Posted on by Ellen Roussel

Documenting the only voting these women were allowed to take part in because they lived, and we continue to live, in a patriarchal society

Throughout the first three seasons, the Woman’s Literary Club has gone from a small gathering of women to a quite larger, established organization. It is easy to forget (as I am often guilty of) that this club of women is one of the first of its kind. During this period of history, there were not many clubs of only female participants, and certainly not many partaking in intellectual and cultural discussions. As the researcher who has taken over the first three seasons of the Club, I have had a very clear window into all that has taken place to establish the Club as an actual organization of women. At times, it has been tedious to transcribe all the voting the women have taken part in throughout the Club’s run, from voting on various Articles while establishing their Constitution, to voting on the membership of proposed women, it seems that nothing can take place within the Club without a vote.

Despite the tedious work that this sometimes presents, it is so so important to realize how monumental the act of voting is for these women. The Club is formed in 1890, nearly thirty years before women are allowed the right to vote in the United States. The Woman’s Literary Club is, for all members throughout the 1890-1920 lifetime of the Club, the only medium through which these women can assert their voices and opinions through voting. It is impossible not to wonder whether women being afforded more liberties within the United States has something to do with the disintegration of the Club.

It was not until I reached the third season of the Club that I noticed any serious dissent between the women in regards to voting. On October 11, 1892, at the 60th general meeting of the WLC, the women met to discuss and vote upon whether or not the Club should elect a Corresponding Secretary to the Board. To set the context, this is after Eliza Ridgely, the previous Secretary, stepped down from her position. Lydia Crane has taken over the role of Recording Secretary, but has refused to take responsibility for the correspondence part of the Secretary’s duties. Therefore, the topic has been broached to elect a Corresponding Secretary to act as a counterpart to Lydia Crane’s position of Recording Secretary. Eliza Ridgely has stressed on numerous occasions how necessary it is to have a Corresponding Secretary, which makes me think that Eliza stepped down from her role because it simply became too much work for one person to handle.

Several women proposed that a Corresponding Secretary be appointed by the President and act as the President’s assistant. However, Miss Edith Duer “made some very decided objections to the motion” which, in WLC speak, basically means shit went down. Edith Duer’s main objection was to the point about the Corresponding Secretary being appointed by the President–this comes after the President was declared to have power likened to a governor. Several women spoke in support of Edith, including my girl Eliza Ridgely, who said the Corresponding Secretary should be voted in just like everyone else (you go girl!). The vote was taken orally, was not super conclusive, so they took a standing vote–14 for, 14 against.

The women were then reminded that the President of the United States got to choose his own Cabinet, and the President piped up that it would be super helpful to the wellbeing of the future club if she could pick her assistant, because why wouldn’t she want more power?

Votes were then taken to amend the Articles on Officer Duties to split the duties of the Recording and Corresponding Secretaries, to allow the President to nominate several people for the position to be voted upon by the Club, and then to allow the President to nominate people for the position for the Club to vote upon by ballot. None of these votes ended in the two-thirds majority to be passed. The meeting took so long, it seems, that several women “left the room” and the President motioned to move this discussion to a different day. It took several meetings and many votes before it was eventually decided that the President could make nominations, but that the position would be filled by Club votes.

This is the first instance I have seen in which dissent amongst Club members has been documented. This vote, which really comes down to how much power the President should be afforded, is really a pivotal moment in the history of the Club. This is the moment where several women–Edith Duer, Eliza Ridgely, and others–spoke up to ensure that things were done fairly. Unfortunately, women with the mindsets of Edith and Eliza still had to wait nearly thirty years before their opinions mattered in actual votes.

Posted on by Katie Kazmierski · 2 Comments

Lydia Crane: Uncovering a Legacy and a Grave

As the rest of the team knows, Lydia Crane, the Club’s dedicated Recording Secretary for over 15 years, has held a special place in my heart over the course of our transcribing. There’s something about her tireless devotion to the Club and her attention to detail in recording minutes. Every detail, that is, other than clues to who she was herself.

I’ve been looking more into Lydia and seeing what I could find about her. I was thrilled when Sydney found her memorial on Find a Grave, which tells me she was born on July 22, 1833 (happy 184th birthday, Lydia!), and died May 4, 1916. This also showed me who her father was, William Crane. Crane founded Richmond African Baptist Missionary Society in 1815, opposed slavery, but also did not call himself an abolitionist, as he criticized them as harshly as he did secessionists. I’ll probably write more about him later, as he was a fascinating figure.

And of course, endless information is available about him, while nearly nothing can be found about Miss Lydia Crane.

Yesterday, when we visited Green Mount Cemetery I was particularly excited to find her grave. We had the location of William Crane’s grave from findagrave.com, and I was confident that Lydia would be right there with him.

The grave of William Crane (1790-1866), father of Lydia Crane (1833-1916).

But, as Sydney mentioned, we couldn’t find her. Or maybe we did, but her grave is weathered arguably beyond recovery.

What might be Lydia Crane’s grave. The writing is completely illegible, though we’re pretty sure we can make out a ‘Crane’ in the top right corner. It’s located in the Crane family plot at Green Mount Cemetery.

I was disappointed, to say the least. I tried fiddling with that photo over and over again in Photoshop, and so far this is the best I could do:

The black and white and dark contrast makes the ‘Crane’ a tiny bit easier to decipher, but even then it’s a shot in the dark. I wont give up on this though–I’ve already asked my dad, a photographer, to come with me to the cemetery with his DSLR camera and off-camera flash, which supposedly will help make the shadows work more in our favor to decipher the inscription. I’d also like to do an etching.

I might seem crazy for the lengths I’m going to to try to uncover Miss Crane’s memorial, especially considering we already do know her first name along with her birth and death dates, which is more than we know about many of the Club’s women. But it troubles me that someone as vital to the Club’s history as her could nearly disappear herself from history. A woman with such detailed accounts of something should at least have a legible gravestone.

Sydney suggested I also contact the woman who published Lydia’s memorial on Find a Grave, which I did this afternoon. Her profile on the site boasts an astonishing 992 memorials added to the database, almost 100 of them with the surname ‘Crane’. I’m interested to know what her connection with the Crane family is, and if all 100 of these Cranes, spanning various generations and locations, might be her ancestors or simply people she’s intrigued in. Lydia Crane could just be a name to her, or maybe she knows something more.

 

Posted on by Sydney Johnson

Names and Dates: Connecting the dots

Diving into discovering who the women of the Club are has come with some rewards, and many challenges. For the past few weeks now I have been in charge of figuring out who was in the Club when and where they lived. Thanks to the incredible record-keeping in the early years that is not a difficult task. Much of the same information overlaps in different notebooks. Essentially, from 1980 to 1916 we have an almost complete record of who the members in the Club and also who the board of management was. However, these are just names and nothing more. My next task was to try to figure who these women were or at least try to find some of their real names—not their husbands names.

Instead of trying to find information about over a hundred women, we thought it would be best to start small, and higher up, with the board of management. This board includes an average of twelve women. One president, two vice presidents, a recording secretary, a corresponding secretary, a treasurer, and six members of the board. These are the women that help run and decide the direction of the club. Having the lists of the board from year to year all in one place can also help explain changes in the dynamic of the club. For example, Hunter has been transcribing the minutes for Fall of 1903 where Lydia Crane was recording the minutes. In the middle of a meeting the hand-writing changes indicating that Miss Crane is not writing anymore. Looking at the board of management for 1903-1904 we can see that Miss Crane is not actually the recording secretary, but she was for 1901-1902 and then comes back in 1906-1907. These are the tiny shifts that we are beginning to pick up the longer we read what these ladies were doing. We are able to piece together to try to get a more three dimensional image of the Club.

So the board of management seemed like a good place to start, since these are the women that the club revolves around, and we picked the year 1903-1904. Here is where the difficulty lies, as I have mentioned in my previous posts: many of the women are referred to by their husbands names, which makes it hard to find out their real names. However, I have been able to use different resources such as ancestry.com and findagrave.com to be able to locate the names of the men, and then many times they have the names of the women as well.

When doing these searches it is hard to determine if the information that I have found is really for the same person that I am searching for. Without knowing the birth and death information about a person before I search for them, a slew of people can come into the found list and I am unsure of if it is who I am looking for. Another thing that I am finding more relevant and difficult in my search is the cemeteries where these people are buried. Many of the ones that I have been able to find are in either Green Mount Cemetery or in Loudon Park Cemetery, with private church cemeteries thrown in throughout. Green Mount is the place where many people of prestige were buried. While I have not found out much information about Loudon Park Cemetery, there is a large portion of the cemetery which was dedicated to the burial of Union soldiers which might have had an impact on who wanted to be buried there depending on their sympathies during the war. Another piece of information is where the two cemeteries are located. Green Mount being located in Greenmount Ave, a couple of blocks south of North Ave. This is located close to where most of the members of the Club lived, therefore making it convenient for them to go to Green Mount. Loudon Park on the other hand, is a 30 minute drive from Green Mount when I put the directions into Google. On horse that would take much longer, let along a slow moving burial procession would be about two days.

The top middle of the map is a small green square which is Green Mount, Loudon Park is not pictured on the map but would be south west of the bottom left edge of the map.

Aside from the interesting information about the cemeteries I have been somewhat successful with finding information about the women. Out of the twelve members of the board of management for 1903-1904, I was able to find birth and death years for six of the members and was able to determine the names of two of the women that had gone by their husbands names. In 1903 Mrs. Jordan Stabler, or Jennie Stabler (although I am not positive that this is her) was 35; Mrs. Philip Uhler, or Julia Pearl Uhler, was 44; Miss Lydia Crane was 70; Miss Ellen Duvall was 62; Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese was 47; and Miss Eveline Early was 35.  I was really disappointed that I could not find anything on Mrs. John Wrenshall, who is the president for many years of the Club. Thanks to findagrave.com I was able to find a picture of Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese.

This image was uploaded to findagrave.com. Unfortunately we have no ability to double-check if it is really her, but hopefully it is.

It is a sad realization that many of the women in the Club are only recognized by a name that is not really theirs. Thankfully there are tools out there that help make it possible to learn about Julia Pearl Uhler instead of just Philip Uhler.

Posted on by Katie Kazmierski

It’s 1909 and I smell drama

In my last post I mentioned how that week I found a lot in the Board of Manager’s minutes that stuck out to me. The main story I wanted to tell happens to be one that Dr. Cole has asked me to share, too, about a bit of drama that’s recorded in May of 1909.

The entry is from May 8th, 1909, but it refers to events that happened in late December 1908/early January 1909. What struck me initially was that the minutes were supposedly taken by the President, not Miss Lydia Crane, the Recording Secretary. It’s weird though because it all appears to be written in the same handwriting but then there are notes supposedly differentiating between who was writing what; Crane or Wrenshall. Why Wrenshall would be writing as opposed to the Secretary at all, I don’t know and I probably never will know–but I almost get the feeling that she wanted to make sure the story was relayed the way she wanted it to be told.

The matter actually concerns the Edgar Allen Poe Association, the Executive Board of which was, at the time, nearly identical to that of the WLBC. I’ll go into that in a later post–what’s important now is just to know that the Board members of the two groups are almost exactly the same, and so they took up affairs of the EAPA in the WLBC meeting.

The Edgar Allen Poe Association took part in the Centenary of Edgar Allen Poe, a celebration commemorating the 100th anniversary of Poe, held at Johns Hopkins University. The ladies worked closely with a few very important men at the time to organize the event, including the president of the university, Dr. Remson, and a man referred to as Professor Bright, who Wrenshall says Remson appointed as his “representative”. Wrenshall, in a lengthy statement to the Club, tells of three visits she had with Bright, the first two in December planning the program for the celebration. The speakers included the university’s pick, Dr. W. P. Trent, who was designated 40 minutes to speak, and two selections by the EAPA ladies, Dr. Huckel and Mr. Poe, who were to have 20-30 minutes each.

Wrenshall then explains how on their Janaury 6th meeting, Bright insisted that she cut Dr. Huckel’s time speaking to eight to ten minutes, and to reduce Mr. Poe’s to only four to five minutes. So to reiterate: the two speakers chosen by the EAPA were given less time to speak than the Hopkins choice to begin with, but then Bright had the nerve to try to compel Wrenshall to shorten her speakers’ time to nearly nothing.

The minutes read, “To do this Mrs. Wrenshall positively declined,–with difficulty maintaining the position of the speakers as asked by the Association.”

Already, this sounds like an uncomfortable position for Wrenshall to be in, especially for a woman at this point in time. Saying no to a prominent man was considered taboo, so I was impressed with Wrenshall in this moment for standing her ground. But then it gets more complicated.

Apparently, this whole time, Wrenshall was supposed to ask about incorporating a poem, written by Miss Reese, in the celebration. Because the meeting didn’t exactly go swimmingly, she didn’t end up bringing it up. This is ultimately why Wrenshall makes the whole statement on May 8th to begin with: to put it bluntly, Miss Reese is pissed off.

At this point, minutes from the meeting of January 11th are read to the group, recalling that Miss Reese was unhappy with the way matters stood so she insisted on going to Dr. Bright herself to ask permission to read her poem. After some back and forth over whether Wrenshall thought that was “suitable”, it was decided that the President would write a letter to Bright on the Board’s behalf, politely asking for the poem’s inclusion. She did so that night, she insists. After some more trivial commentary in the statement, it’s clear that Wrenshall means business:

In concluding Mrs. Wrenshall said she wished to emphasize the facts: First, that Miss Reese’s poem was not written when the poem was decided on, in Dr. Bright’s two visits of December 15th and 20th. Second, that after hearing from Miss Reese that she had a poem, (this in the last week of the year,) she was willing to forego her own judgment, and ask Dr. Bright for Miss Reese to be placed on the programme, according to the letter asking him to call before the programme was finally arranged.

Thirdly, that when he came on the evening of that day, the situation was so uncomfortable and strained that she could not consistently with the dignity of the Association ask for any further addition to the programme from the Association.”

That third ‘fact’ is what got me. From Wrenshall’s initial description of the encounter with Dr. Bright, I knew it was unpleasant, but that last sentence says it all. It sounds to me like Wrenshall felt helpless. I get the feeling that she did want to support her fellow Club member by including her poem, but the position she was put in with this awful man made it, she felt, impossible to push for it. It would be ‘inappropriate’. It also strikes me how she speaks of how doing so would sacrifice the ‘dignity of the Association’.

At the end of her statement, Wrenshall is met with a chorus of loving expressions of gratitude from her colleagues. They “agreed that [their] President had done all that she could have done under trying circumstances; and more than could have been asked or expected.” The strength of their affectionate response is interesting– in one way, it shows the Club’s dedication and appreciation for their President. But it also might show an underlying understanding–maybe these women reacted as strongly as they did to this particular story because they’d all been there, in one way or another. They’d all had their ideas and passions stifled by a man. Some of them, so much so, that their names have vanished from history in favor of “Mrs.” slapped onto their husband’s full names.