The HerStory Scrapbook

(Copyright (c) 2012 Cynthia Shenette)  Given that it is Election Day it seems like a good time to mention The HerStory Scrapbook.  The scrapbook chronicles the final four years of the Women's Suffrage Movement and includes more that 900 articles, opinion pieces, and letters which appeared in the New York Times between 1917 and 1920.  What I particularly like about this resource is that the writings are arranged in chronological order and reflect both sides of the issue--those for women's suffrage and those against.  The scrapbook is recommended by the American Historical Association (AHA) and the National Women's History Project.  You can read the AHA's review of the scrapbook here.


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(Original Images and Text, Copyright (c) 2011 Cynthia Shenette)

My family and I visited the Rosie the Riveter Memorial in Richmond, CA in July of 2010.

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Fascinating Ladies

(Copyright (c) 2011 Cynthia Shenette)

Famous and Infamous Women in Worcester County History

What do anarchist Emma Goldman, social reformer Dorothea Dix, stage coach driver Charley Parkhurst, and author Esther Forbes all have in common? How about American Red Cross founder Clara Barton, women's rights activist Lucy Stone, author Louisa May Alcott, and captive Mary Rowlandson? All of these women spent time or lived a portion of their lives in Worcester or Worcester County, Massachusetts.

I've been interested in women's history for years. I also love local history. Put both things together in a newspaper, magazine, or journal article and you can pretty much guarantee if I see it, I'll read it. I'm constantly fascinated at how many interesting women, both famous and infamous, have Worcester County roots or connections. Not only that, did you know that the very first National Women's Rights Convention was held in Worcester in 1850? Now you thought it was in Seneca Falls, NY didn't you? Nope. Seneca Falls was the first Woman's Rights Convention, but the first national convention was held right here in Worcester, MA.

Here are some well known or fairly well known women with Worcester County connections:

~ Mary Rowlandson (c.1637-1711), who lived in the Worcester County town of Lancaster, MA, was captured by Native Americans during King Philip's War and eventually released at Redemption Rock, in the Worcester County town of Princeton, MA. She later wrote a book about her experience, The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.

~ Bathsheba Spooner (1746-1778), the daughter of Brigadier General Timothy Ruggles, was tried, convicted, and hanged on July 2, 1778 for her part as an accomplice in the murder of her husband, Joshua Spooner. She was the first woman to be executed in the new republic. She was five months pregnant at the time of her death.

~ Deborah Sampson (1760-1827) served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. She disguised herself as a man, Robert Shurtliff of Uxbridge, MA (Worcester County), and was mustered into the 4th Massachusetts Regiment in Worcester, MA in May of 1782.

~ Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) spent part of her childhood in Worcester. Later in her life she outlined the harsh realities and living conditions of the mentally ill poor living in Massachusetts in writing. She presented her findings to the Massachusetts legislature which resulted in funds for what is now known as Worcester State Hospital.

~ Mary Sawyer (1806-1889), of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" fame, lived in the Worcester County town of Sterling, MA. Sadly, her home which stood in Sterling, was destroyed by arsonists in August of 2007. The school house mentioned in the nursery rhyme was purchased by Henry Ford and relocated to Sudbury, MA in 1927. It is part of the property of the Wayside Inn.

~ Abby Kelley Foster (1811-1877), abolitionist and women's rights activist, lived the majority of her life in Worcester. She was a speaker and organizer at the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester in 1850. Her home, Liberty Farm, was a stop on the Underground Railroad and is a currently designated as a National Historic Landmark.

~ Charley Parkhurst (1812-1879) lived her life as a man, and was a stagecoach driver in old California. As a youth she learned to work with horses as a stable hand for Ebenezer Balch in Worcester before traveling west.

~ Lucy Stone (1818-1893), abolitionist and suffragist, was born on the family farm in the Worcester County town of West Brookfield, MA. She was the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree, attending Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, MA and later Oberlin College in Ohio. She also attended and spoke at the National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester in 1850.

~ Clara Barton (1821-1912), nurse and founder of the American Red Cross, was born and lived her her early years in the Worcester County town of Oxford, MA. At the age of 16 she became a teacher in a one-room school house in North Oxford. Her birthplace in Oxford is on the National Register of Historic Places, and the Clara Barton birthplace is home to a museum and The Barton Center for Diabetes Education.

~ Esther Howland (1828-1904), Worcester's own "Queen of Hearts," was an astute business woman and Valentine maker. She was the daughter of stationer and bookseller Southworth Howland, and is credited with popularizing Valentine's cards in America and for a time making Worcester central to America's Valentine production industry.

~ Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), the author of Little Women, lived in the Worcester County town of Harvard, MA at Fruitlands, an experimental Utopian community founded by her father Bronson Alcott and fellow transcendentalist Charles Lane. The Alcotts lived at Fruitlands from June of 1843 to January of 1844.

~ Emma Goldman (1869-1940), political activist and anarchist lived in and visited Worcester on different occasions. A quirky bit of Worcester history, Goldman and her companion and fellow anarchist Alexander Berkman ran an ice-cream parlor for a short time in Worcester in 1892. She was also in attendance for Sigmund Freud's American lectures at Clark University in 1909.

~ Frances Perkins (1880-1965), United States Secretary of Labor under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, was born in Boston, MA but spent much of her childhood in Worcester. She attended Worcester's Classical High School. One of the branches of Worcester's public library system is the Frances Perkins Branch, a Carnegie library, in the Greendale section of the city.

~ Olive Higgins Prouty (1882-1974) was a poet and romance writer, and friend of writer Sylvia Plath. Two of her works were made in to films, Stella Dallas (1937) starring Barbara Stanwyck and Now, Voyager (1942) starring Bette Davis. Stella Dallas was most recently made over as Stella in 1990 starring Bette Midler.

~ Esther Forbes (1891-1967) was the author of Newbery Award winner Johnny Tremain and received the Pulitzer Prize for History for her biography, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. Interestingly, her 1938 novel The General's Lady, is a historical novel about Bathsheba Spooner. She was born in Westboro, MA and spent a good part of her life in Worcester. Much of her writing was done in Worcester.

~ Gertrude Lawrence (1898-1952), the legendary English actress best known for her Tony Award winning role of Anna Leonowens in the King and I, was buried in her husband Richard Aldrich's family plot at the Lakeview Cemetery in the Worcester County town, of Upton, MA. She was buried wearing the champagne-colored gown she wore in the Shall We Dance? number from The King and I.

~ Agnes Moorehead (1900-1974) , the actress probably best known for her role as Endora in the classic television show Bewitched, was born and lived a short time in the Worcester County town of Clinton, MA. Her father was the Reverend John Henderson Moorehead, a Presbyterian minister, who eventually relocated the family to St. Louis, MO.

~ Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)--Poet Laureate for the United States, Pulitzer Prize winner, and National Book Award winner--was born and spent part of her childhood (much of it unhappy due to family discord) in Worcester. Her poem, "In The Waiting Room" mentions Worcester briefly.

Are there any interesting women who lived in your area?


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Meditation: The Strength of Ordinary Women

(Digital Image. Photograph Privately Held By Cynthia Shenette. Text Copyright (c) 2010 Cynthia Shenette) 

I can't count any female innovators among my ancestors. I don't have any female doctors, lawyers, pilots, suffragettes, inventors, abolitionists, or famous sports figures in my family. There are no female famous firsts. With the exception of a royal connection several generations back, most of the women in my family were wives and mothers, peasants, immigrants, and well, ordinary. They were women typical of their time, kind of like me. 

I am constantly impressed with these "ordinary" women, the decisions they made, and the lives they led, given their sometimes limited circumstances. I am lucky to live today and not in the past. My female ancestors, struggled against illness and death, war, political strife, poor nutrition, and economic difficulties, often with little or no education. They persevered. Their hard work, persistence, good health, and in some cases good luck, paved the way for me to have a better life.

How is my life better than the lives of my ancestors? I have access to education, good health care, and better food. I have the ability to vote. I have the freedom to marry the man of my choice, not someone chosen for me or forced upon me by circumstances beyond my control. I have the opportunity to work in a professional career and the ability to achieve financial independence, if I want to. I have modern conveniences. I live without fear, political oppression, and war in my homeland. Many of my female ancestors did not.

Take for instance my great-grandmother Ewa (Kowalewska) Bulak. In 1897 Ewa boarded a ship in Bremen and traveled to meet her husband Antoni in America. She arrived at Ellis Island with her two daughters in hand and five dollars in her pocket. Up until that time Ewa had probably never ventured outside of her small village in Lomza province. How difficult was life in the old country that immigrating to the U.S. was the best option for the family? What kind of courage did it take for Ewa to travel beyond her village, across the Atlantic, and leave everything and everyone, including her mother, behind? I'm thankful that Ewa brought my grandmother to America. While life in the U.S wasn't always easy, the family left in Poland didn't fare nearly as well given the political situation with Russia, two major wars, and a constant struggle against poverty. Ewa set her fears aside and made the decision to follow her husband to America to embark on a new life, hopefully a better life, for her and her children.

Throughout history mothers have sacrificed for their children. My grandfather, Adolf Szerejko, came to this county in 1913 from Warsaw, Poland. He was 18 years old. According to the family story, he sat down at breakfast one morning and his mother, Jozefa, and their father told him that they had made arrangements for Adolf and his older brother Aleksander to escape from what was then Russian Poland and to travel to the United States. The brothers left Warsaw that night, jumped the border, and made their way to Holland where they caught a ship to America. If they didn't leave when they did Adolf and Aleksander would have been conscripted into the Russian army just in time to fight in the First World War and possibly the Russian Revolution. When the Russians took their older brother, Wincenty, he disappeared into Russia and the family never saw him again. Jozefa probably knew that she would never see Adolf and Aleksander again, but it was more important to protect them than to keep them with her in Poland. What a difficult decision that must have been.

For hundreds of years mothers sacrificed their lives just giving birth. In the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century America maternal mortality was still high, despite better nutrition and living conditions. Around 1900 out of every 1,000 live births, 200 children died before the age of five. 

A couple of years ago I stumbled upon the burial record for two ancestors I had never heard of--sisters Alena and Sophia Bulak--my grandmother's first cousins. Alena died on September 4, 1908. She was five months and three days old. Her death record states that she died of meningitis. What probably started out as strep infection or virus developed into meningitis or some kind of swelling of the brain. Today, that illness would probably be treatable. Alena's sister, Sophia, died on July 4, 1909, less than a year after Alena. Sophia was one month, 17 days old. The primary cause of death listed on the death certificate was bronchitis, with a contributing cause as cholera infantum. How sad, two babies born to the same mother dying less than a year of one another, and both dying of illnesses that could probably be prevented today. Where did their mother Maryanna find the strength to handle the loss of two infants in less than one years time? Despite her losses, Maryanna put aside her grief went on to have more children and live to the ripe old age of 94. Even though she had other children, I'm sure that she never forgot those two little girls whose lives ended before they had a chance to really begin.

For my grandmother's family and my grandfather's family back in Poland, life was difficult. Two world wars and the stress of the Soviet occupation took their toll. Even though we live in a time of political unrest, thankfully, war has not been fought on American soil since the 1865. Much of my grandparents' family lived in Poland during World War II. Some of the family survived the war. Some didn't. I have a photo of my grandfather's cousin, Celina Gzell, taken in Warsaw in 1943. I've often looked at the photo and wondered what her life was like. What was she thinking about at that moment in time when the photo was taken? I see Celina standing on a Warsaw street holding her three-year-old son's hand. In the background there is a man who appears to be a German soldier in uniform. What was her life like during the war? What were her fears, for herself and for her son? Celina and her son survived the war, but her parents did not. I am grateful that I live where and when I do.

I admire all the women, all the mothers and grandmothers in my family. They were women who made tough decisions and lived their lives to the best of their ability despite trying times and circumstances. I admire their courage and ability to persevere and to be the best mothers they could be for their children. Women like Ewa, Jozefa, Maryanna, and Celina were by most standards, "ordinary" women. They weren't doctors, lawyers, or suffragettes. Their names won't be found in a list of who's who. When I get aggravated because I'm stuck in traffic or because I have to stand in a long line at the pharmacy, I try to put things in perspective. My life is easy compared to theirs. When I think about their lives, I like to think I too would have the grace, dignity, and courage to do what they did. I don't know if I would, but I'd like to think so. By remembering our "ordinary" women we honor them. It's our way of saying thank you. 

Thanks ladies.

Named Persons: 

Alena Bulak (1 Apr 1908-4 Sep 1908)
Antoni Bulak (1868-19 Feb 1940)
Ewa (Kowalewska) Bulak (1873-20 Mar 1924)
Maryanna (Bialobrzywska) Bulak (1867-26 Dec 1961)
Sophia Bulak (20 May 1909-4 Jul 1909)
Celina (Szerejko) Gzell (Abt. 1911-Aft. 1978)
Adolf S. Szerejko (11 Apr 1895-19 Dec 1959)
Aleksander D. Szerejko (11 Nov 1892-21 Jul 1962)
Jozefa (Bielska) Szerejko (1867-1920)
Wincenty Szerejko (Abt. 1890-Aft. 1931)

Photograph: 

Celina (Szerejko) Gzell and son. Warsaw, 1943. Author's private collection. 

References:

Maine, Deborah, and Katrina Stamas. "Maternal Mortality." Encyclopedia of Population. Ed. Paul Demeny and Geoffrey McNicoll. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2003. 628-631. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 19 May 2010.

Pebley, Anne R. "Infant and Child Mortality." Encyclopedia of Population. Ed. Paul Demeny and Geoffrey McNicoll. Vol 2. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2003. 533-536. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 19 May 2010.


Submitted for the 94th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy.