Response to Adam Turner's "Doing History in Public" on Nursing Clio blog

Jean Perry #

I loved this article, especially the links to “The Presence of the Past” and “Think Talk Make Do”. Reading just “The Book Introduction” link in The Presence of the Past was fascinating although i found the lack of comment about women’s connection to the past disappointing and telling. Were there no such responses from women about having connections to women in the past, whether to their families or at museums, reading history, etc? 

In one sense i can understand that, if it is true. I’m fortunate that various generations before me have extensive information about four Scotch-Irish brothers/ancestors who came to south central Pennsylvania in the early 1700′s and that my biological family has stayed in the area, so i know a lot about their environment and the history they lived through. Of course, i have no history about any of the women in their lives! It’s very frustrating. 

I also recognize that most people that the surveyors talked to probably know little women’s history unless they read some biographies, or the women were connected to men whom historians have written about – and lord knows that info has often not been factual! 

It still surprises me that as women’s history and women’s historical sites have been getting more attention since the 1970′s that there was only one place where the word “women” was mentioned in that explanation of how they interpreted the information from the surveys.

I found NC about six months ago and have loved it. Thank you for your initiation of this blog and for your time and expertise in sharing it with us. I have frequently shared some or all of it with friends who are feminists and some who have an interest in women’s history. I taught high school and then college history at various times in my life, but have been a reader about women in history since my sophomore year in high school – 50+ yrs ago. I have had women’s history as both a vocation and an avocation ever since. I was a founding member of the Alice Paul Institute, which continues educating school children and adults in Alice’s fight for a suffrage amendment and an Equal Rights Amendment. I actually met and talked with Alice Paul in her 92nd year.

Some of those women who were with me on the founding board of API are still dear friends and many of us meet every Jan 11 – Alice’s birthday – for dinner. They are all women who are interested in women’s history. I know there are millions of such women in the country, which is the reason for my surprise at the lack of mention in the link to The Presence of the Past.

Here is the link to the API, it is housed in the home she grew up in which was bought and renovated by an interested group of women and conducts tours, telling Alice’s and the suffrage and ERA story, and trains school girls in leadership skills and the fact that they CAN be leaders! Certainly “Doing History In Public.”

http://www.alicepaul.org/

May 10, 2013

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Elizabeth, how are we doing?

Posted by Marguerite Kearns on May 30, 2013 in 60-Second History Lesson | 0 comments

Daniel Cady, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s father.

by Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The tears and complaints of the women who came to my father for legal advice touched my heart, and early drew my attention to the injustice and cruelty of the laws. As the practice of the law was my father’s business, I could not exactly understand why he could not alleviate the sufferings of these women.

So, in order to enlighten me, he would take down his books and show me the inexorable statutes. The students, observing my interest, would amuse themselves by reading to me all the worst laws they could find, over which I would laugh and cry by turns. One Christmas morning I went into the office to show them my present of a new coral necklace and bracelet. They all admired the jewelry, and then began to tease me with hypothetical cases of future ownership. “Now,” said Henry Bayard, “if in due time you should be my wife, those ornaments would be mine. I could take them and lock them up, and you could never wear them except with my permission. I could even exchange them for a cigar, and you could watch them evaporate in smoke.”

A CHILDHOOD RESOLVE TO CUT THE NASTY LAWS FROM THE BOOKS

With this constant bantering from students, and the sad complaints of women clients, my mind was sorely perplexed. So when, from time to time, my attention was called to these odious laws, I would mark them with a pencil, and becoming more and more convinced of the necessity of taking some active measures against these unjust provisions, I resolved to seize the first opportunity, when alone in the office, to cut every one of them out of the books; supposing my father and his library were the beginning and the end of the law.

However, this mutilation of his volumes was never accomplished, for dear old FloraCampbell, to whom I confided my plan for the amelioration of her wrongs, warned my father of what I proposed to do. Without letting me know that he had discovered my secret, he explained to me one evening how laws were made, the large number of lawyers and libraries there were all over the state, and that if his library should burn up it would make no difference in woman’s condition.

“When you are grown up, and able to prepare a speech,” said he, “you must go down to Albany and talk to the legislators; tell them all you have seen in this office — the sufferings of these Scotchwomen, robbed of their inheritance and left dependent on their unworthy sons, and, if you can persuade them to pass new laws, the old ones will be a dead letter.” Thus was the future object of my life suggested and my duty plainly outlined by him who was most opposed to my public career when, in due time, it was entered upon.”

SOURCE: Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s memoir. Information about Daniel Cady, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s father.

How are we doing Elizabeth? The story of the students taunting her about their being able to take control of her jewelry and being able to do with it what they wished reminds me of the MALE legislators who still think they are in control of women's bodies, and they can be. This is like playing whack-a-mole. Women and their supporters have been whacking away at those MALE moles who keep wanting to take us back to the 19th century and it appears that it will be necessary to be whacking away for many years, perhaps decades to come.......the price of keeping those changes that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, et al worked

 so hard to make.