Talk:Lucy Stone

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Good articleLucy Stone has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
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January 10, 2010Good article nomineeListed
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Wedding in 1855; Marriage Protest[edit]

There's nothing in this article about how Blackwell and Stone met, nothing about their wedding on May 1, 1855 and nothing about the Marriage Protest that they had printed up, read aloud and passed out among the wedding attendees. Nothing saying how Blackwell first came up with the idea of the Marriage Protest declaration. Fairly significant event in her life, I'd say. Here are some sources:

Hope that helps. Binksternet (talk) 05:02, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's been three months since I wrote the above note, but nobody acted upon it. Fixed now. Binksternet (talk) 03:38, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think given the time period, that the state she married in matters as well. I'm fairly certain not all states would have even allowed the declaration. MagnoliaSouth (talk) 17:55, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure you're right. Massachusetts was one of the most understanding states to be in if non-Quakers wanted a Quaker-style wedding ceremony (without the "obey" part), and Higginson was game for it. I bet an open-minded minister like Higginson would have been able to proceed with the reading of the protest followed by the Quaker-style wedding in another state, so maybe the person of the officiant was important, too. Binksternet (talk) 19:25, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To do list[edit]

Still unwritten: Stone's opinion about

  • temperance
  • Native Americans
  • divorce
  • abortion
  • organization of women's groups
  • age of consent
  • more about religion Binksternet (talk) 00:24, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Temperance section is done. Binksternet (talk) 23:38, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Divorce is now covered in two places, early views and later views. Binksternet (talk) 20:29, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Stone apparently didn't let her thoughts be known regarding Native Americans. Stone's opinion about abortion wasn't trumpeted around; she kept the subject out of her Woman's Journal. Binksternet (talk) 02:58, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Let me know if you need any help on this article. I was quite impressed to see a substantial one, and I'd love to help it improve. --Midnightdreary (talk) 13:49, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Why, thank you! In checking out from the local university library and reading some of the classic Stone biographies, I have grown to look askance at any of them written before the mid-1980s, and some written after. The 1930 biography by Stone's daughter Alice is quite inaccurate in terms of dates and places, and is only suitable for gaining a general sense of Stone, or for adding color. Same with 1961's Morning Star by Hays, which fills in detail where none exists in the original materials. The best works are the ones that recognize the relative absence of Stone from Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's History of Woman Suffrage:
If you have access to any one of these three more recent books, you hold the key to making this article rise above the background noise. Binksternet (talk) 15:25, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
More on the to do list: I haven't written nearly enough about Henry Browne Blackwell's preoccupation with get-rich-quick schemes involving land purchases or sugar refining, and of his not-very-enlightened hand in Stone's purse. Nor have I written enough about Blackwell's near-constant need for attention from Stone, or about his impossible wish that his own works shine more brightly than hers. I haven't written at all about how Stone dealt with a troubling period when Blackwell spent too much time with a certain "Mrs. P" in New York, about which his own Blackwell siblings were very disapproving, and which affair shattered Stone's confidence in her own womanliness, hardening her heart at a most inopportune time. I haven't written enough about the importance of Stone's Woman's Journal, the publication of which some later historians say is Stone's mightiest achievement. Other historians say that Stone's highest legacy is her pollination of a great number of women's organizations at the state and local level, without which the 19th Amendment would not have passed in 1919–1920. The History of Woman Suffrage glorifies Anthony's central effort to put woman suffrage in front of federal lawmakers, and many historians poo-pooh Stone's local- and state-oriented efforts, saying it was misguided and wasteful, but a few have acknowledged that ratification of the federal amendment required approval from those very states where Stone laid the groundwork. Also: Stone, too, worked at the federal level, but little has been written about this. Finally, the radical feminist splinter group of NWSA, formed by Anthony and Stanton in 1869, is portrayed in many women's histories as being the one true faith, weathering abuse from all sides but advancing the flag of woman suffrage. I keep finding that Stone's AWSA was more inclusive and centrist, and contained ten times as many members including politically-connected men and respected club women who passed a great deal of unheralded legislation at the local and state level. A modern evaluation of the relative merits of AWSA and NWSA looks more like Stone carried the main effort while Anthony and Stanton angered black men by opposing their voting rights, and, with advocacy of 'free love' and easy divorce, made a mockery of what was popularly seen as the sanctity of marriage. Stone's more moderate group tried not to alienate anyone; Anthony's group couldn't help but do so. Binksternet (talk) 16:02, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(undent) I agree about being careful about which sources to use; I tend to avoid anything before 1960s when possible. A couple notes, if you don't mind. According to WP:LENGTH, a decent article should be around 50K - this article well exceeds that. Using WP:SUMMARY style, we should consider finding more succinct ways to talk about Stone and her beliefs, etc. Alternatively, we can consider making a forked article. I'm also concerned about the length of the table of contents; we might have too many headings/subheadings here. I know I can attest that I found the article a bit cumbersome to navigate. What do you think? --Midnightdreary (talk) 14:05, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm somewhat entrenched here; it's hard for me to figure out another way to present the material with fewer headlines. Early on, I decided to write chronologically, but not all the various threads of Stone's life can easily be followed that way. The answer to fewer headlines is probably to ditch the chron order and take up a subject-by-subject order. As for length, I've been hoping to achieve an article that is so good it can pass GA and maybe FA. The only featured article I have written (so far) was given its star at 76–77kb, which makes me think that WP:LENGTH is not a hard and fast rule. Still, there's value in the idea of putting some of the not-yet-addressed material about Stone into another article, like maybe one devoted to the AWSA/NWSA split, or perhaps a great expansion of the Woman's Journal article. Binksternet (talk) 17:13, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A possibility is to try to present the bio info separately, then have a section for "Beliefs" or something along those lines. I agree, WP:LENGTH is just a guideline, but it should give an understanding that these articles don't need to be ridiculously comprehensive. GAs pass at much, much smaller sizes, of course. One thing to consider, maybe, is that the AWSA article could discuss Stone's role with the organization more thoroughly than on here, so long as it is represented (that's just an example). As for headlines, consider if the one on "Headaches" is needed. Same with the short subsection "Whole World's Temperance Convention". --Midnightdreary (talk) 12:03, 25 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

reversion of my addition justified[edit]

Sorry about that. I rushed and didn't do a word search of the whole page. Thanks, Binksternet, for catching it. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:20, 26 May 2010 (UTC) Corrected 2 links: Nick Levinson (talk) 15:28, 26 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No sweat! The intention was good. Binksternet (talk) 15:38, 26 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Favoring the Joelle Million book?[edit]

Recently, Jmillionjpostma has been making some improvements to the article, but I am seeing a shift away from other authors and toward the book by Joelle Million: Woman's Voice, Woman's Place: Lucy Stone and the Birth of the Women's Rights Movement. I don't mind good sources being used to write the article, but I would like to think that this article reflects a wider swath of scholarship than just one author. Recently removed concepts:

  • That Stone helped to form the "largest group of like-minded women's rights reformers, the politically moderate" AWSA. This idea is from various works by Andrea Moore Kerr, Bonnie G. Mani, Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott. I think it is important to emphasize in the lead section that Lucy Stone, in her day, was more popular than Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, attracting a much larger base of support because she was less radical than they were.
  • Stone's father drank too much. From Kerr.
  • Details of Stone's rural childhood with various foods described changed to the "opulence" of plenty to eat. The detailed description is from Kerr, the opulence is from Million.
  • Young Stone declaring that she would learn Greek and Hebrew to get behind what she thought was a mistranslation of the Bible into English. This concept is from Alice Stone Blackwell, repeated by Kerr.
  • "Women studying rhetoric were required to do so by listening to the men debate." This is from Blackwell 1930.
  • Close friendship and debate partner Antoinette Brown convince James A. Thorne to let them debate. This is from Blackwell 1930.
  • Browne/Stone debate heavily attended and "especially brilliant". This is from Dale Spender.
  • Clandestine or secret women's debating society with Brown, Stone and Hannah Tracy Cutler. This is from Andrew MacKay and Anne Firor Scott, pages 11–12 of One Half the People: The Fight for Woman Suffrage, though the reference is not shown in this article. It can be seen at the Hannah Tracy Cutler article.
  • Stone's "clear full tone" from Spender 1992.
  • "Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex." From Kerr.
  • Menial labor to pay for college.
  • "...[T]he rectitude of the principle which takes away from women their equal rights, and denies to them the privilege of being co-laborers with men in any sphere to which their ability makes them adequate; and that no word or deed of mine should ever look towards the support of such a principle, or even to its toleration." From Spender.
  • Other students supporting Stone's refusal. Per Hays 1961.
  • Money earned by Stone: $6 per week in 1848, followed by $4 per week. From Hays 1961.
  • "Stone earned between $500 and $1,000 a week..." From Kerr.
  • Stone's money going to Blackwell who invested it unwisely and lost it. Per Kerr.

I think the article should reflect the work of a broad base of authors. Binksternet (talk) 17:51, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please forgive what appears to be my overzealous deletions from the Lucy Stone article. I am new to Wikipedia editing and wanted to both contribute some significant information omitted from the article (such as the equal pay “strike” at Oberlin) and correct a few inaccuracies. I cite the Million book because it is the only secondary source of the information I added or of the corrections I made. As the most recently published biography of Stone (2003)and the most extensive study of Stone’s life up to the Civil War, it has much information not found in earlier biographies and corrects some of the inaccuracies those earlier works.

Before explaining some of my deletions (some will have to wait for tomorrow) let me mention some of the well-documented information in the Million book that seems to me worthy of inclusion in any biographical summary: ●Stone’s vast suffrage work, including but not limited to: Stone’s initiative woman suffrage petitioning in Massachusetts; her petition campaign directed to and her hearing before the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1853; initiation of multi-state suffrage petitioning in 1855-56, with her personal role in Ohio and Wisconsin; role in suffrage memorials campaign of 1856. ●Stone’s rise as one of the nation’s most effective and popular orators, lecturing to great effect in seventeen states and the District of Columbia, as well as in Ontario. ● Detailed account of the progression of the Stone- Blackwell courtship, their evolving thoughts on an egalitarian marriage, and how the “Marriage Protest” was written and how it was followed by other reform couples. ● Detailed analysis of Henry Blackwell’s business dealings, investments, and handling of money Stone gave him to invest that refutes charges made by Kerr.

The book’s documentation also shows some information in the Wikipedia article to be inaccurate: ●nature of Stone’s headaches, ●chronology of her teaching and schooling before Oberlin, ●character and duration of Stone’s antislavery agency, ●nature of contact with organizers of the April 1850 Ohio Woman’s Rights Convention, ●speech given at 1850 convention vs. one given in New York City in May 1853, ●how she turned to full time women’s rights work,●conversion of Susan B. Anthony. etc.

For example, This is what can be documented from primary sources about Stone’s “Teaching and classes,” which reveals several inaccuracies in the article as it now stands:

● 1834-35. All biographers accept Stone’s recollection that she began teaching at the minimally allowed age of sixteen (which would have been between August 1834 and August 1835) (LS Rem., p. 4). Stone said her first school was at New Braintree (where her sister Eliza Barlow lived) (Note, Blackwell Family Papers, Reel 71, frame 466). She said she began teaching at $1.00 an hour and later got $1.50 and $2.00 as she got larger schools, and finally had $16 a month, which was called very good pay for a woman (LS Rem., p. 4). For comparison, 23-year-old sister Rhoda, who had been teaching quite some time, was receiving $3.00 a week teaching in Warren in winter 1837-38 (LS to brother Frank Stone, Dec. 1, 1837). The next year she was to receive $13 a month teaching in Paxton in 1838-39, while brother Luther, a year older, was to receive $21 a month teaching in West Braintree (Lucy and Luther to Frank, Aug. 31, 1838). ● January 1836. Stone said she substituted for her brother Bowman in West Brookfield and though she taught all his subjects, the committee would give her “only a woman’s pay”(LS Rem., p. 4). Family correspondence (Lucy to Frank, Dec. 1835) indicates that was probably in January 1836. ● Summer 1836. Letters to Frank (July 26, 1836; Aug. 1836, and Sept. 20, 1836) show that Stone taught in New Braintree and boarded with sister Eliza Barlow during the summer of 1836. ● Spring-summer 1837. Lucy said she was teaching in North Brookfield and boarding with an aunt and uncle at the time the state convention of Congregational ministers issued its Pastoral letter against the Grimkes (LS Rem., p 18, Woman’s Journal, April 14, 1888), which was June 27-29, 1837. ● Summer 1838. She taught at an unspecified place during the summer of 1838, beginning about May 19, nine weeks after Eliza’s death on March 17, 1838 (LS to Frank, June 2, and Aug. 31, 1838). ● Fall-winter 1838-39. She, her brother Luther, and other local young people hired a college friend of Bowman’s, a Mr. Bartlett (Kerr has supplied the first name Alfred) to teach them in a “select school,” beginning the last week of August 1838 (Lucy and Luther to Frank, Aug. 31 and Nov. 29, 1838; LS Rem. Pp. 14 & 20, Sarah Stone Lawrence Rem., p. 26). ● Fall-spring 1838-39. Stone taught “several winters” in Paxton around 1840 (LS Rem. P. 4). Rhoda was engaged to teach in Paxton during the winter term 1838-39 (Lucy to Frank, Aug. 31, 1838). She became ill and Lucy completed the term for her and then was hired to teach a subsequent term at a different school in Paxton, (the one that had trouble with the previous teacher) (LS Rem., p. 5.) ● Mount Holyoke April-July 1839. Although no college records indicate her exact dates of attending Mount Holyoke, The General Catalog of Mount Holyoke Seminary, South Hadley, Mass., 1837-1887, lists Stone as a nongraduate of 1839. Stone said she attended for less than one year (LS Rem., 21). The above correspondence and other records show that she could only have attended the last of the year’s three terms, which was April 18- July 24, 1839 (Arthur C. Cole, A Hundred Years of Mount Holyoke College ..., 46-47). Stone returned home after the end of that term (after July 24), and Rhoda died on July 31, 1839. Neither that death nor the death of Eliza a year earlier, on March 17, 1838, had anything to do with Lucy’s leaving Mount Holyoke. Subsequent letters and speaches indicate it was dissatisfaction over Mary Lyon’s intolerance of antislavery and women’s rights as well as her philosophy of “woman’s appropriate sphere” (LS Rem, p. 21; LS speech at 1852 National woman’s Rights Convention, Proceedings, p. 88; Lucy to Bowman, June 18, 1840). ● 1840-41. The following month, August 1839, using the unspent money she had saved for Mount Holyoke, Stone enrolled at Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham. When that money ran out she took a loan from her father; the promissory to her father was for Wesleyan, not Mount Holyoke. (Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the Wesleyan Academy for the Year 1839-40 [Hartford, 1840]; Reminiscences of Maria Barlow; Lucy to Bowman, June 18, 1840). Her brothers also borrowed from their father to pay their education expenses above what they earned through teaching, and they repaid the loans with interest. So Lucy signing a promissory note to her father does not seem, to me, remarkable. ● 1840-41. Stone attended Monson Academy 1840-41 (Catalog of the Officers and Students of the Monson Academy 1840-1841 (Springfield, Mass., 1841). ● Summer 1842. Stone attended an 11-week term at Quaboag Seminary in Warren, summer - November 16, 1842 (Quaboag Seminary Catalogue of the Corporation, Trustees, Instructors, and Students for the Autumn Term Ending Nov. 16, 1842 (West Brookfield, Mass., 1842); “Order of Exercises at the Exhibition of the Male and Female Departments [of the Quaboag Seminary], Wednesday, Nov. 16, 1842,” American Antiquarian Society; Sarah Stone Lawrence Rem., p. 23). ● Winters 1841-42, 42-43. One can assume that Stone taught during the winters of 1841-42 and 1842-43 to raise money for Quaboag and then Oberlin, and based on her statement that she taught “several winters” at Paxton, one can conclude she taught there.

If someone has found primary source documentation that disagrees with these primary citations, the conflicting sources should certainly be evaluated.

Rationale for some of the deletions I made (others to follow): 1. [That Stone helped to form the "largest group of like-minded women's rights reformers, the politically moderate" AWSA. . . . I think it is important to emphasize in the lead section that Lucy Stone, in her day, was more popular than Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, attracting a much larger base of support because she was less radical than they were.] I wholeheartedly agree that primary records show Stone as more active and prominent in the antebellum women’s rights movement than either Stanton or Anthony, and the AWSA was indeed the larger of the two national suffrage associations after the wwar, well into the eighties. But neither of those facts is suggested by the characterization of the AWSA as being “politically moderate” or formed by a “group of like-minded women’s rights reformers.” Both the AWSA and NWSA were progressive and encompassing in their agendas; Stanton and Anthony branded the AWSA “conservative” because it rejected their leadership, and I would hope this article might give a more accurate assessment.

2. [Stone's father drank too much. From Kerr.] Like virtually all New England farmers at the time, Francis Stone made hard cider, kept it in a barrel in the their cellar. During winter evenings a quart mug was passed around the family circle and they all drank from it. One time, when Lucy was about ten or twelve, she refused her father’s direction to go to the cellar of a refill, thinking Luther should be the one to go. Her obstinance got her a very hard spanking. Its harshness, she said, was “very likely” due to father having been “taking too much cider at the time” (LS. Rem. pp. 7-8). That is the only reference in all of her remembrances of her father drinking too much. Lucy recalled that three of Francis’s old school friends had become “tramps through drink” and sometimes turned up at the Stone farm when down on their luck, and Francis never turned them away. Lucy’s mother pleaded with one of them to “reform and be a man equal to his early promise.” This man showed up one Saturday with a jug of rum intending to “stay over Sunday and have a good drunk,” but Lucy and Luther broke the jug when it was unattended (LS Rem. p. 7). Francis Stone appears to have been very strict and at times harsh. But when Stone told her daughter of instances of her father’s “ugliness” with money, she also said not to use them in any biography she might write. “I will not have my father blamed. It is enough to say that he had the Puritan idea that women were to be governed, and that he had a right to hold the purse and to rule his own home” (LS Rem., 11).

3. [Details of Stone's rural childhood with various foods described changed to the "opulence" of plenty to eat. The detailed description is from Kerr, the opulence is from Million.] In recalling her childhood, Lucy told her daughter: “that in anything we wrote about her early home, we must be sure to say what an opulent home it was – barrels of meat, and my father used to drive to the Connecticut River and bring home a great wagon-load of shad, and have it salted down, and we ate it all through the year, freshened and cooked with cream; and such abundance of apples; and the bvery best butter; I never tasted rancid butter in my mother’s house; and peaches and plums (innumerable plums) and quinces and other fruits; and every kind of berries, fresh. We all worked hard, but we all worked in [sic] together and had the feeling that everything was ours– the calves, etc. We had honey, more than we could eat; we sold some.” (LS Rem. p. 22) Yes, Stone recalled that her brothers hunted, all the children helped with age-appropriate farm tasks, Luther and Lucy took the cows to pasture and retrieved them, Eliza helped their mother with the housework, and Lucy and Rhoda sewed rough field shoes to be traded, at a value of 4 cents a pair, for things the family needed at the store. When the store account was balanced at the end of one year and there was unspent money in the shoe account, Francis gave it to Lucy and Rhoda, who in turn gave it to Eliza for all the work she did for them. (LS Rem. p. 9) When Stone told her daughter about her father’s “ugliness” with money, in connection with refusing their mother’s request for certain items, she also said not to use it in any biography Alice might write. “I will not have my father blamed. It is enough to say that he had the Puritan idea that women were to be governed, and that he had a right to hold the purse and to rule his own home” (LS Rem., 11).

5. ["Women studying rhetoric were required to do so by listening to the men debate." This is from Blackwell 1930.] This is true and can come from any number of secondary sources.

6. [Close friendship and debate partner Antoinette Brown convince James A. Thorne to let them debate. This is from Blackwell 1930. 7. Browne/Stone debate heavily attended and "especially brilliant". This is from Dale Spender.] Blackwell says "they" both Lucy and Antoinette, asked Thome. Thome taught the collegiate rhetoric class of which Stone was a member. Brown was a member of the Ladies Course, which did not include rhetoric. I did not check if Thome taught some other kind of class in the Ladies Department. Brown arrived at Oberlin in august for the 1846-47 year, Stone's final year, and they became friends. Since both wanted to develop skill in public speaking, they corresponded during the winter break when Brown was away teaching, on how they could get practical experience. When she returned, the two formed the off-campus club to circumvent Oberlin's restrictions. Stone asked Thome if he would be willing to instruct them, but the other women did not want to speak in front of him. It was only after Stone and Brown formed the club and gained a measure of experience that the classroom debate was requested and granted---surely by Stone since it was her class and not Brown’s. The Spender description is certainly true, and could be returned deemed desirable.

8. [Clandestine or secret women's debating society with Brown, Stone and Hannah Tracy Cutler. This is from Andrew MacKay and Anne Firor Scott, pages 11–12 of One Half the People: The Fight for Woman Suffrage, though the reference is not shown in this article. It can be seen at the Hannah Tracy Cutler article.] Oberlin wrote of Hannah Tracy (later Cutler) that she was going to become a women’s rights speaker/activist and asked for advice on how to get started (Tracy to LS. Oct. 26, 1846; LS to sister Sarah Jan. e, 1847; Obituary of Hannah Tracy Cutler, Woman's Journal, March 7, 1896) It was after that correspondence that Cutler came to Oberlin(Hannah Tracy Cutler Reminiscences, Woman's Journal, Sept. 26, 1896; Brown Blackwell, "Reminiscences of Early Oberlin," and "Aunt Nettie's Reminiscences"). Yes, Tracy was a member of the off-campus debating club, but she also participated in other unmentioned activities that Stone initiated, such as trying to start a women’s newspaper.

9. [Stone's "clear full tone" from Spender 1992.”] This is one way of describing Stone’s speaking voice, but others abound. Is it needed here? Jmillionjpostma (talk) 15:40, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

AWSA less radical than NWSA?[edit]

I wish to separate one issue from the above discussion. Was there a difference between Stone's AWSA and the Anthony/Stanton NWSA beyond AWSA's larger size? Was AWSA less radical or more conservative by comparison? I keep running into this in various reliable sources which characterize the Stone organization as less radical than Anthony and Stanton's group, though both were of course progressive with regard to mainstream politics of the day.

  • "Lucy Stone and others organize the more conservative American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA)..." Ashlyn K. Kuersten (2003) Women and the Law: Leaders, Cases, and Documents, page 227. ISBN 9780874368789
  • "The two organizations' style was different, in that the NWSA favored a more radical activist approach..." Voichita Nachescu (2006) Becoming the Feminist Subject. Consciousness-raising Groups in Second Wave Feminism, page 66. ISBN 9780542771682
  • "The NWSA was considered a radical group at the time... A more moderate group, the American Woman Suffrage Assocation (AWSA) was formed under the leadership of Lucy Stone." Claudia Bryant, in Larry J. Sabato, Howard R. Ernst (2009) Encyclopedia of American Political Parties and Elections, page 449. ISBN 9781438109947
  • "The NWSA concentrated on federal politics; the moderate AWSA focused..." Richard J. Evans (1977) The Feminists, page 54. ISBN 9780064920377
  • "...the more moderate American Woman Suffrage Association..." Kristi Lowenthal (2008) Conservative Thought and the Equal Rights Amendment in Kansas, page 71. ISBN 9780549724483
  • "...the faction led by Lucy Stone and followers promoted an essentially conservative strategy [in comparison to Stanton's]." Paul Buhle, Mari Jo Buhle (2005) The Concise History of Woman Suffrage, page xxv. ISBN 9780252072765
  • "The AWSA focused solely on suffrage issues and also had a publication, the Woman's Journal, which was more conservative than the Revolution. Cheris Kramarae, Dale Spender (2000) Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women, volume II, page 594. ISBN 9780203800973
  • "[Compared to NWSA,] AWSA was a conservative organization..." "...NWSA showed its more radical agenda..." Rory Dicker (2008) A History of U.S. Feminisms, page 54. ISBN 9780786741144
  • "In 1869 the women's equal rights movement split into the liberal and conservative factions." Frank J. McVeigh, Loreen Therese Wolfer (2004) Brief History of Social Problems: A Critical Thinking Approach, page 118. ISBN 9780761828310
  • "An alternative and less radical group, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), led by Lucy Stone..." Neil A. Wynn (2009) The A to Z from the Great War to the Great Depression, page 318. ISBN 9780810863309

Anthony herself said on February 17, 1890, to the NWSA board members, "When the division was made twenty-two years ago, it was because our platform was too broad, because Mrs. Stanton was too radical. A more conservative association was wanted." This appears to have set the tone for later historians. In 1904, the leading NAWSA feminists Carrie Chapman Catt, Anna Howard Shaw, Alice Stone Blackwell and Ida Husted Harper wrote, "Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell founded the more moderate American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA)..." Binksternet (talk) 18:07, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Remaining comments on my deletions to article.

I was not aware of Wikipedia’s “no delete” policy. The deletions I made were either incorrect or did not seem essential to or fit into the replacement information I added.


4. [Young Stone declaring that she would learn Greek and Hebrew to get behind what she thought was a mistranslation of the Bible into English. This concept is from Alice Stone Blackwell, repeated by Kerr.]

The only primary source support for the idea that Stone, as a young girl, decided to study these languages so she could see what the Bible really said about women is her daughter’s biography (Blackwell, p. 16), which biographers accept as a virtual primary source. Stone certainly could have told her daughter this, but it is not among the memories Blackwell recorded in her mother’s “Reminiscences.” The claim is dubious. Did children of that time know the Bible had not been written in English or Latin? When Stone was eighteen, she read Sarah Grimke’s “Letters on the Province of Woman,” made that very Biblical examination. While Latin and Greek were part of any college education at that time, Hebrew was not. Oberlin required all students in its collegiate course to study Greek and Hebrew precisely so they could study the Bible in its original (Fletcher’s history of Oberlin College, pp. 364-65), and Stone studied them there. On the other hand, that Stone had resolved at an early age to “call no man master” is documented as early as 1838 (LS to Frank, Aug. 31, 1838). What influenced her to make that decision might be seen as a necessary part of any account of her early life. Inclusion of the claim about a childhood or teen intent to study Greek and Hebrew, while perhaps true, might be considered less essential than one that has primary source support. If the claim is restored, the citation needs to be changed. Blackwell says Greek and Hebrew (p. 16), Hays says Hebrew, Latin, and Greek (p. 20), but Kerr says only Greek and Latin (p. 20).

10. ["Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex." From Kerr.]

As concisely as possible, I sought to do three things in revising this paragraph: establish that Stone made the decision to become a women’s rights lecturer at the end of her third year at Oberlin, correct the misstatement that all of her family opposed the decision, and explain her rationale– that she wanted to promote the highest good of humanity. The above quotation is generally used to illustrate Stone’s early decision not only to become a public speaker but also to make women’s rights her priority. I stated that as a matter of fact, supplying citation that included the other two points as well. Therefore, I did not feel it necessary to retain the quote. The quotation is from Stone’s response to her mother’s objections, and the fuller passage from which it is taken is a beautiful, moving description of the personal cost Stone expected and was willing to endure as a speaker. Perhaps the quotation could be restored along with some more of the fuller passage? (Hays, 65; Kerr, 43)


11. [Menial labor to pay for college.]

There are two problems with the phrase “mending clothes and cleaning houses to pay for the costs.” “Cleaning houses” implies cleaning other people’s houses. During her first two years, Stone worked in the college’s manual labor program–straightening the dormitory sitting room in the morning and drying dishes in the evening– but there is no record that she cleaned other people’s houses. Stone’s daughter said she sometimes mended clothes for poor students, both white and colored, as a way of lending a “helping hand” (Blackwell, 50), but there is no record that she took in sewing or mending to pay her college expenses.


12. ["...[T]he rectitude of the principle which takes away from women their equal rights, and denies to them the privilege of being co-laborers with men in any sphere to which their ability makes them adequate; and that no word or deed of mine should ever look towards the support of such a principle, or even to its toleration." From Spender.]

This quote, in part or in whole, is found also in Blackwell (9), Hays (56), Kerr (45), and Million (82). I used only part of it, but the entire quote can certainly be restored.


13. [Other students supporting Stone's refusal. Per Hays 1961.]

Stone told her parents that half the men and half the women in her graduating class were to be appointed to speak/write for the ceremonies (LS to Family, [Apr. 1847]). When she told them about her own resignation, she also told them that three of the four other women and two of the eight men appointed also resigned, as did those appointed to replace them (LS to Family, July 4, 1847). This is what Hays (pp. 56-57) and others have reported. However, despite these initial resignations, seven men and four women from their class spoke/wrote at the ceremonies: only one man and one woman (Stone) short of the intended thirteen ( Alumni Catalogue: Officers and Graduates of Oberlin College, 1833-1936, vol. 1; Robert Samuel Fletcher, A History of Oberlin College, vol. 1, pp. 294-95).


14. [Money earned by Stone: $6 per week in 1848, followed by $4 per week. From Hays 1961.]

The pay figures, found in Hays (75), partially in Kerr (52), and in Million (119), are not the object of the deletion. Rather, it is the dating of Stone’s decision to leave her antislavery agency with the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and the subsequent agreement to work Sundays for it. Hays suggests it happened “Long before this [excommunication], almost as soon as she began her career of public speaking” (pp. 74-75). But the episode with the Greek Slave exhibit was in May 1851. It was only in an 1888 speech that Stone recounted the incident, marked it as the catalyst for her leaving the antislavery society, and provided the words of her reply to Samuel May, Jr. (LS speech, Report of the International Council of Women, 1888, 333-34). However, her correspondence shows that she continued her antislavery agency through the summer, and only on August 5 did she notify May that she would be leaving at the end of the month (LS to Samuel May, Jr., Aug. 5, 1851, Boston Public Library). She also told Abby Kelley Foster (Aug. 3, 1851, AKF Papers, Worcester Historical Society). When May pleaded for her to continue, it was Stone who offered the “compromise arrangement,” agreeing to work on Sundays but insisting that she would lecture on woman’s rights the rest of the week (LS to S May, Jr., Aug. 14, 1851 BPL).


15. ["Stone earned between $500 and $1,000 a week..." From Kerr.] See next item.

16. [Stone's money going to Blackwell who invested it unwisely and lost it. Per Kerr.]

The Million book provides detailed analysis and documentation of Blackwell’s handling of Stone’s money. While Stone was lecturing around the West in Oct.-Dec. 1853, she sent her considerable earnings to Blackwell to hold. Some of it was sent eastward to her bank; some she invested in the Blackwell brothers’ hardware business. She received annual interest on this investment (Million, 199), and when she and Henry bought their first house in 1857, each taking half ownership, she paid most of her half of the $5000 cost by surrendering the $2000 note she held against the business (Million, 231). The entire Blackwell family were land speculators, purchasing land first in Illinois and later Wisconsin and Iowa during the land bubble of the early to mid-fifties. Stone did not begin investing in land until after her marriage, and then was a voluntary and enthusiastic participant (Million, 199-201, 304 n.29). Although the necessity of paying taxes on the land they held often created cash-flow problems for all the members of the family, they helped each other out (Million, 199-201, 304 n. 29). The Panic of 1857 and the Civil War created problems with their investments (Million, 243-44, 247-48), but Stone and Blackwell made it through, trading western land for eastern and receiving a moderate income from the investments (Million, 263). In 1864 they sold a major property and received thousands of dollars, bringing them their long-sought financial independence (Million, 271-72).

Also, I inadvertently omitted the following two items from the summary of Stone’s teaching and classes that can be documented by primary sources:

● Fall 1837. Attended a select school. (LS to Frank, Dec. 1, 1837)

● Winter 1837-38. Lucy to start teaching at unspecified place Dec. 4. (LS to Frank, Dec. 1, 1837) Jmillionjpostma (talk) 05:16, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your carefully considered comments. The explanations you provide are valuable in helping me understand why some text was deleted when other text was being added. By the way, there is no policy on Wikipedia about refraining from deletions of article text or references! My intention in posting an overarching question about the recent changes was to find out the reasons for the deletions, to discover if any of the deleted content was seen as wrong, or seen as trivial, or simply moved aside to improve reading flow. Your response is a balm to my concerns. Binksternet (talk) 05:56, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

AWSA Conservative or Moderate?[edit]

As you have noted, the terms “conservative” and “moderate” are widely used in women’s rights scholarship to describe the AWSA, its agenda, strategy, and members. I think you will find, though, that Lucy Stone scholars do not use them--I think, for the following reasons:

1. Meaning of terms. In its basic meaning of being be disposed toward preserving existing or traditional customs and conventions, the word “conservative” cannot with any accuracy characterize the agenda or membership of the AWSA, not even in comparison with the NWSA. While focusing its active agitation on winning the vote for women, the AWSA also promoted–especially through the Woman’s Journal, which was its official organ– equal educational opportunity (opening existing colleges and universities to women over establishing separate women’s schools, equal employment opportunities, equal pay, equal property rights, egalitarian marriage, etc. These goals were “radical,” in that they favored drastic change to traditional mores, and sought to go to the root of women’s subjugation.

“Moderate,” on the other hand, can certainly be used to characterize the organization, but only in comparison with the NWSA. The AWSA, like the American Equal Rights Association from which it emerged, tried to distance the suffrage movement from Stanton’s outspoken views on prostitution, abortion, birth control, and divorce– all subjects later embraced by 20th-century feminists but which in 1870 were considered extreme and scared away many who would otherwise have supported woman suffrage (see for example, Louise R. Noun, Strong-Minded Women, The Emergence of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Iowa, p. 105).

2. Biased interpretation. The interpretation of the AWSA as being conservative in comparison with the NWSA originated with Stanton and Anthony– in their History of Woman Suffrage (HWS); Stanton’s autobiography, Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815-1897; and Anthony’s biography, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, by Ida Husted Harper, whom Anthony hand picked for the work and to whom she supplied materials and interpretations. (For a description of Anthony’s role in the writing of her biography, see Kathleen Barry, Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist [New York: Ballantine Books, 1988], 323-26. Harper also compiled and edited the final three volumes of the HWS [Ellen Carol DuBois, “Making Women’s History: Activist Historians of Women’s Rights, 1880-1940,” in Radical History Review 49 (1991): 64]).

Early writers on woman suffrage history generally anchored their work on the Stanton-Anthony sources and their interpretations, and later scholars accepted and repeated those interpretations. However, Stone scholars who have delved more deeply into primary sources surrounding Stone’s work know that these sources give an incomplete and biased account of that work. Elinor Rice Hays found that the first volume of the HWS would have no chapter on the AWSA at all if Stanton’s daughter hadn’t interceded and put together a brief chapter based solely on newspaper clippings. Hays pointed out in 1967, “In writing their history, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony took possession of the past of the movement, so that to this day they are known as its leaders, while Lucy Stone’s name . . . is virtually unknown (Hays, Those Extraordinary Blackwells [New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1967], 254).

Few historians seem to have recognized the bias that comes from the HWS being written about a divided movement, by one faction in that division. Among those who did were Blanche Glassman Hersh, who noted that woman suffrage history was written by the Stanton and Anthony-led NWSA, which represented “only a minority of feminists.” Hersh quoted a letter from Stanton explaining why Stone’s work had been so understated in the first volume of the HWS: “[Lucy Stone] thinks it desecration of her immaculate being to be even mentioned by such profane lips as ours. Hence we had decided to say of her what History demanded and no more” (Hersh, The Slavery of Sex: Feminist-Abolitionists in America [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978], 72). In 1975, Anne Firor Scott, who also noted that the AWSA was the larger and more active of the two national suffrage organizations but had not been the subject of any historical study. When she made the same observation in 1991, she said that when a history of the AWSA is written, “a good deal of the conventional wisdom may have to be modified” (Anne Firor Scott and Andrew M. Scott, One Half the People: The Fight for Woman Suffrage [New York: Harper and Row, 1975], xii; Anne Firor Scott, Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in American History [Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1991], 221, note 66). While I have not kept up with scholarship over the past ten years, I believe that as 2003 the closest thing to such a study was an unpublished 1956 doctoral dissertation on “Massachusetts and the Woman Suffrage Movement,” by Lois Bannister Merk (Harvard University, 1956, Revised, 1961.

In 1993, Gerda Lerner, one of the founders of the field of women’s history, said: “The History of Woman Suffrage is an incomplete, flawed, and heavily biased assemblage of sources. It distorts the origins of the movement by ignoring or downplaying the role of many activists and antecedent activists in favor of stressing the leadership of a few women. . . . It is also factionally biased in its downplaying of the role of the women [and, she could have said, men] who in 1869 split with Stanton and Anthony, a distortion which is particularly striking in regard to the role of Lucy Stone” (Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-seventy, [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 2:269).


3. Strategies of AWSA and NWSA. The object of both organizations was to win a woman suffrage amendment to the United States Constitution. For a discussion of the two societies’ work for the federal amendment, see Scott and Scott, One Half the People (op cit, 20).

After the Civil War, when the idea emerged about using an amendment to the federal constitution to prohibit states from denying suffrage on the basis of race, Stone, Stanton, and Anthony– acting as the National Woman’s Rights Central Committee (reincarnation of the Central committee that organized and managed the pre-war National Woman’s Rights Conventions)– issued a petition seeking a woman suffrage amendment to the constitution as well. As the Fifteenth Amendment was being drafted, they lobbied for the inclusion of sex as a basis on which states could not deny suffrage. Under their guidance, the National Woman’s Rights Convention, which had revived after wartime inactivity, voted itself into an American Equal Rights Association (AERA) to combine work for black and woman suffrage.

When Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment without including woman suffrage, Stanton and Anthony wanted the AERA to repudiate the amendment. The AERA rejected their proposals and voted to reorganize as a woman suffrage association, but only after the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified so as not to imply any opposition to black suffrage. Stanton and Anthony preempted the AERA by calling a meeting of their supporters and spontaneously, without any notice to the several state and local woman suffrage associations then in existence, and forming the National Woman Suffrage Association, which opposed ratification of the Fifteenth (New York Tribune, May 14, 1869; Henry Blackwell to Martha Wright, Nov. 6, 1869, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Library; Garrison et al. to Theodore Tilton, April 2, 1870; Hannah Tracy Cutler, “Recollections of Woman Suffrage Affairs,” [n.d.], typescript in NAWSAR; Hays, 207-09; Kerr, Lucy Stone, 140-41; Kerr, “White Women’s Rights,” 61-79).

That left the majority of the AERA no alternative but to form their own national organization to work for a Sixteenth (woman suffrage) Amendment, which had been drafted by Congressman George Julian of Indiana, introduced in Congress in December 1868, withdrawn until after passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, and reintroduced it in March 1869.

Once the Fifteenth was ratified, the NWSA also took up work for the Sixteenth Amendment, but soon abandoned it to champion a “New Departure” – winning suffrage through judicial interpretation. For the next five years, Anthony spearheaded that effort and Stanton wrote and lectured on the lucrative lyceum circuit.

In 1876, after the “New Departure” had played itself out, Anthony joined Stanton on the lyceum circuit to repay the debt she incurred in publishing her newspaper, the Revolution (which, undeniably, was more radical than the Woman’s Journal. It however, had folded in February 1872, after less than four years in publication, while the Woman’s Journal was the voice of the woman suffrage movement for nearly fifty years). During this time, the NWSA had a very small membership that did very little work. The AWSA, however, had gradually turned its focus to winning suffrage wherever it could, thus building support for the federal amendment. With its much larger membership and a roster of organizing agents, it waged suffrage campaigns in several states. Sometimes Anthony or Stanton took part in these efforts, but they were clearly AWSA campaigns.

Only in the 1880s, as the NWSA attracted activist women from the growing temperance movement with its appeal that the vote would enable women to outlaw alcohol, did NWSA membership overtake that of the AWSA. When the two organizations merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1893, the merged association continued the work of the AWSA.

Stone scholars generally fail to see how engaging a large active force in several states, making small but positive inroads in gaining the vote for women, and steadily building demand for the federal amendment can be considered at all conservative or more moderate than repeatedly introducing the federal amendment but having it go nowhere for lack of support.

Because it bases its articles on established research revealed in published secondary sources, Wikipedia is certainly justified in characterizing the AWSA as conservative or moderate. But I think Stone scholars would prefer to simply avoid the characterization without making an issue of it.

Jmillionjpostma (talk) 22:43, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You make good points. We can characterize NWSA as initially more radical, or simply describe the differences and leave it at that. Binksternet (talk) 02:36, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Need for further revision of "Early life and influences"[edit]

The “Early life and influences” section contains the following errors. I have drafted a revision I'd like to post here for your approval.

Teaching

1. Stone taught “to augment her family's income.”

There is no record that Stone or any of her siblings (Rhoda, Bowman, and Luther also taught) gave their teaching pay to their father except to repay loans from him. The boys earned money to pay the costs of their higher education, and if they needed more than they earned, they took loans from their father, which they repaid with interest. (As of 1846, Luther still owed their father, and Bowman was going to help him pay it off.)

2. Taught in Paxton in 1837.

Stone first taught in Paxton during the winter of 1838-39, replacing her sister Rhoda (LS to Frank, Nov. 29, 1838), and received $13 a month. That was what Rhoda had been paid (LS to Frank, Aug. 31, 1838), while brother Luther was getting $21 a month teaching in West Braintree.
Lucy continued teaching in Paxton several winters (LS Rem., p. 4), possibly 1841-42 and 1842-43, but not 1839-40, when she was at Wesleyan Academy, or 1840-41, when she was at Monson Academy.

3. Went to Mount Holyoke in 1838.

No college records indicate Stone’s exact dates of attendance, but the General Catalog of Mount Holyoke Seminary, South Hadley, Mass., 1837-1887, lists her as a nongraduate of 1839. Stone said she went to Mount Holyoke “for less than a year, probably for only one term.” (LS Rem, p. 21). Family correspondence and other records show Stone did not attend either of the first two terms. Stone also said Rhoda died after her return from Mount Holyoke (LS Rem., p. 21), and Mount Holyoke’s 1839 session ended on July 24, one week before Rhoda’s July 31 death (Catalog cited above). Stone could only have attended the last session, April 18- July 24, 1839 (see, Million, p.285, note 14).

4. Promissory note.

Stone attended Wesleyan Academy for its full 45-week 1839-40 session (August 21, 1839- July 30, 1840 (Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the Wesleyan Academy for the Year 1839-40, Hartford, 1840). The promissory note Stone signed for a $10 loan from her father was to complete the year at Wesleyan, according to the reminiscences of a niece (Reminiscences of Maria Barlow).

Speaking Out

5. In March 1838, Stone was called home [from Mount Holyoke] to attend Eliza’s funeral.

Stone was not at Mount Holyoke at the time of Eliza’s death on March 17, 1838 (see above).

6. 1838 dating of repaying promissory note, reading Grimkes’ letters, reacting to pastoral letter, membership in Congregational church, Abby Kelley’s lecture, Henshaw’s church trial.

– Stone took a $10 from her father to complete her year at Wesleyan Academy in the spring 1840, and signed a promissory note to repay him (Rem. of Maria Barlow, cited above) If Stone taught to repay it, that would have been after Wesleyan’s term ended on July 30, 1840 (Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the Wesleyan Academy for the Year 1839-40 (Hartford, 1840).
– Stone read Sarah Grimke’s letters as they were published in the New England Spectator, to which she and Rhoda subscribed (LS to Frank, Feb. 28, 1836), and again in the Liberator, copies of which Bowman sent home from College (In Spectator, July-Dec. 1837; in Liberator, January 1838) . In the summer of 1838, Bartlett brought them in the just-published pamphlet form (LS to Frank, Aug. 31, 1838). By then, she had already been discussing them with Frank, as this letter indicates.
– The pastoral letter was issued the end of June 1837, in response to the Grimkes’ lecturing. Kelley did not begin lecturing until 1839.
– Stone joined the church along with her father and sister Sarah in March 1839 (A Catalogue of the Members of the Congregational Church in West Brookfield, From 1758 to 1861 [West Brookfield, Mass.: Thomas Morey, 1861], 38-39).
– Kelley’s lecture in West Brookfield’s Congregational church was during the winter of the winter of 1841-42. After that lecture, the minister brought charges against Josiah Henshaw, a fifty-year-old deacon of the church, not for having arranged the lecture, but for entertaining Kelley in his home and driving her to lectures, thus countenancing her anti-church positions on antislavery (“Church Affairs in West Brookfield,” a report of the proceedings against Josiah Henshaw, Quaboag Historical Society, West Brookfield, Mass.). The report shows that the minister’s complaint was submitted to the congregation on March 31, 1842; the charges specified on May 19, 1842; church meetings held over a nine-month period, and the four-day trial begun on March 14, 1893. It also shows that Henshaw was exonerated of all charges, not expelled as Stone later recalled [Woman’s Journal, Nov. 4 1893] and both Hays [27] and Million repeated [51].)

Further education

7. Stone taught and private schools November 1838 to August 1843.

Stone began attending coeduational academies after leaving Mount Holyoke in 1839 (see above). She attended Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham (now the Wilbraham and Monson Academy) August 1839-40 (Catalog and Rem. of Maria Barlow, cited above, and LS to Bowman Stone, June 18, 1840); Monson Academy in nearby Monson, 1840-41 (Catalog of the Officers and Students of the Monson Academy 1840-1841, Springfield, Mass., 1841); and an eleven-week session at Quaboag Seminary in Warren that ended on November 16, 1842 (Quaboag Seminary Catalogue of the Corporation, Trustees, Instructors, and Students for the Autumn Term Ending Nov. 16, 1842, West Brookfield, Mass., 1842; “Order of Exercises at the Exhibition of the Male and Female Departments [of the Quaboag Seminary], Wednesday, Nov. 16, 1842,” both at the American Antiquarian Society; Sarah Stone Lawrence Reminiscences , p. 23).

8. After Rhoda’s death, Stone stayed close to home.

Stone began attending Wesleyan Academy three weeks after Rhoda’s July 31, 1829, death.

Jmillionjpostma (talk) 01:50, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

the Million Book[edit]

Having just become a participant in the wikipedia editing community, I want to commend your long and diligent work on the Lucy Stone website. It is evident that you have researched extensively among secondary sources to compile your overview of Stone’s work.

I see, though, that you overlooked a source that I personally consider essential to a full appreciation of Stone’s achievement and influence before the Civil War– Joelle Million, Woman’s Voice, Woman’s Place: Lucy Stone and the Birth of the Woman’s Rights Movement (Praeger, 2003). You can tell by my user name that I am the author. But I do not consider it a bias to state as a matter of fact that this book is both the most recently published work on Stone, but also the most extensively researched. As such it provides much information not found in earlier works and corrects many errors contained in them.

I strongly urge you to read this book. It is a thorough examination of the rise of women’s rights agitation within the antislavery movement and its influence on Stone, how her experience at Oberlin led to her decision to become a woman’s rights reformer, the launching of her lecturing career as an antislavery agent, and her transition to full-time women’s rights work–which included nation-wide lecturing, instigating suffrage petitioning in several states, and leading the National Woman’s Rights Convention (using that term to mean the organized movement and not just the series of annual meetings). Woman’s Voice is also a thorough examination of certain aspects of Stone’s personal life– her and Henry Blackwell’s effort to create a marriage of equal partnership, as well as her success in establishing a financial independence that allowed her to lead the post-war suffrage movement without having to earn her living.

I hope you will read the book at your earliest convenience. Afterwards, if you are interested, I would like to talk to you about possible revisions to the Stone site that could make it a more comprehensive summary of Stone’s major achievements and yet more compact.

Sorry, I forgot to sign this post, which I do now.Jmillionjpostma (talk) 15:35, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the recommendation. I will read the book when I can borrow one of the copies held at my local university. Until I do that, the fact that I have not read the book will not stop us from continuing to improve the article. I trust that your citations of the book will be accurate representations of it.
Thank you for revealing your identity as Joelle Million. I had been wondering whether you were the book's author or Mr. Postma.
Your corrections and additions of details about Stone's life are good for the article. Even better would be more analysis and characterization of Stone, putting her life in context so that the reader can see just how important she was in her time, a major figure who was seen as central to the advocacy of woman suffrage in her day, more effective in her methods than Susan B. Anthony. For such characterization and analysis, previous books on Stone will continue to help shape this aspect, especially the 1992 Kerr work. I say so after reading the Louise W. Knight review of your book, the review titled "Rediscovering Lucy Stone", published in December 2003 in Women's Review of Books. Knight notes that the Millon book's strength is detail but its weakness is analysis, character and context.
This article can graduate from Good Article level to Featured Article level only if problems with chronology and flow are addressed. I would like the article to attain FA status but I have been frustrated by the layout—how it is clunky in some ways, having a disjointed layout with the developing story not as clear as it should be. The main part of history is story which is why I have wanted to make the Stone article even stronger in its story-telling capacity. If you agree with this assessment then perhaps we can team up and determine what improvements are needed, the focus being on showcasing the article as an example of Wikipedia's best work. Binksternet (talk) 00:26, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Possible outline for more comprehensive article[edit]

Here is a possible outline for a more comprehensive summary of Stone’s work and influence. It in itself is lengthy, but the article might be kept as brief as possible by removing nonessential subheadings and focusing on women’s rights (her chosen field), treating antislavery as an influence and training field, and giving less attention to the temperance movement, which Stone aided for less than a year and which she entered only because temperance women asked her to help them wing the right to full participation as antislavery women had done.

Is there any other way to communicate with you?


1.Early life and influences include what is there but remove all subheadings proposed revisions re teaching, woman question, higher education before Oberlin

2. Oberlin – no subheadings


3. Launching a career — include: a. antislavery lecturing 1848-51, if subheaded, it could be simply “Antislavery agent” b. First National Woman’s Rights Convention c. leaving antislavery to go woman’s rights full time

4. A voice for women — include a. independent lecturing (headaches could be mentioned here) b. Bloomerism (Stone wore 1851 - 1855) c. Suffrage petitioning and Massachusetts Constitutional Convention d. Temperance and woman’s rights ( include conversion of SBA) e. Role in organizing National Woman’s Rights Conventions of 1851, ’52, ’53 f. Western Tour g. Tracts and subscriptions (a single sentence or two would suffice)

5. Marriage a. Courtship (inc. summary of lectures in Mich., Ontario, Washington DC, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc. ) b. Marriage Agreement and Marriage Protest c. Keeping her name d. Financial Independence (incl. lectures in Wisconsin, Iowa, etc.) e. Role in organizing National Conventions of 1854, ’55, and ’56 including suffrage petitioning campaign of 55-56 and memorial campaign of 56-57 f. birth of daughter Sept. 1857

6. Representative woman – include photo a. 1857 purchase of house and 1858 tax protest (include mini tax revolt it inspired) b. Attempts to pass convention responsibility to Anthony (include failed convention of 1857, shared responsibility for 1858, absence at ’59 and ’60; also include 1859 work in Illinois and stillbirth of son)

7. Civil War activities

8. AERA and push for universal suffrage (include Kansas campaign and organizing NJ woman suffrage assn)

9. National and American suffrage associations

10. Woman’s Journal

11. AWSA campaigns and gains (70s and 80s)

12. Omission from Stanton and Anthony’s History

13 Merger

14. Final Appearance and death

15. Legacy Jmillionjpostma (talk) 00:53, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good suggestions! This should help the article's flow.
Under "Marriage", the subheading "Keeping her name" might better be represented as "Reclaiming her name" since it appears she was content for a little more than a year with the usual and standard assumption of her husband's surname.
Your suggested "Omission from Stanton and Anthony’s History" is of course a very important point to make, and I can see how it might be better framed in the proper chronological sequence rather than described at the end of the article as part of the historiography of Stone, or Stone's legacy. Naturally, the "Legacy" section will revisit the omission.
You can contact me by email. Go to User:Binksternet and look at the left side where it says "email this user". Or just click here. I look forward to communicating with you! But let us preserve the email conversation for personal interaction and generalizations rather than specific suggestions for article development. It will be most helpful to other editors who join us here (or who follow us later) if all of the Stone biography discussion was kept here on the Stone talk page. Binksternet (talk) 02:34, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Again, the ultimate aim is to have an article which is of the highest possible standard, one that meets the Wikipedia:Featured article criteria, or exceeds it. I hope we can craft some brilliant, engaging prose which speaks to the reader's imagination. Binksternet (talk) 02:39, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

revisions to Early life[edit]

Here is a proposed revision to correct errors I pointed out in the latter half of "Early life." It might be better to discuss any questions or issues before any of the changes are actually made to the article.

Teaching at “a woman’s pay”[edit]

At age sixteen, Stone began teaching in district schools, as her brothers and sister Rhoda also did. Her beginning pay of $1.00 an hour was much lower than that of male teachers, and when she substituted for her brother Bowman one winter, she received less pay than he received. When she protested to the school committee that she had taught all the subjects Bowman had, it replied that they could give her “only a woman’s pay.” Lower pay for women was one of the arguments cited by those promoting the hiring of women as teachers: “To make education universal, it must be at moderate expense, and women can afford to teach for one-half, or even less, the salary which men would ask” [1] Although Stone’s salary increased along with the size of her schools, until she finally received $16 a month, it was always lower than the male rate.[2]

References

  1. ^ Nancy Woloch, Women and the American Experience, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984, p. 129.
  2. ^ (Kerr, 1992, p. 23; Million, 2003, p. 19.

This is the text currently used in the article, except that $1/hr was changed to $1/day. I don't understand how $16/mo is more than $1/day, though. There must still be something wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jerri Kohl (talk • contribs) 14:05, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The “woman question”[edit]

In 1836 Stone began following newspaper reports of a controversy raging throughout Massachusetts that some referred to as the “woman question” – what was woman’s proper role in society; should she assume an active and public role in the reform movements of the day? Developments within that controversy over the next several years shaped her evolving philosophy on women’s rights. Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). After sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimke began speaking to audiences of men and women, instead of women only as was acceptable, a state convention of Congregational ministers issued a Pastoral letter condemning women’s assuming “the place of man as a public reformer” and “itinerat[ing] in the character of public lecturers and teachers.” Stone attended the convention as a spectator, and was so angered by the letter that she determined "if ever [I] had anything to say in public, [I] would say it, and all the more because of that pastoral letter."[1]

Stone read Sarah Grimke’s “Letters on the Province of Woman” (later republished as “Letters on the Equality of the Sexes”), and told a brother they only reinforced her resolve “to call no man master.” She drew from these "Letters" when writing college essays and her later women’s rights lectures.[2]

Having determined to obtain the highest education she could, Stone enrolled at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1839, at the age of 21. But she was so disappointed in Mary Lyons’ intolerance of antislavery and women’s rights that she withdrew after only one term. The very next month she enrolled at Wesleyan Academy (later Wilbraham & Monson Academy),[3] which she found more to her liking: “It was decided by a large majority in our literary society the other day,” she reported to a brother, “that ladies ought to mingle in politics, go to Congress, etc. etc.” Stone read a newspaper account of how a Connecticut antislavery meeting had denied the right to speak or vote to Abby Kelley, recently hired as an antislavery agent to work in that state. Refusing to relinquish her right, Kelly had defiantly raised her hand every time a vote was taken. “I admire the calm and noble bearing of Abby K,” Stone wrote to a brother, “and cannot but wish there were more kindred spirits.” [4]

Three years later she followed Kelley’s example. In 1843, a deacon of her church was recommended for expulsion because of certain antislavery activities, including giving countenance to Abby Kelley’s anti-church views by driving her to lectures and entertaining her at his home. When the first vote was taken, Stone raised her hand in his defense. The minister discounted her vote, saying that, though she was a member of the church, she was not a voting member. Like Kelly, she stubbornly raised her hand for each of the remaining five votes.[5]

References

  1. ^ Kerr, 1992, p. 24; Million, 2003, pp. 29-30
  2. ^ Million, 2003, pp. 36, 68, 160.
  3. ^ Million, 2003, p. 42
  4. ^ Blackwell, 1930, pp. 39-40.
  5. ^ Million, 2003, p. 51.

Further education[edit]

After completing a year at coeducational Monson Academy in the summer of 1841, Stone learned that Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Ohio had become the first college in the nation to admit women and had bestowed college degrees on three women. Stone enrolled at Quaboag Seminary in neighboring Warren, where she read Virgil and Sophocles and studied Latin and Greek grammar in preparation for Oberlin’s entrance examinations.[1] Jmillionjpostma (talk) 11:36, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Kerr, 1992, p. 28.

Temperance section[edit]

I propose that the entire Temperance section, with its subheadings, be eliminated, leaving Stone's temperance activity summarized in the section on "Widening influence." Stone was involved with the temperance movement for only one year, October 1852- September 1853 -- and only because Susan Anthony asked her to help New York temperance women win the right to equal participation in the (men's) State Temperance Society. While this is a very dramatic and interesting chapter in Stone's work, it is not as important as many other achievements that could be mentioned.Jmillionjpostma (talk) 14:48, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's a fine idea. Anything worth saving in that section can be merged into "Widening influence". Binksternet (talk) 16:55, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 15 December 2015[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. Consensus is against moving. (non-admin closure) Natg 19 (talk) 01:30, 22 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Lucy Stone → Lucy Stone Blackwell – This is the most common name used to refer to her, especially during her own life. Bobby Martnen (talk) 02:50, 15 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose this is not used in books, "Lucy Stone was" In ictu oculi (talk) 10:36, 15 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose couldn't find enough to establish this as commonname. Tiggerjay (talk) 18:04, 15 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - I disagree, it is not the most common name used. There aren't nearly enough sources (news, web, or books) using Lucy Stone Blackwell. Meatsgains (talk) 00:37, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Death date[edit]

Gives death date as October 19th. However, many sources give death data as October 18. Even this Wikipedia article uses the October 18th date twice in the body of the article. Does anyone have a primary source? Thisdaytrivia (talk) 21:48, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Kerr and McMillen biographies of Stone both say she died on Oct 18. That's good enough for me. I will correct the article shortly. Thanks for noticing the error. Bilpen (talk) 00:57, 8 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Reworking paragraphs on WLNL and AERA[edit]

I will shortly post a rewritten and expanded version of the paragraphs on the Women's Loyal National League and the American Equal Rights Association, partly to clarify the origins of these organizations. I also incorporated other information about those years of Stone's life from recent biographies. I moved the League material to the "Waning activism" section because it fits that stage of her life, and also because moving it there helps keep things in chronological order. I dropped "great majority" as the description of those who opposed the position of Stanton and Anthony because that isn't the general consensus of historians. Bilpen (talk) 18:54, 15 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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External links modified[edit]

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