“Prudence” the Play, Spring 2017

I am very excited to restart this blog with wonderful news: “Prudence” the plan, written by Stefan Lanfer will appear at The Open Theater in Boston, MA in the spring of 2017.  Back in 2013, I met Stefan at a Barr Foundation event after someone had mentioned to me that he also writes plays.  I mentioned to him that I wrote a paper about an amazing woman and that I always thought that it should be a play.  He said he was looking for a project, and the rest is, as they say, history.

Inspired by our forward progress, I have re-engaged my research files and look forward to posting more on the blog.

Fayerweather Family Papers, Part 2: Handwriting help requested!

Prudence Crandall’s Female Academy

I have continued to search for letters and other primary documents that will reveal to me more about the women who attended Prudence Crandall’s Female Academy.  By far, the most information is available about her first student, Sarah Harris.  Her family celebrated her history and so kept careful care of documents related to Sarah’s life.  Sarah also married into a family of well-established and well-regarded blacksmiths, who had a family habit of meticulous record-keeping; a business account book for the family blacksmith shop begins in 1809 and goes through 1868.  Sarah’s family was literate, proud of their history, and had the means and foresight to preserve many of the letters, account books, photographs, and other ephemera — to my great delight.

Receipt for Sarah Harris’ Subscription for The Liberator shows that she was a faithful reader of Garrison’s publication for many years. Ephemera contained in the Fayerweather Family Papers.

Unfortunately, Sarah’s classmates remain terribly elusive.  My continued search for primary source data pertaining to the 20 other students who attended Prudence Crandall’s Female Academy remains fruitless.  Letters are the best and most frequent primary source evidence I have found in researching women.  I believe this is because letters were the primary means of communication between literate persons, and also because letters are intimate and deeply relational so people often hold on to them.  I still have a shoebox filled with letters from my grandmothers and from my mother who often wrote to me when I was away at college.  (All are bound with ribbons, of course.)

Where are Sarah’s classmates letters?  Did they have few literate people in their lives with whom to exchange letters?  Did they die young?  Did they just meticulously purge their homes of old letters and receipts?  Are their letters in a special box in some descendant’s attic? Or, might some papers be waiting for me in some small library or historical society collection I have not yet discovered?  You can be sure I will let you know when I find out.

Sally Prentice Harris, Sarah Fayerweather Harris’ mother.

 

In the meantime, perhaps someone out there can help me decipher a passage from a letter from Sally Prentice Harris to her daughter Sarah Harris Fayerweather about sister Jane Harris and her husband David who was ill of smallpox (click on the excerpt and it should give you a close-up).  Sally wrote without punctuation and the transcription reflects this:

Excerpt of a letter from Sally Prentice Harris to her daughter Sarah Harris Fayerweather.

 

“David had the small Pox and you know how frightened every body is well so it was with all the neighbors around here and no one dared come in and there was her sick husband no one to attend upon him and he left so that she could attend upon David well she took care of him until the Dr said he could not live then you know Jane was gone for she always was so nervous when any one dies in the house where she was much more one that she had the care of as she did of him she could not standit no longer and through the Dr Mr ? and his wife came and staid with him until he died she was sick in bed and could not see him when he died but he had his senses until an hour or so before he died then he was a little ? and got up and said he wanted to go home to NH they had to bury him the same afternoon… and Mr. Land and another man and the People Jane said acted like Idiots and then she and Gertrude were alone and she was sick and troubled to death to think that he should die there ….”

Please write in the comment field if you think you can decipher Sally’s handwriting where I have indicated in bold above!

 

 

 

Fayerweather Family Papers, University of Rhode Island

This week I began a 5-day research trip intended to re-start and deepen my research about Prudence Crandall and her students and starting with the nearby collections I did not see when I first wrote about Crandall back in 1999.  My first stop brought me to the Special Collections Department at the University of Rhode Island on a beautiful spring day.

 

Sarah Ann Major Harris was Crandall’s first black student.  She was 20 years old when she requested to attend the Canterbury Female Boarding School.  Her family moved from Norwich to Canterbury and she would have had some schooling prior to attending school in Canterbury.  (Harris’ previous schooling in Norwich is another thread I will follow.)

 

Harris attended Crandall’s school for a short time, and indeed, it is unclear if she was enrolled when Crandall “exchanged her white students for colored”.  In a letter to Reverend Samuel S. Jocelyn dated April 17, 1833, Crandall laments:

Disappointment seems yet to be my lot I have only two boarders and one day Scholar—one girl is under warning to depart the town Her accusation is that she is residing here against the peace of the state. 

The student “under warning” is Ann Eliza Hammond.  It is possible the “one day Scholar” Crandall mentions is Sarah Harris, who lived nearby.

Harris married George Fayerweather III on November 28, 1833 just 7 months after Crandall opened her school for “young misses of color” inspired in large part by Harris, her first student of color.   Charles Frederick Douglas Harris, married Sarah’s good friend, Ann Marcia Davis, that same day in what was very likely a “double wedding”.

The Fayerweather Family Papers brought me to URI.  In a unique gender reversal, the Fayerweather family of Kingston, Rhode Island enjoyed considerable fame because George Fayerweather III married Sarah Harris.  Sarah’s role as the first student of color at Crandall’s school was a point of pride in the Fayerweather family.  The back of the photo above illustrates this pride:

 

I find it particularly interesting that “Heroine” appears twice on the back of the card, and I am also wondering what a “Parisian Photographer” is…

Much more to come.

What did Prudence teach her students? Part 2

I continue to try to uncover what schoolbooks and lessons Prudence Crandall may have used in her classroom.  Unfortunately, the Prudence Crandall Museum has no such artifacts.  So, I have started researching 19th Century textbooks that cover the academic topics Crandall listed in her advertisements for the school in hopes of making an educated guess as to what texts she would have been drawn to using.

I have found a wonderful, searchable 19th Century Schoolbooks Collection at the Digital Research Library, University of Pittsburgh that has been invaluable in this quest.

One text that I have been scouring is entitled An Abridged history of the United States, or, Republic of America.  I have been drawn to this particular history because a first edition was published in 1828 and because the author, Emma Willard, was an education pioneer and contemporary of Crandall’s who was devoted to providing young women with a quality education.

The paragraphs in this history are numbered with marginal notes of important topic areas.  Each page in the history has a footnote full of questions regarding the specific historic facts above and each chapter concludes with additional questions for further reflection (and provided ample fodder for tests, I imagine).

I am excited to dig deeper into this history to cull forth a lesson that can be imagined on stage that intersects with our history of slavery and how Crandall may have taught this history to her black students in the context of their rebellion in the Town of Canterbury.

 

 

What did Prudence teach her students? Part 1

The Canterbury Female Boarding School is at the top center of this newspaper clipping.

At the Canterbury Female Boarding School, Prudence Crandall offered instruction in “reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, geography, history, natural and moral philosophy, chemistry, music (piano), and French”.  I am searching for historical evidence of what she may have taught so we can develop a classroom scene for the play.

I reached out to Kaz Kozlowski, long time curator at The Prudence Crandall Museum, in hopes that she might have a textbook or lesson that Crandall used with her students.  Kaz told me she did not and added that teachers were “free to use reading materials and books on specific topics more freely than they are today”.  She does, however, have a copy of The Schoomaster’s Companion, which provided teachers and schoolmasters with guidelines for setting up classrooms and organizing school materials.  You can bet I plan to go see that book.

Meanwhile, I have been left trying to deduce what Crandall may have taught.  From my experience as a teacher, I know that I created lessons from texts with which I was familiar as a student; Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style was always part of my curriculum.

In pursuit of this theory, I reached out to the Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island (formerly The Friend’s Boarding School) to see if they have any schoolbooks from Crandall’s time as a student there (circa 1826).  Anne M. Krive the MBS Middle School Librarian was not able to find any primary sources from the 1820s, but she did find a catalog that was in use at the school from 1867-1868.   

The “course of study” of this “academical” year includes the following courses and terms:

This more specific list of subject matter and authors can help me target possible books Crandall may have used — with the caveat that this course of study is for a period more than 30 years after Crandall taught.

The Friends’ Boarding School was a Quaker school and so it admitted both boys and girls.  In addition to abhorring slavery, Quakers promoted gender equity in “meeting” and with regard to education.  However, a little close reading of the above course of study shows that in the first term of the third year gender lines were clearly drawn with “Trigonometry & Surveying” required of the boys and “Literature of the Nineteenth Century” required of the girls.  The lack of women in STEM careers has roots in an American system of education that diverted women from a course of study that would have provoked their interest in advanced science and math.

The following photo is from 1898 — much later that when Crandall attended school — but this provides an interesting perspective on mixed gender science classrooms during the Victorian era.  (Anatomy and physiology class, no less!  How terribly risque…)

On Wednesday, March 5th, I will travel to the Moses Kimball School to meet with Anne and the school archivist.  I will let you all know what I dig up.

Ann Eliza Hammond Passport Update

Thanks you to William Hoofe who suggested that the word describing Hammond’s nose might be “arching”.  This seems plausible to me!

Crandall’s Elusive Students

Prudence Crandall’s most well-known black student was Sarah Harris, later Sarah Harris Fayerweather.  Sarah was the first student Crandall admitted who inspired her to “exchange her white students for colored”.  I am still searching for an earlier photograph of Sarah, but here is one of her in later years:

Photograph of elderly Sarah Harris Fayerweather.

Ann Eliza Hammond was recruited to Crandall’s school and as the first out-of-state student to enroll, she became the target of an out-of-date vagrancy law.  If found in violation of this law, Hammond was subject to either daily fines (up to ten days) or sentences “to be whipped on the naked body not exceeding ten stripes”.  Samuel May asked George Benson to put up a $10,000 bond with Canterbury to guard against execution of the vagrancy law against any of the out-of-state students.  Thwarted, Andrew Judson went to see his cronies at the Connecticut State Legislature which soon thereafter drafted “the Black Law”.

With the exception of Sarah Harris, Crandall’s other students fade into obscurity.  Ann Eliza Hammond is particularly elusive.  With the help of Ancestry.com I was able to find a passport application she completed so she could travel to England when she was 54.  If anyone can help me decipher the one word description next to “nose”, I would appreciate it (I believe the last letter is a “g”).  Otherwise, she is described has having a “high” forehead, “black” eyes, an “ordinary” mouth, “black and gray hair”, and a “full face”.

Ann Eliza Hammond’s passport application for her trip to England in 1887.

Boston Public Library Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, Day 1

The opposite view I had of the BPL Commons as I approached the Manuscripts and Special Collections Department, except there was snow on the ground.

Beth is Back in the Archives

This portrait of Prudence Crandall hangs in the Cornell University Kroch Library Elizabeth Reed Reading Room.Boston has provided me with an amazing opportunity to re-engage what many of you know has been a topic of great passion for me: Prudence Crandall.

Boston has provided me with an amazing opportunity to re-engage what many of you know has been a topic of great passion for me: Prudence Crandall.

I am currently collaborating with the estimable playwright, Stefan Lanfer, to finally bring Crandall’s story to the stage.  Right now, my husband Jim is printing the 100 pages of the script so I can make edits (we have a crap printer — he keeps coming in to give me updates — “25 pages printed!”).

I have gone back to the archives in hopes of finding additional primary source materials to help us better understand, know, and represent the women at the center of the events at the Canterbury Female Seminary from 1831-1834.  Though they were central, they were quite invisible.

In my undergraduate paper, “Prudence Crandall: Challenging Race and Gender Boundaries in Antebellum America”  (snappy title, eh?), I argued that because Crandall and her female students cloaked themselves in the gender appropriate passivity of the time, they were able to be quite radical in their stand against racism. Good academic stuff, according to folks at Trinity.

But now, things are going to get personal.