This week on The Historians Podcast with Bob Cudmore, Sandra Maceyka, vice president of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Women’s Consortium (ECSWC), explains a fund raising campaign to build a statue of the women’s rights leader in Stanton’s home town of Johnstown. [Read more…] about Elizabeth Cady Stanton Statue Planned For Johnstown
Elizabeth Cady Stanton House
Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Birthday Celebration
On Saturday afternoon, November 12th, the Women’s Rights National Historical Park will celebrate the 201st birthday of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
This will be the last day of the season that the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House will be open, as it will be closed for restorations. It will reopen again the spring of 2017. [Read more…] about Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Birthday Celebration
The Elizabeth Cady Stanton Bicentennial
It’s not too early to start planning for New York State History Month in November. One of the themes that the state’s history community might consider this year is reform in New York State. There are few better examples of a New York reform leader than Elizabeth Cady Stanton and November 15 is the bicentennial of her birth.
She was born Elizabeth Cady in Johnstown on November 15, 1815. She observed how the law treated women as subordinate to men through observing the work of her father, an attorney and judge. She derived a hatred of slavery and confidence in political change from her cousin, Gerrit Smith, who lived in nearby Peterboro. She married a leading abolitionist, Henry Stanton, in 1840, but Elizabeth Cady Stanton was always independent, opinionated, determined, sometimes headstrong, never resting. [Read more…] about The Elizabeth Cady Stanton Bicentennial
Women in Science: Gazing at the Stars Through History
2014’s season of college graduations is winding down, but the questions to students persist: “What are you going to do now?” While some grads provide a satisfying answer to this bothersome query, many avoid a direct response.
Frequently, they are heading down a road that is not their first choice. In 1878 a well-known graduate from Vassar Female College in Poughkeepsie, New York, found herself in a similar situation. [Read more…] about Women in Science: Gazing at the Stars Through History
A Winter Baby Girl, Harriot Eaton Stanton, 1856
By the time Elizabeth Cady Stanton gave birth to her sixth child, Harriot Eaton Stanton, she had had plenty of practice. This winter baby would be her second daughter, but the first born in New York State’s frigid temperatures. It was January 24, 1856 and the Stanton family had resided in Seneca Falls and experienced its Januaries for almost ten years.
Within moments of Harriot’s birth, at home with a midwife as was the practice, Elizabeth forgot any ambivalence she might have felt about a child delaying her re-entry into the Woman’s Rights Movement. Clinging to the warmth of her fireplace, she discovered that she could not resist the allure of Harriot, whom she promptly dubbed Hattie. She told her closest colleague, Susan B. Anthony, “Well I have got out the sixth edition of my admirable work. Another female child is born into the world! Last Sunday afternoon, Harriot Eaton Stanton – oh, the little heretic thus to desecrate that holy day – opened her soft blue eyes on the mundane sphere.” Elizabeth wrote, “I am very happy that the terrible ordeal is passed and that the result is another daughter.” She joked that instead of giving birth to a baby, “I might have been born an orator before spring, you acting as midwife.” Elizabeth was nevertheless reconciled to waiting for her “latent fires to burst forth.” She admitted that Hattie was worth delaying her re-entry into the public world and “it would not be in vain that I am held back.” [Read more…] about A Winter Baby Girl, Harriot Eaton Stanton, 1856
Can The Women’s Rights Trail Become Reality?
The federal government shutdown in Washington, DC may have dimmed the lights at the Elizabeth Cady Stanton house in Seneca Falls, NY, at the visitors’ center, Wesleyan Chapel, and other park site locations. But it didn’t deter our determination to continue on the blogging tour of the “Cradle of the Women’s Rights Movement in the US” that has kept us busy.
Seneca Falls took up most of our fourth day on this blogging tour that also included Johnstown, Fayetteville, Auburn, Rochester, and Farmington. Identifying what constitutes the “cradle” is an informal process we devised that highlights key locations of activism located in a geographic area of the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York that suggests a cradle shape. [Read more…] about Can The Women’s Rights Trail Become Reality?
In Johnstown, Hope for Votes for Women Trail Funding
It’s late afternoon in Johnstown, NY, magic hour, right before sunset when filmmakers capture the best lighting. Nancy Brown, a fifth grade teacher, is waiting to take us to the local historical society and out to dinner with three other board members of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Hometown Association.
This is the town where well-known women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton grew up. The place is also loaded with history of the American Revolution, plus generations of tanners and workers in the glove industry who lived and worked here. We can’t get to the Johnstown Historical Society at 17 North William Street without passing sites of major historical interest. It’s as if everybody is related in some way to this historical community. It looks like classic small town America, made in America. [Read more…] about In Johnstown, Hope for Votes for Women Trail Funding
Equality Weekend in Peterboro August 25-26
Irene’s flooding in August 2011 prevented Penny Colman from getting to Peterboro to discuss her new book Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: A Friendship That Changed the World. Colman has arranged with the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark to discuss and sign her work at 2 p.m. on Saturday, August 25, 2012. [Read more…] about Equality Weekend in Peterboro August 25-26
Elizabeth Cady Stanton House Reopens After Storm
Women’s Rights National Historical Park was affected by a storm cell which occurred during the afternoon of Tuesday, May 29th. High winds, heavy rains, and hail affected the areas in and near the park, resulting in downed power lines, trees, and tree limbs. A large chestnut tree located in front of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House suffered severe damage. [Read more…] about Elizabeth Cady Stanton House Reopens After Storm