Isabella got him a job as a coachman, but he pawned his livery. She got him a job as a lock tender on the new D&H canal, but he failed at that. In desperation she got him a job on a whaling ship. Two years later the ship returned, but her son was not on board. She never heard from him again!

D&H Canal locks where Peter briefly worked

Locks entering the Roundout Creek

While Isabella was with the Van Wagenens, and in Kingston, she was  growing in assertiveness, learning to present herself in public, and learning, if not to read books, to "read people." At the same time, her new employers encouraged her to attend Methodist meetings/prayer sessions.  Early Methodism, unlike the Methodism of modern times was expressive, estatic, and evangelical.  Isabella's life with the VanWagenens was comfortable, but somewhat boring and she missed drinking, carousing, smoking and dancing with her former slave friends. When John Dumont came by the Van Wagenen's household she almost begged him to take her back, but was overcome by indecision, and guilt and she experienced a powerful conversion experience in which she believed she felt God's presence. Isabella felt a calling to preach. She began ministering in her own social circles.  By 1829 she had decided to leave Ulster County for New York City and new challenges to express her new faith. It would not be until 1843 she would leave New York City as a traveling evangelist, and adopt a new name for herself, "Sojourner Truth"; and it would be fully two decades before she became the mature orator and advocate for Women's Rights and the nationwide abolition of slavery for which she became famous.

 
 *Part I on 3/31/13 concerned Charles Nalle in Troy and Part II on 4/7/13 concerned Solomon Northrup from Saratoga.  Both of those posts  can be brought up by scrolling to those dates on the column on the right.

**For anyone who has done NYS income taxes, or participates in a NYS employees Tier-ed retirement system, do you detect a familiar resonance, even if the substance is foreign?




Marker of the Week --This week, (April 1st) is our main holiday dedicated to the promulgation of silliness (though, New Years Eve comes in a close second). In its honor,  I offer you this historic marker.  It is one of a group of historical ho-hum-ers marking the boundaries between towns, that seemed to have been especially popular in Columbia and Dutchess Counties.

 








Now, if you feel compelled to visit this historic shrine (as apparently I was) It is located at the intersection of Dutchess Co. Rte 199 and --

Happy Holiday!

It Happened Here -- The "Lily"

Amelia Jenks, like a surprising number of her sisters and brothers in the social reform movements that swept through America in the first 60 years of the 19th century had been born and raised in central New York.  This area had been host to so many pentecostal type religious reform movements and fiery  traveling religious speakers that it became known as the "burned over" district. While these preachers' central message had been that individuals could save their souls by accepting Jesus Christ, implicit in that message was the notion that individuals through their personal actions and choices could improve their lives, reform their society, and create in a small measure, a heaven on earth. It was this notion that inspired the girl from Homer, New York, and so many of her contemporary central New Yorkers.

In 1830 Amelia married Dexter Bloomer, a lawyer, and they moved to Seneca Falls,  New York where he edited a newspaper the Seneca Falls County Courier. Though Amelia had only two years of formal education she was soon regularly contributing to his paper. Active in her church, she became involved in the Seneca Falls Ladies Temperance Society in 1848. Americans had been heavy drinkers since the earliest colonial times, with homemade low alcohol beers providing a safe alternative to often fetid and disease laden water available to early settlers, but the post-revolutionary war era saw the rise in popularity of much higher alcohol content—distilled beverages, bourbons and rye whiskeys. Widespread inebriation had become a social problem, having the greatest impact on women and their families. She would write,

“Intemperance is the great foe of her (women's) peace and happiness. It is that above

all that has made her House desolate and beggared her offspring....Surely she has the

right to wield her pen for its suppression.”

The Lily, a newspaper for 'home distribution' was started by members of the Ladies Temperance Society in1849 but by 1850 Amelia Jenks Bloomer would be its sole editor. One of its early contributors would be Elizabeth Cady Stanton, writing under the pen name “Sunflower”. Before long the Lily would be addressing not only temperance issues but issues about child bearing and education, women's rights and fashion, becoming a forerunner of modern publications for women—Ladies Home Journal, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Oprah and many more. Beginning with a circulation of 500, by its final year of publication in 1853 it was being distributed to 6000 people.

The same year Amelia joined the temperance society, she attended, as an observer, the First Women's Rights Convention, in Seneca Falls. Women's Rights became an increasing focus of the Lily. In 1851 she introduced Susan B. Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton facilitating a partnership that would span decades and be the driving force in the Women's Movement in the 19^th century.

Also in 1851 Elizabeth Smith Miller visited her cousin Elizabeth Cady Stanton. There she met Amelia Bloomer. Mrs Miller was a women's rights activist and the daughter of Gerritt Smith, a leading abolitionist from Peterborough New York, near Rochester. She was also an advocate of women's clothing reform. The fashions and mores of women's dress in the mid-19th century dictated that women wear floor length, billowing dresses with up to fifteen pounds of petticoats underneath and tightly corseted waists, often strengthened with stays of whalebone.  Hot and fatiguing, such costumes, the women agreed, were  a considerable health and safety hazard.  Trips and falls were a constant threat especially for women attempting to negotiate stairways with children or arm loads of laundry. Such dresses dragged in the street, bringing all sorts of filth home with them and around hot stoves and open hearths they could be a menace.  The women believed the tight corsets. besides being extremely uncomfortable might be leading to a variety of health problem.

At their meeting, Elizabeth Smith Miller wore a costume inspired by middle eastern women's costumes, with a loose blouse, a short skirt and underneath, a pair of light loose pants,

fastened at the ankles.  Both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia made their own versions of this outfit and Amelia began to enthusiastically promote dress reform in the Lily,  even supplying patterns to interested readers.  The New York Tribune picked up her articles and soon her clothes were the center of a storm of controversy with clergymen and male social commentators weighing in against “the Bloomer Costume” and the most controversial part of the outfit, the baggy pantaloons or “Bloomers.” Ridiculed by male opinion leaders, and condemned for undercutting the patriarchy of the family, or even being sinful the fashion was abandoned by most member of the women's rights movement who saw it as a distraction from their main cause of Women's Rights. Amelia persisted until 1859 when she too abandoned the fashion announcing the advent of crinoline petticoats and other changes made current fashions less objectionable. 

In 1853 Amelia moved with her husband to Mount Vernon Ohio, where she continued to publish her paper. The following year she sold the Lily when the couple moved again to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where there were no facilities to have the paper printed, but she remained a contributing editor .
Amelia Bloomer continued to be involved in Women's and other social causes throughout the rest of her life.

Marker of the Week -- Winners and Losers

Rte. 32,  Greenville

It is easy to forget that the American Revolution was actually America's first Civil War  with an estimated 1/3 of all Americans supporting the Crown; or that this nation that earned a reputation for accepting all sorts of political refugees was extremely reluctant to accept back the loyalists who had supported the mother country against the revolutionaries.
The displacement of people was extensive and widespread with every town seeing properties "abandoned" and realizing the necessity of having courts set up to dispose of "abandoned" properties.  Prejudices persisted. Thus on this sign, Benjamin Spees is held up as something of a pioneer, for occupying the home of a (nameless) Tory.