Produced by Mike Lough
THE STORY OF A PIONEER
By Anna Howard Shaw, D.D., M.D.
With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan
TO THE WOMEN PIONEERS OF AMERICA
They cut a path through tangled underwood
Of old traditions, out to broader ways.
They lived to here their work called brave and good,
But oh! the thorns before the crown of bays.
The world gives lashes to its Pioneers
Until the goal is reached--then deafening cheers.
Adapted by ANNA HOWARD SHAW.
CONTENTS
I. FIRST MEMORIES
II. IN THE WILDERNESS
III. HIGH-SCHOOL AND COLLEGE DAYS
IV. THE WOLF AT THE DOOR
V. SHEPHERD OF A DIVIDED FLOCK
VI. CAPE COD MEMORIES
VII. THE GREAT CAUSE
VIII. DRAMA IN THE LECTURE FIELD
IX. "AUNT SUSAN"
X. THE PASSING OF "AUNT SUSAN"
XI. THE WIDENING SUFFRAGE STREAM
XII. BUILDING A HOME
XIII. PRESIDENT OF "THE NATIONAL"
XIV. RECENT CAMPAIGNS
XV. CONVENTION INCIDENTS
XVI. COUNCIL EPISODES
XVII. VALE!
ILLUSTRATIONS
REVEREND ANNA HOWARD SHAW IN HER PULPIT ROBES
LOCH-AN-EILAN CASTLE
DR SHAW'S MOTHER, NICOLAS SHAW, AT SEVENTEEN
ALNWICK CASTLE
DR. SHAW AT THIRTY-TWO
DR. SHAW AT FIFTY
DR. SHAW AND "HER BABY"--THE DAUGHTER OF RACHEL FOSTER AVERY
DR. SHAW'S MOTHER AT EIGHTY
DR. SHAW'S FATHER AT EIGHTY
DR. SHAW'S SISTER MARY, WHO DIED IN 1883
LUCY E. ANTHONY, DR. SHAW S FRIEND AND "AUNT SUSAN'S"
FAVORITE NIECE
THE WOOD ROAD NEAR DR. SHAW'S CAPE COD HOME, THE HAVEN
DR. SHAW'S COTTAGE, THE HAVEN, AT WIANNO, CAPE
COD--THE FIRST HOME SHE BUILT
GATE ENTRANCE TO DR. SHAW'S HOME AT MOYLAN
THE SECOND HOUSE THAT DR. SHAW BUILT
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
MISS MARY GARRETT, THE LIFE-LONG FRIEND OF MISS THOMAS
MISS M. CAREY THOMAS, PRESIDENT OF BRYN MAWR COLLEGE
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT
LUCY STONE
MARY A. LIVERMORE
FOUR PIONEERS IN THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
FIREPLACE IN THE LIVING-ROOM, SHOWING AUNT
SUSAN'S" CHAIR
HALLWAY IN DR. SHAW'S HOME AT MOYLAN
DR. SHAW'S HOME (ALNWICK LODGE) AND HER TWO OAKS
THE VERANDA AT ALNWICK LODGE
SACCAWAGEA
ALNWICK LODGE, DR. SHAW'S HOME
THE ROCK-BORDERED BROOK WHICH DR. SHAW LOVES
THE STORY OF A PIONEER
I. FIRST MEMORIES
My father's ancestors were the Shaws of Rothiemurchus, in Scotland,
and the ruins of their castle may still be seen on the island of
Loch-an-Eilan, in the northern Highlands. It was never the picturesque
castle of song and story, this home of the fighting Shaws, but an
austere fortress, probably built in Roman times; and even to-day the
crumbling walls which alone are left of it show traces of the relentless
assaults upon them. Of these the last and the most successful were made
in the seventeenth century by the Grants and Rob Roy; and it was into
the hands of the Grants that the Shaw fortress finally fell, about 1700,
after almost a hundred years of ceaseless warfare.
It gives me no pleasure to read the grisly details of their struggles,
but I confess to a certain satisfaction in the knowledge that my
ancestors made a good showing in the defense of what was theirs. Beyond
doubt they were brave fighters and strong men. There were other sides to
their natures, however, which the high lights of history throw up
less appealingly. As an instance, we have in the family chronicles the
blood-stained page of Allen Shaw, the oldest son of the last Lady Shaw
who lived in the fortress. It appears that when the father of this
young man died, about 1560, his mother married again, to the intense
disapproval of her son. For some time after the marriage he made no open
revolt against the new-comer in the domestic circle; but finally, on the
pretext that his dog had been attacked by his stepfather, he forced a
quarrel with the older man and the two fought a duel with swords, after
which the victorious Allen showed a sad lack of chivalry. He not only
killed his stepfather, but he cut off that gentleman's head and bore it
to his mother in her bedchamber--an action which was considered, even in
that tolerant age, to be carrying filial resentment too far.
Probably Allen regretted it. Certainly he paid a high penalty for it,
and his clan suffered with him. He was outlawed and fled, only to be
hunted down for months, and finally captured and executed by one of the
Grants, who, in further virtuous disapproval of Allen's act, seized and
held the Shaw stronghold. The other Shaws of the clan fought long and
ably for its recovery, but though they were helped by their kinsmen, the
Mackintoshes, and though good Scotch blood dyed the gray walls of the
fortress for many generations, the castle never again came into the
hands of the Shaws. It still entails certain obligations for the Grants,
however, and one of these is to give the King of England a snowball
whenever he visits Loch-an-Eilan!
As the years passed the Shaw clan scattered. Many Shaws are still to be
found in the Mackintosh country and throughout southern Scotland. Others
went to England, and it was from this latter branch that my father
sprang. His name was Thomas Shaw, and he was the younger son of a
gentleman--a word which in those days seemed to define a man who devoted
his time largely to gambling and horse-racing. My grandfather, like his
father before him, was true to the traditions of his time and class.
Quite naturally and simply he squandered all he had, and died abruptly,
leaving his wife and two sons penniless. They were not, however, a
helpless band. They, too, had their traditions, handed down by the
fighting Shaws. Peter, the older son, became a soldier, and died bravely
in the Crimean War. My father, through some outside influence, turned
his attention to trade, learning to stain and emboss wallpaper by hand,
and developing this work until he became the recognized expert in
his field. Indeed, he progressed until he himself checked his rise by
inventing a machine that made his handwork unnecessary. His employer at
once claimed and utilized this invention, to which, by the laws of those
days, he was entitled, and thus the cornerstone on which my father had
expected to build a fortune proved the rock on which his career was
wrecked. But that was years later, in America, and many other things had
happened first.
For one, he had temporarily dropped his trade and gone into the
flour-and-grain business; and, for another, he had married my mother.
She was the daughter of a Scotch couple who had come to England and
settled in Alnwick, in Northumberland County. Her father, James Stott,
was the driver of the royal-mail stage between Alnwick and Newcastle,
and his accidental death while he was still a young man left my
grandmother and her eight children almost destitute. She was immediately
given a position in the castle of the Duke of Northumberland, and
her sons were educated in the duke's school, while her daughters were
entered in the school of the duchess.
My thoughts dwell lovingly on this grandmother, Nicolas Grant Stott, for
she was a remarkable woman, with a dauntless soul and progressive ideas
far in advance of her time. She was one of the first Unitarians in
England, and years before any thought of woman suffrage entered the
minds of her country-women she refused to pay tithes to the support of
the Church of England--an action which precipitated a long-drawn-out
conflict between her and the law. In those days it was customary to
assess tithes on every pane of glass in a window, and a portion of the
money thus collected went to the support of the Church. Year after year
my intrepid grandmother refused to pay these assessments, and year after
year she sat pensively upon her door-step, watching articles of her
furniture being sold for money to pay her tithes. It must have been
an impressive picture, and it was one with which the community became
thoroughly familiar, as the determined old lady never won her fight and
never abandoned it. She had at least the comfort of public sympathy, for
she was by far the most popular woman in the countryside. Her neighbors
admired her courage; perhaps they appreciated still more what she did
for them, for she spent all her leisure in the homes of the very poor,
mending their clothing and teaching them to sew. Also, she left behind
her a path of cleanliness as definite as the line of foam that follows
a ship; for it soon became known among her protegees that Nicolas Stott
was as much opposed to dirt as she was to the payment of tithes.
She kept her children in the schools of the duke and duchess until they
had completed the entire course open to them. A hundred times, and among
many new scenes and strange people, I have heard my mother describe her
own experiences as a pupil. All the children of the dependents of the
castle were expected to leave school at fourteen years of age. During
their course they were not allowed to study geography, because, in the
sage opinion of their elders, knowledge of foreign lands might make
them discontented and inclined to wander. Neither was composition
encouraged--that might lead to the writing of love-notes! But they were
permitted to absorb all the reading and arithmetic their little brains
could hold, while the art of sewing was not only encouraged, but
proficiency in it was stimulated by the award of prizes. My mother,
being a rather precocious young person, graduated at thirteen and
carried off the first prize. The garment she made was a linen chemise
for the duchess, and the little needlewoman had embroidered on it, with
her own hair, the august lady's coat of arms. The offering must have
been appreciated, for my mother's story always ended with the same
words, uttered with the same air of gentle pride, "And the duchess
gave me with her own hands my Bible and my mug of beer!" She never saw
anything amusing in this association of gifts, and I always stood behind
her when she told the incident, that she might not see the disrespectful
mirth it aroused in me.
My father and mother met in Alnwick, and were married in February, 1835.
Ten years after his marriage father was forced into bankruptcy by the
passage of the corn law, and to meet the obligations attending
his failure he and my mother sold practically everything they
possessed--their home, even their furniture. Their little sons, who were
away at school, were brought home, and the family expenses were cut down
to the barest margin; but all these sacrifices paid only part of the
debts. My mother, finding that her early gift had a market value, took
in sewing. Father went to work on a small salary, and both my parents
saved every penny they could lay aside, with the desperate determination
to pay their remaining debts. It was a long struggle and a painful one,
but they finally won it. Before they had done so, however, and during
their bleakest days, their baby died, and my mother, like her mother
before her, paid the penalty of being outside the fold of the Church of
England. She, too, was a Unitarian, and her baby, therefore, could not
be laid in any consecrated burial-ground in her neighborhood. She had
either to bury it in the Potter's Field, with criminals, suicides, and
paupers, or to take it by stage-coach to Alnwick, twenty miles away, and
leave it in the little Unitarian churchyard where, after her strenuous
life, Nicolas Stott now lay in peace. She made the dreary journey alone,
with the dear burden across her lap.
In 1846, my parents went to London. There they did not linger long,
for the big, indifferent city had nothing to offer them. They moved
to Newcastle-on-Tyne, and here I was born, on the fourteenth day of
February, in 1847. Three boys and two girls had preceded me in the
family circle, and when I was two years old my younger sister came. We
were little better off in Newcastle than in London, and now my father
began to dream the great dream of those days. He would go to America.
Surely, he felt, in that land of infinite promise all would be well with
him and his. He waited for the final payment of his debts and for my
younger sister's birth. Then he bade us good-by and sailed away to make
an American home for us; and in the spring of 1851 my mother followed
him with her six children, starting from Liverpool in a sailing-vessel,
the John Jacob Westervelt.
I was then little more than four years old, and the first vivid memory
I have is that of being on shipboard and having a mighty wave roll
over me. I was lying on what seemed to be an enormous red box under a
hatchway, and the water poured from above, almost drowning me. This was
the beginning of a storm which raged for days, and I still have of it a
confused memory, a sort of nightmare, in which strange horrors figure,
and which to this day haunts me at intervals when I am on the sea. The
thing that stands out most strongly during that period is the white face
of my mother, ill in her berth. We were with five hundred emigrants on
the lowest deck of the ship but one, and as the storm grew wilder an
unreasoning terror filled our fellow-passengers. Too ill to protect her
helpless brood, my mother saw us carried away from her for hours at a
time, on the crests of waves of panic that sometimes approached her
and sometimes receded, as they swept through the black hole in which
we found ourselves when the hatches were nailed down. No madhouse, I am
sure, could throw more hideous pictures on the screen of life than
those which met our childish eyes during the appalling three days of the
storm. Our one comfort was the knowledge that our mother was not afraid.
She was desperately ill, but when we were able to reach her, to cling
close to her for a blessed interval, she was still the sure refuge she
had always been.
On the second day the masts went down, and on the third day the disabled
ship, which now had sprung a leak and was rolling helplessly in the
trough of the sea, was rescued by another ship and towed back to
Queenstown, the nearest port. The passengers, relieved of their
anxieties, went from their extreme of fear to an equal extreme of
drunken celebration. They laughed, sang, and danced, but when we reached
the shore many of them returned to the homes they had left, declaring
that they had had enough of the ocean. We, however, remained on the ship
until she was repaired, and then sailed on her again. We were too poor
to return home; indeed, we had no home to which we could return. We were
even too poor to live ashore. But we made some penny excursions in the
little boats that plied back and forth, and to us children at least
the weeks of waiting were not without interest. Among other places we
visited Spike Island, where the convicts were, and for hours we watched
the dreary shuttle of labor swing back and forth as the convicts carried
pails of water from one side of the island, only to empty them into the
sea at the other side. It was merely "busy work," to keep them occupied
at hard labor; but even then I must have felt some dim sense of the
irony of it, for I have remembered it vividly all these years.
Our second voyage on the John Jacob Westervelt was a very different
experience from the first. By day a glorious sun shone overhead; by
night we had the moon and stars, as well as the racing waves we never
wearied of watching. For some reason, probably because of my intense
admiration for them, which I showed with unmaidenly frankness, I became
the special pet of the sailors. They taught me to sing their songs
as they hauled on their ropes, and I recall, as if I had learned it
yesterday, one pleasing ditty:
Haul on the bow-line,
Kitty is my darling,
Haul on the bow-line,
The bow-line--HAUL!
When I sang "haul" all the sailors pulled their hardest, and I had
an exhilarating sense of sharing in their labors. As a return for my
service of song the men kept my little apron full of ship sugar--very
black stuff and probably very bad for me; but I ate an astonishing
amount of it during that voyage, and, so far as I remember, felt no ill
effects.
The next thing I recall is being seriously scalded. I was at the foot
of a ladder up which a sailor was carrying a great pot of hot coffee. He
slipped, and the boiling liquid poured down on me. I must have had some
bad days after that, for I was terribly burned, but they are mercifully
vague. My next vivid impression is of seeing land, which we sighted at
sunset, and I remember very distinctly just how it looked. It has never
looked the same since. The western sky was a mass of crimson and gold
clouds, which took on the shapes of strange and beautiful things. To
me it seemed that we were entering heaven. I remember also the doctors
coming on board to examine us, and I can still see a line of big
Irishmen standing very straight and holding out their tongues for
inspection. To a little girl only four years old their huge, open mouths
looked appalling.
On landing a grievous disappointment awaited us; my father did not
meet us. He was in New Bedford, Massachusetts, nursing his grief and
preparing to return to England, for he had been told that the John Jacob
Westervelt had been lost at sea with every soul on board. One of the
missionaries who met the ship took us under his wing and conducted us
to a little hotel, where we remained until father had received his
incredible news and rushed to New York. He could hardly believe that
we were really restored to him; and even now, through the mists of more
than half a century, I can still see the expression in his wet eyes as
he picked me up and tossed me into the air.
I can see, too, the toys he brought me--a little saw and a hatchet,
which became the dearest treasures of my childish days. They were
fatidical gifts, that saw and hatchet; in the years ahead of me I was to
use tools as well as my brothers did, as I proved when I helped to build
our frontier home.
We went to New Bedford with father, who had found work there at his old
trade; and here I laid the foundations of my first childhood friendship,
not with another child, but with my next-door neighbor, a ship-builder.
Morning after morning this man swung me on his big shoulder and took
me to his shipyard, where my hatchet and saw had violent exercise as I
imitated the workers around me. Discovering that my tiny petticoats were
in my way, my new friend had a little boy's suit made for me; and thus
emancipated, at this tender age, I worked unwearyingly at his side all
day long and day after day. No doubt it was due to him that I did not
casually saw off a few of my toes and fingers. Certainly I smashed them
often enough with blows of my dull but active hatchet. I was very, very
busy; and I have always maintained that I began to earn my share of the
family's living at the age of five--for in return for the delights of my
society, which seemed never to pall upon him, my new friend allowed my
brothers to carry home from the shipyard all the wood my mother could
use.
We remained in New Bedford less than a year, for in the spring of
1852 my father made another change, taking his family to Lawrence,
Massachusetts, where we lived until 1859. The years in Lawrence were
interesting and formative ones. At the tender age of nine and ten I
became interested in the Abolition movement. We were Unitarians, and
General Oliver and many of the prominent citizens of Lawrence belonged
to the Unitarian Church. We knew Robert Shaw, who led the first negro
regiment, and Judge Storrow, one of the leading New England judges of
his time, as well as the Cabots and George A. Walton, who was the author
of Walton's Arithmetic and head of the Lawrence schools. Outbursts of
war talk thrilled me, and occasionally I had a little adventure of my
own, as when one day, in visiting our cellar, I heard a noise in the
coal-bin. I investigated and discovered a negro woman concealed there.
I had been reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, as well as listening to the
conversation of my elders, so I was vastly stirred over the negro
question. I raced up-stairs in a condition of awe-struck and quivering
excitement, which my mother promptly suppressed by sending me to bed. No
doubt she questioned my youthful discretion, for she almost convinced
me that I had seen nothing at all--almost, but not quite; and she wisely
kept me close to her for several days, until the escaped slave my father
was hiding was safely out of the house and away. Discovery of this
serious offense might have borne grave results for him.
It was in Lawrence, too, that I received and spent my first twenty-five
cents. I used an entire day in doing this, and the occasion was one of
the most delightful and memorable of my life. It was the Fourth of July,
and I was dressed in white and rode in a procession. My sister Mary, who
also graced the procession, had also been given twenty-five cents; and
during the parade, when, for obvious reasons, we were unable to break
ranks and spend our wealth, the consciousness of it lay heavily upon
us. When we finally began our shopping the first place we visited was a
candy store, and I recall distinctly that we forced the weary proprietor
to take down and show us every jar in the place before we spent one
penny. The first banana I ever ate was purchased that day, and I
hesitated over it a long time. Its cost was five cents, and in view of
that large expenditure, the eating of the fruit, I was afraid, would be
too brief a joy. I bought it, however, and the experience developed into
a tragedy, for, not knowing enough to peel the banana, I bit through
skin and pulp alike, as if I were eating an apple, and then burst into
ears of disappointment. The beautiful conduct of my sister Mary shines
down through the years. She, wise child, had taken no chances with the
unknown; but now, moved by my despair, she bought half of my banana,
and we divided the fruit, the loss, and the lesson. Fate, moreover, had
another turn of the screw for us, for, after Mary had taken a bite of
it, we gave what was left of the banana to a boy who stood near us and
who knew how to eat it; and not even the large amount of candy in our
sticky hands enabled us to regard with calmness the subsequent happiness
of that little boy.
Another experience with fruit in Lawrence illustrates the ideas of my
mother and the character of the training she gave her children. Our
neighbors, the Cabots, were one day giving a great garden party, and
my sister was helping to pick strawberries for the occasion. When I was
going home from school I passed the berry-patches and stopped to speak
to my sister, who at once presented me with two strawberries. She said
Mrs. Cabot had told her to eat all she wanted, but that she would eat
two less than she wanted and give those two to me. To my mind, the
suggestion was generous and proper; in my life strawberries were rare.
I ate one berry, and then, overcome by an ambition to be generous also,
took the other berry home to my mother, telling her how I had got it. To
my chagrin, mother was deeply shocked. She told me that the transaction
was all wrong, and she made me take back the berry and explain the
matter to Mrs. Cabot. By the time I reached that generous lady the berry
was the worse for its journey, and so was I. I was only nine years old
and very sensitive. It was clear to me that I could hardly live through
the humiliation of the confession, and it was indeed a bitter experience
the worst, I think, in my young life, though Mrs. Cabot was both
sympathetic and understanding. She kissed me, and sent a quart of
strawberries to my mother; but for a long time afterward I could not
meet her kind eyes, for I believed that in her heart she thought me a
thief.
My second friendship, and one which had a strong influence on my
after-life, was formed in Lawrence. I was not more than ten years old
when I met this new friend, but the memory of her in after-years, and
the impression she had made on my susceptible young mind, led me first
into the ministry, next into medicine, and finally into suffrage-work.
Living next door to us, on Prospect Hill, was a beautiful and mysterious
woman. All we children knew of her was that she was a vivid and romantic
figure, who seemed to have no friends and of whom our elders spoke in
whispers or not at all. To me she was a princess in a fairy-tale, for
she rode a white horse and wore a blue velvet riding-habit with a blue
velvet hat and a picturesquely drooping white plume. I soon learned at
what hours she went forth to ride, and I used to hover around our gate
for the joy of seeing her mount and gallop away. I realized that there
was something unusual about her house, and I had an idea that the prince
was waiting for her somewhere in the far distance, and that for the time
at least she had escaped the ogre in the castle she left behind. I was
wrong about the prince, but right about the ogre. It was only when my
unhappy lady left her castle that she was free.
Very soon she noticed me. Possibly she saw the adoration in my childish
eyes. She began to nod and smile at me, and then to speak to me, but at
first I was almost afraid to answer her. There were stories now among
the children that the house was haunted, and that by night a ghost
walked there and in the grounds. I felt an extraordinary interest in
the ghost, and I spent hours peering through our picket fence, trying
to catch a glimpse of it; but I hesitated to be on terms of neighborly
intimacy with one who dwelt with ghosts.
One day the mysterious lady bent and kissed me. Then, straightening up,
she looked at me queerly and said: "Go and tell your mother I did that."
There was something very compelling in her manner. I knew at once that I
must tell my mother what she had done, and I ran into our house and did
so. While my mother was considering the problem the situation presented,
for she knew the character of the house next door, a note was handed in
to her--a very pathetic little note from my mysterious lady, asking my
mother to let me come and see her. Long afterward mother showed it to
me. It ended with the words: "She will see no one but me. No harm shall
come to her. Trust me."
That night my parents talked the matter over and decided to let me go.
Probably they felt that the slave next door was as much to be pitied as
the escaped-negro slaves they so often harbored in our home. I made my
visit, which was the first of many, and a strange friendship began and
developed between the woman of the town and the little girl she loved.
Some of those visits I remember as vividly as if I had made them
yesterday. There was never the slightest suggestion during any of them
of things I should not see or hear, for while I was with her my hostess
became a child again, and we played together like children. She had
wonderful toys for me, and pictures and books; but the thing I loved
best of all and played with for hours was a little stuffed hen which she
told me had been her dearest treasure when she was a child at home. She
had also a stuffed puppy, and she once mentioned that those two things
alone were left of her life as a little girl. Besides the toys and books
and pictures, she gave me ice-cream and cake, and told me fairy-tales.
She had a wonderful understanding of what a child likes. There were half
a dozen women in the house with her, but I saw none of them nor any of
the men who came.
Once, when we had become very good friends indeed and my early shyness
had departed, I found courage to ask her where the ghost was--the ghost
that haunted her house. I can still see the look in her eyes as they
met mine. She told me the ghost lived in her heart, and that she did
not like to talk about it, and that we must not speak of it again. After
that I never mentioned it, but I was more deeply interested than ever,
for a ghost that lived in a heart was a new kind of ghost to me at
that time, though I have met many of them since then. During all our
intercourse my mother never entered the house next door, nor did my
mysterious lady enter our home; but she constantly sent my mother secret
gifts for the poor and the sick of the neighborhood, and she was always
the first to offer help for those who were in trouble. Many years
afterward mother told me she was the most generous woman she had ever
known, and that she had a rarely beautiful nature. Our departure for
Michigan broke up the friendship, but I have never forgotten her; and
whenever, in my later work as minister, physician, and suffragist, I
have been able to help women of the class to which she belonged, I have
mentally offered that help for credit in the tragic ledger of her life,
in which the clean and the blotted pages were so strange a contrast.
One more incident of Lawrence I must describe before I leave that city
behind me, as we left it for ever in 1859. While we were still there
a number of Lawrence men decided to go West, and amid great public
excitement they departed in a body for Kansas, where they founded the
town of Lawrence in that state. I recall distinctly the public interest
which attended their going, and the feeling every one seemed to have
that they were passing forever out of the civilized world. Their
farewells to their friends were eternal; no one expected to see them
again, and my small brain grew dizzy as I tried to imagine a place so
remote as their destination. It was, I finally decided, at the
uttermost ends of the earth, and it seemed quite possible that the brave
adventurers who reached it might then drop off into space. Fifty years
later I was talking to a California girl who complained lightly of the
monotony of a climate where the sun shone and the flowers bloomed all
the year around. "But I had a delightful change last year," she added,
with animation. "I went East for the winter."
"To New York?" I asked.
"No," corrected the California girl, easily, "to Lawrence, Kansas."
Nothing, I think, has ever made me feel quite so old as that remark.
That in my life, not yet, to me at least, a long one, I should see such
an arc described seemed actually oppressive until I realized that,
after all, the arc was merely a rainbow of time showing how gloriously
realized were the hopes of the Lawrence pioneers.
The move to Michigan meant a complete upheaval in our lives. In Lawrence
we had around us the fine flower of New England civilization. We
children went to school; our parents, though they were in very humble
circumstances, were associated with the leading spirits and the
big movements of the day. When we went to Michigan we went to the
wilderness, to the wild pioneer life of those times, and we were all old
enough to keenly feel the change.
My father was one of a number of Englishmen who took up tracts in the
northern forests of Michigan, with the old dream of establishing a
colony there. None of these men had the least practical knowledge
of farming. They were city men or followers of trades which had
no connection with farm life. They went straight into the thick
timber-land, instead of going to the rich and waiting prairies, and they
crowned this initial mistake by cutting down the splendid timber instead
of letting it stand. Thus bird's-eye maple and other beautiful woods
were used as fire-wood and in the construction of rude cabins, and the
greatest asset of the pioneers was ignored.
Father preceded us to the Michigan woods, and there, with his oldest
son, James, took up a claim. They cleared a space in the wilderness just
large enough for a log cabin, and put up the bare walls of the cabin
itself. Then father returned to Lawrence and his work, leaving James
behind. A few months later (this was in 1859), my mother, my two
sisters, Eleanor and Mary, my youngest brother, Henry, eight years of
age, and I, then twelve, went to Michigan to work on and hold down the
claim while father, for eighteen months longer, stayed on in Lawrence,
sending us such remittances as he could. His second and third sons, John
and Thomas, remained in the East with him.
Every detail of our journey through the wilderness is clear in my mind.
At that time the railroad terminated at Grand Rapids, Michigan, and
we covered the remaining distance--about one hundred miles--by wagon,
riding through a dense and often trackless forest. My brother James met
us at Grand Rapids with what, in those days, was called a lumber-wagon,
but which had a horrible resemblance to a vehicle from the health
department. My sisters and I gave it one cold look and turned from
it; we were so pained by its appearance that we refused to ride in it
through the town. Instead, we started off on foot, trying to look as if
we had no association with it, and we climbed into the unwieldy vehicle
only when the city streets were far behind us. Every available inch of
space in the wagon was filled with bedding and provisions. As yet we
had no furniture; we were to make that for ourselves when we reached
our cabin; and there was so little room for us to ride that we children
walked by turns, while James, from the beginning of the journey to its
end, seven days later, led our weary horses.
To my mother, who was never strong, the whole experience must have been
a nightmare of suffering and stoical endurance. For us children there
were compensations. The expedition took on the character of a high
adventure, in which we sometimes had shelter and sometimes failed
to find it, sometimes were fed, but often went hungry. We forded
innumerable streams, the wheels of the heavy wagon sinking so deeply
into the stream-beds that we often had to empty our load before we could
get them out again. Fallen trees lay across our paths, rivers caused
long detours, while again and again we lost our way or were turned aside
by impenetrable forest tangles.
Our first day's journey covered less than eight miles, and that night we
stopped at a farm-house which was the last bit of civilization we saw.
Early the next morning we were off again, making the slow progress due
to the rough roads and our heavy load. At night we stopped at a place
called Thomas's Inn, only to be told by the woman who kept it that
there was nothing in the house to eat. Her husband, she said, had gone
"outside" (to Grand Rapids) to get some flour, and had not returned--but
she added that we could spend the night, if we chose, and enjoy shelter,
if not food. We had provisions in our wagon, so we wearily entered,
after my brother had got out some of our pork and opened a barrel of
flour. With this help the woman made some biscuits, which were so green
that my poor mother could not eat them. She had admitted to us that
the one thing she had in the house was saleratus, and she had used this
ingredient with an unsparing hand. When the meal was eaten she broke the
further news that there were no beds.
"The old woman can sleep with me," she suggested, "and the girls can
sleep on the floor. The boys will have to go to the barn." She and her
bed were not especially attractive, and mother decided to lie on the
floor with us. We had taken our bedding from the wagon, and we slept
very well; but though she was usually superior to small annoyances, I
think my mother resented being called an "old woman." She must have felt
like one that night, but she was only about forty-eight years of age.
At dawn the next morning we resumed our journey, and every day after
that we were able to cover the distance demanded by the schedule
arranged before we started. This meant that some sort of shelter usually
awaited us at night. But one day we knew there would be no houses
between the place we left in the morning and that where we were to
sleep. The distance was about twenty miles, and when twilight fell we
had not made it. In the back of the wagon my mother had a box of little
pigs, and during the afternoon these had broken loose and escaped
into the woods. We had lost much time in finding them, and we were so
exhausted that when we came to a hut made of twigs and boughs we decided
to camp in it for the night, though we knew nothing about it. My brother
had unharnessed the horses, and my mother and sister were cooking
dough-god--a mixture of flour, water, and soda, fried in a pan-when two
men rode up on horseback and called my brother to one side. Immediately
after the talk which followed James harnessed his horses again and
forced us to go on, though by that time darkness had fallen. He told
mother, but did not tell us children until long afterward, that a man
had been murdered in the hut only the night before. The murderer was
still at large in the woods, and the new-comers were members of a posse
who were searching for him. My brother needed no urging to put as many
miles as he could between us and the sinister spot.
In that fashion we made our way to our new home. The last day, like the
first, we traveled only eight miles, but we spent the night in a house
I shall never forget. It was beautifully clean, and for our evening meal
its mistress brought out loaves of bread which were the largest we had
ever seen. She cut great slices of this bread for us and spread maple
sugar on them, and it seemed to us that never before had anything tasted
so good.
The next morning we made the last stage of our journey, our hearts
filled with the joy of nearing our new home. We all had an idea that we
were going to a farm, and we expected some resemblance at least to the
prosperous farms we had seen in New England. My mother's mental picture
was, naturally, of an English farm. Possibly she had visions of red
barns and deep meadows, sunny skies and daisies. What we found awaiting
us were the four walls and the roof of a good-sized log-house, standing
in a small cleared strip of the wilderness, its doors and windows
represented by square holes, its floor also a thing of the future, its
whole effect achingly forlorn and desolate. It was late in the afternoon
when we drove up to the opening that was its front entrance, and I shall
never forget the look my mother turned upon the place. Without a word
she crossed its threshold, and, standing very still, looked slowly
around her. Then something within her seemed to give way, and she sank
upon the ground. She could not realize even then, I think, that this was
really the place father had prepared for us, that here he expected us to
live. When she finally took it in she buried her face in her hands, and
in that way she sat for hours without moving or speaking. For the first
time in her life she had forgotten us; and we, for our part, dared not
speak to her. We stood around her in a frightened group, talking to one
another in whispers. Our little world had crumbled under our feet. Never
before had we seen our mother give way to despair.
Night began to fall. The woods became alive with night creatures, and
the most harmless made the most noise. The owls began to hoot, and
soon we heard the wildcat, whose cry--a screech like that of a lost and
panic-stricken child--is one of the most appalling sounds of the forest.
Later the wolves added their howls to the uproar, but though darkness
came and we children whimpered around her, our mother still sat in her
strange lethargy.
At last my brother brought the horses close to the cabin and built fires
to protect them and us. He was only twenty, but he showed himself a man
during those early pioneer days. While he was picketing the horses and
building his protecting fires my mother came to herself, but her face
when she raised it was worse than her silence had been. She seemed to
have died and to have returned to us from the grave, and I am sure she
felt that she had done so. From that moment she took up again the burden
of her life, a burden she did not lay down until she passed away; but
her face never lost the deep lines those first hours of her pioneer life
had cut upon it.
That night we slept on boughs spread on the earth inside the cabin
walls, and we put blankets before the holes which represented our doors
and windows, and kept our watch-fires burning. Soon the other children
fell asleep, but there was no sleep for me. I was only twelve years old,
but my mind was full of fancies. Behind our blankets, swaying in the
night wind, I thought I saw the heads and pushing shoulders of animals
and heard their padded footfalls. Later years brought familiarity with
wild things, and with worse things than they. But to-night that which I
most feared was within, not outside of, the cabin. In some way which I
did not understand the one sure refuge in our new world had been taken
from us. I hardly knew the silent woman who lay near me, tossing from
side to side and staring into the darkness; I felt that we had lost our
mother.
II. IN THE WILDERNESS
Like most men, my dear father should never have married. Though his
nature was one of the sweetest I have ever known, and though he would
at any call give his time to or risk his life for others, in practical
matters he remained to the end of his days as irresponsible as a child.
If his mind turned to practical details at all, it was solely in their
bearing toward great developments of the future. To him an acorn was not
an acorn, but a forest of young oaks.
Thus, when he took up his claim of three hundred and sixty acres of
land in the wilderness of northern Michigan, and sent my mother and
five young children to live there alone until he could join us eighteen
months later, he gave no thought to the manner in which we were to make
the struggle and survive the hardships before us. He had furnished us
with land and the four walls of a log cabin. Some day, he reasoned, the
place would be a fine estate, which his sons would inherit and in
the course of time pass on to their sons--always an Englishman's most
iridescent dream. That for the present we were one hundred miles from
a railroad, forty miles from the nearest post-office, and half a dozen
miles from any neighbors save Indians, wolves, and wildcats; that we
were wholly unlearned in the ways of the woods as well as in the most
primitive methods of farming; that we lacked not only every comfort, but
even the bare necessities of life; and that we must begin, single-handed
and untaught, a struggle for existence in which some of the severest
forces of nature would be arrayed against us--these facts had no weight
in my father's mind. Even if he had witnessed my mother's despair on the
night of our arrival in our new home, he would not have understood it.
From his viewpoint, he was doing a man's duty. He was working steadily
in Lawrence, and, incidentally, giving much time to the Abolition cause
and to other big public movements of his day which had his interest and
sympathy. He wrote to us regularly and sent us occasional remittances,
as well as a generous supply of improving literature for our minds.
It remained for us to strengthen our bodies, to meet the conditions in
which he had placed us, and to survive if we could.
We faced our situation with clear and unalarmed eyes the morning after
our arrival. The problem of food, we knew, was at least temporarily
solved. We had brought with us enough coffee, pork, and flour to last
for several weeks; and the one necessity father had put inside the cabin
walls was a great fireplace, made of mud and stones, in which our food
could be cooked. The problem of our water-supply was less simple, but
my brother James solved it for the time by showing us a creek a long
distance from the house; and for months we carried from this creek, in
pails, every drop of water we used, save that which we caught in troughs
when the rain fell.
We held a family council after breakfast, and in this, though I was only
twelve, I took an eager and determined part. I loved work--it has
always been my favorite form of recreation--and my spirit rose to the
opportunities of it which smiled on us from every side. Obviously the
first thing to do was to put doors and windows into the yawning holes
father had left for them, and to lay a board flooring over the earth
inside our cabin walls, and these duties we accomplished before we had
occupied our new home a fortnight. There was a small saw-mill nine miles
from our cabin, on the spot that is now Big Rapids, and there we bought
our lumber. The labor we supplied ourselves, and though we put our
hearts into it and the results at the time seemed beautiful to our
partial eyes, I am forced to admit, in looking back upon them, that they
halted this side of perfection. We began by making three windows and two
doors; then, inspired by these achievements, we ambitiously constructed
an attic and divided the ground floor with partitions, which gave us
four rooms.
The general effect was temperamental and sketchy. The boards which
formed the floor were never even nailed down; they were fine, wide
planks without a knot in them, and they looked so well that we merely
fitted them together as closely as we could and lightheartedly let them
go at that. Neither did we properly chink the house. Nothing is
more comfortable than a log cabin which has been carefully built and
finished; but for some reason--probably because there seemed always a
more urgent duty calling to us around the corner--we never plastered
our house at all. The result was that on many future winter mornings we
awoke to find ourselves chastely blanketed by snow, while the only warm
spot in our living-room was that directly in front of the fireplace,
where great logs burned all day. Even there our faces scorched while
our spines slowly congealed, until we learned to revolve before the fire
like a bird upon a spit. No doubt we would have worked more thoroughly
if my brother James, who was twenty years old and our tower of strength,
had remained with us; but when we had been in our new home only a few
months he fell and was forced to go East for an operation. He was never
able to return to us, and thus my mother, we three young girls, and my
youngest brother--Harry, who was only eight years old--made our fight
alone until father came to us, more than a year later.
Mother was practically an invalid. She had a nervous affection which
made it impossible for her to stand without the support of a chair. But
she sewed with unusual skill, and it was due to her that our clothes,
notwithstanding the strain to which we subjected them, were always in
good condition. She sewed for hours every day, and she was able to move
about the house, after a fashion, by pushing herself around on a stool
which James made for her as soon as we arrived. He also built for her a
more comfortable chair with a high back.
The division of labor planned at the first council was that mother
should do our sewing, and my older sisters, Eleanor and Mary, the
housework, which was far from taxing, for of course we lived in the
simplest manner. My brothers and I were to do the work out of doors, an
arrangement that suited me very well, though at first, owing to our lack
of experience, our activities were somewhat curtailed. It was too late
in the season for plowing or planting, even if we had possessed anything
with which to plow, and, moreover, our so-called "cleared" land was
thick with sturdy tree-stumps. Even during the second summer plowing was
impossible; we could only plant potatoes and corn, and follow the most
primitive method in doing even this. We took an ax, chopped up the sod,
put the seed under it, and let the seed grow. The seed did grow, too--in
the most gratifying and encouraging manner. Our green corn and potatoes
were the best I have ever eaten. But for the present we lacked these
luxuries.
We had, however, in their place, large quantities of wild
fruit--gooseberries, raspberries, and plums--which Harry and I gathered
on the banks of our creek. Harry also became an expert fisherman. We
had no hooks or lines, but he took wires from our hoop-skirts and made
snares at the ends of poles. My part of this work was to stand on a
log and frighten the fish out of their holes by making horrible sounds,
which I did with impassioned earnestness. When the fish hurried to the
surface of the water to investigate the appalling noises they had heard,
they were easily snared by our small boy, who was very proud of his
ability to contribute in this way to the family table.
During our first winter we lived largely on cornmeal, making a little
journey of twenty miles to the nearest mill to buy it; but even at that
we were better off than our neighbors, for I remember one family in our
region who for an entire winter lived solely on coarse-grained yellow
turnips, gratefully changing their diet to leeks when these came in the
spring.
Such furniture as we had we made ourselves. In addition to my mother's
two chairs and the bunks which took the place of beds, James made a
settle for the living-room, as well as a table and several stools. At
first we had our tree-cutting done for us, but we soon became expert in
this gentle art, and I developed such skill that in later years, after
father came, I used to stand with him and "heart" a log.