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The Story of a Pioneer

A >> Anna Howard Shaw >> The Story of a Pioneer



THE STORY OF A PIONEER
----


TO
THE WOMEN PIONEERS
OF AMERICA

They cut a path through tangled underwood
Of old traditions, out to broader ways.
They lived to here their work called brave and good,
But oh! the thorns before the crown of bays.
The world gives lashes to its Pioneers
Until the goal is reached--then deafening cheers.
Adapted by ANNA HOWARD SHAW.


CONTENTS


I. FIRST MEMORIES

II. IN THE WILDERNESS

III. HIGH-SCHOOL AND COLLEGE DAYS

IV. THE WOLF AT THE DOOR

V. SHEPHERD OF A DIVIDED FLOCK

VI. CAPE COD MEMORIES

VII. THE GREAT CAUSE

VIII. DRAMA IN THE LECTURE FIELD

IX. ``AUNT SUSAN''

X. THE PASSING OF ``AUNT SUSAN''

XI. THE WIDENING SUFFRAGE STREAM

XII. BUILDING A HOME

XIII. PRESIDENT OF ``THE NATIONAL''

XIV. RECENT CAMPAIGNS

XV. CONVENTION INCIDENTS

XVI. COUNCIL EPISODES

XVII. VALE!



ILLUSTRATIONS

REVEREND ANNA HOWARD SHAW IN HER PULPIT ROBES

LOCH-AN-EILAN CASTLE

DR SHAW'S MOTHER, NICOLAS SHAW, AT SEVENTEEN

ALNWICK CASTLE

DR. SHAW AT THIRTY-TWO

DR. SHAW AT FIFTY

DR. SHAW AND ``HER BABY''--THE DAUGHTER OF RACHEL FOSTER AVERY

DR. SHAW'S MOTHER AT EIGHTY

DR. SHAW'S FATHER AT EIGHTY

DR. SHAW'S SISTER MARY, WHO DIED IN 1883

LUCY E. ANTHONY, DR. SHAW S FRIEND AND ``AUNT SUSAN'S''
FAVORITE NIECE

THE WOOD ROAD NEAR DR. SHAW'S CAPE COD HOME, THE HAVEN

DR. SHAW'S COTTAGE, THE HAVEN, AT WIANNO, CAPE
COD--THE FIRST HOME SHE BUILT

GATE ENTRANCE TO DR. SHAW'S HOME AT MOYLAN

THE SECOND HOUSE THAT DR. SHAW BUILT

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

MISS MARY GARRETT, THE LIFE-LONG FRIEND OF MISS THOMAS

MISS M. CAREY THOMAS, PRESIDENT OF BRYN MAWR COLLEGE

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON

CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT

LUCY STONE

MARY A. LIVERMORE

FOUR PIONEERS IN THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

FIREPLACE IN THE LIVING-ROOM, SHOWING AUNT
SUSAN'S'' CHAIR

HALLWAY IN DR. SHAW'S HOME AT MOYLAN

DR. SHAW'S HOME (ALNWICK LODGE) AND HER TWO OAKS

THE VERANDA AT ALNWICK LODGE

SACCAWAGEA

ALNWICK LODGE, DR. SHAW'S HOME

THE ROCK-BORDERED BROOK WHICH DR. SHAW LOVES


THE STORY OF A PIONEER

FIRST MEMORIES

My father's ancestors were the Shaws of
Rothiemurchus, in Scotland, and the ruins
of their castle may still be seen on the island of
Loch-an-Eilan, in the northern Highlands. It was
never the picturesque castle of song and story, this
home of the fighting Shaws, but an austere fortress,
probably built in Roman times; and even to-day
the crumbling walls which alone are left of it show
traces of the relentless assaults upon them. Of
these the last and the most successful were made
in the seventeenth century by the Grants and
Rob Roy; and it was into the hands of the Grants
that the Shaw fortress finally fell, about 1700, after
almost a hundred years of ceaseless warfare.

It gives me no pleasure to read the grisly details
of their struggles, but I confess to a certain satisfac-
tion in the knowledge that my ancestors made a
good showing in the defense of what was theirs.
Beyond doubt they were brave fighters and strong
men. There were other sides to their natures,
however, which the high lights of history throw up
less appealingly. As an instance, we have in the
family chronicles the blood-stained page of Allen
Shaw, the oldest son of the last Lady Shaw who
lived in the fortress. It appears that when the
father of this young man died, about 1560, his
mother married again, to the intense disapproval
of her son. For some time after the marriage he
made no open revolt against the new-comer in the
domestic circle; but finally, on the pretext that
his dog had been attacked by his stepfather, he
forced a quarrel with the older man and the two
fought a duel with swords, after which the vic-
torious Allen showed a sad lack of chivalry. He
not only killed his stepfather, but he cut off that
gentleman's head and bore it to his mother in her bed-
chamber--an action which was considered, even in
that tolerant age, to be carrying filial resentment
too far.

Probably Allen regretted it. Certainly he paid
a high penalty for it, and his clan suffered with him.
He was outlawed and fled, only to be hunted down
for months, and finally captured and executed by
one of the Grants, who, in further virtuous disap-
proval of Allen's act, seized and held the Shaw
stronghold. The other Shaws of the clan fought
long and ably for its recovery, but though they were
helped by their kinsmen, the Mackintoshes, and
though good Scotch blood dyed the gray walls of
the fortress for many generations, the castle never
again came into the hands of the Shaws. It still
entails certain obligations for the Grants, however,
and one of these is to give the King of England a
snowball whenever he visits Loch-an-Eilan!

As the years passed the Shaw clan scattered.
Many Shaws are still to be found in the Mackintosh
country and throughout southern Scotland. Others
went to England, and it was from this latter branch
that my father sprang. His name was Thomas
Shaw, and he was the younger son of a gentleman--a
word which in those days seemed to define a man
who devoted his time largely to gambling and horse-
racing. My grandfather, like his father before him,
was true to the traditions of his time and class.
Quite naturally and simply he squandered all he had,
and died abruptly, leaving his wife and two sons
penniless. They were not, however, a helpless band.
They, too, had their traditions, handed down by
the fighting Shaws. Peter, the older son, became a
soldier, and died bravely in the Crimean War. My
father, through some outside influence, turned his
attention to trade, learning to stain and emboss wall-
paper by hand, and developing this work until he
became the recognized expert in his field. Indeed,
he progressed until he himself checked his rise by
inventing a machine that made his handwork un-
necessary. His employer at once claimed and
utilized this invention, to which, by the laws of
those days, he was entitled, and thus the corner-
stone on which my father had expected to build a
fortune proved the rock on which his career was
wrecked. But that was years later, in America, and
many other things had happened first.

For one, he had temporarily dropped his trade
and gone into the flour-and-grain business; and,
for another, he had married my mother. She was
the daughter of a Scotch couple who had come to
England and settled in Alnwick, in Northumberland
County. Her father, James Stott, was the driver
of the royal-mail stage between Alnwick and New-
castle, and his accidental death while he was still a
young man left my grandmother and her eight
children almost destitute. She was immediately
given a position in the castle of the Duke of Nor-
thumberland, and her sons were educated in the
duke's school, while her daughters were entered in
the school of the duchess.

My thoughts dwell lovingly on this grandmother,
Nicolas Grant Stott, for she was a remarkable
woman, with a dauntless soul and progressive ideas
far in advance of her time. She was one of the first
Unitarians in England, and years before any thought
of woman suffrage entered the minds of her country-
women she refused to pay tithes to the support of
the Church of England--an action which precipitated
a long-drawn-out conflict between her and the law.
In those days it was customary to assess tithes on
every pane of glass in a window, and a portion of the
money thus collected went to the support of the
Church. Year after year my intrepid grandmother
refused to pay these assessments, and year after
year she sat pensively upon her door-step, watching
articles of her furniture being sold for money to pay
her tithes. It must have been an impressive picture,
and it was one with which the community became
thoroughly familiar, as the determined old lady
never won her fight and never abandoned it. She
had at least the comfort of public sympathy, for she
was by far the most popular woman in the country-
side. Her neighbors admired her courage; perhaps
they appreciated still more what she did for them,
for she spent all her leisure in the homes of the very
poor, mending their clothing and teaching them to
sew. Also, she left behind her a path of cleanliness
as definite as the line of foam that follows a ship;
for it soon became known among her protegees that
Nicolas Stott was as much opposed to dirt as she
was to the payment of tithes.

She kept her children in the schools of the duke and
duchess until they had completed the entire course
open to them. A hundred times, and among many
new scenes and strange people, I have heard my
mother describe her own experiences as a pupil.
All the children of the dependents of the castle were
expected to leave school at fourteen years of age.
During their course they were not allowed to study
geography, because, in the sage opinion of their elders,
knowledge of foreign lands might make them dis-
contented and inclined to wander. Neither was com-
position encouraged--that might lead to the writing
of love-notes! But they were permitted to absorb
all the reading and arithmetic their little brains
could hold, while the art of sewing was not only
encouraged, but proficiency in it was stimulated by
the award of prizes. My mother, being a rather pre-
cocious young person, graduated at thirteen and
carried off the first prize. The garment she made
was a linen chemise for the duchess, and the little
needlewoman had embroidered on it, with her own
hair, the august lady's coat of arms. The offering
must have been appreciated, for my mother's story
always ended with the same words, uttered with the
same air of gentle pride, ``And the duchess gave me
with her own hands my Bible and my mug of beer!''
She never saw anything amusing in this association
of gifts, and I always stood behind her when she told
the incident, that she might not see the disrespectful
mirth it aroused in me.

My father and mother met in Alnwick, and were
married in February, 1835. Ten years after his
marriage father was forced into bankruptcy by the
passage of the corn law, and to meet the obliga-
tions attending his failure he and my mother
sold practically everything they possessed--their
home, even their furniture. Their little sons, who
were away at school, were brought home, and
the family expenses were cut down to the barest
margin; but all these sacrifices paid only part of the
debts. My mother, finding that her early gift had
a market value, took in sewing. Father went to
work on a small salary, and both my parents saved
every penny they could lay aside, with the desperate
determination to pay their remaining debts. It was a
long struggle and a painful one, but they finally won
it. Before they had done so, however, and during their
bleakest days, their baby died, and my mother, like
her mother before her, paid the penalty of being
outside the fold of the Church of England. She,
too, was a Unitarian, and her baby, therefore, could
not be laid in any consecrated burial-ground in her
neighborhood. She had either to bury it in the
Potter's Field, with criminals, suicides, and paupers,
or to take it by stage-coach to Alnwick, twenty
miles away, and leave it in the little Unitarian church-
yard where, after her strenuous life, Nicolas Stott
now lay in peace. She made the dreary journey
alone, with the dear burden across her lap.

In 1846, my parents went to London. There
they did not linger long, for the big, indifferent city
had nothing to offer them. They moved to New-
castle-on-Tyne, and here I was born, on the four-
teenth day of February, in 1847. Three boys and
two girls had preceded me in the family circle, and
when I was two years old my younger sister came.
We were little better off in Newcastle than in
London, and now my father began to dream the
great dream of those days. He would go to America.
Surely, he felt, in that land of infinite promise all
would be well with him and his. He waited for the
final payment of his debts and for my younger
sister's birth. Then he bade us good-by and sailed
away to make an American home for us; and in
the spring of 1851 my mother followed him with her
six children, starting from Liverpool in a sailing-
vessel, the John Jacob Westervelt.

I was then little more than four years old, and the
first vivid memory I have is that of being on ship-
board and having a mighty wave roll over me. I was
lying on what seemed to be an enormous red box
under a hatchway, and the water poured from above,
almost drowning me. This was the beginning of a
storm which raged for days, and I still have of it a
confused memory, a sort of nightmare, in which
strange horrors figure, and which to this day haunts
me at intervals when I am on the sea. The thing
that stands out most strongly during that period is
the white face of my mother, ill in her berth. We
were with five hundred emigrants on the lowest
deck of the ship but one, and as the storm grew
wilder an unreasoning terror filled our fellow-pas-
sengers. Too ill to protect her helpless brood, my
mother saw us carried away from her for hours at a
time, on the crests of waves of panic that sometimes
approached her and sometimes receded, as they
swept through the black hole in which we found our-
selves when the hatches were nailed down. No mad-
house, I am sure, could throw more hideous pictures
on the screen of life than those which met our childish
eyes during the appalling three days of the storm.
Our one comfort was the knowledge that our mother
was not afraid. She was desperately ill, but when
we were able to reach her, to cling close to her for a
blessed interval, she was still the sure refuge she had
always been.

On the second day the masts went down, and on
the third day the disabled ship, which now had
sprung a leak and was rolling helplessly in the
trough of the sea, was rescued by another ship and
towed back to Queenstown, the nearest port. The
passengers, relieved of their anxieties, went from
their extreme of fear to an equal extreme of drunken
celebration. They laughed, sang, and danced, but
when we reached the shore many of them returned
to the homes they had left, declaring that they had
had enough of the ocean. We, however, remained
on the ship until she was repaired, and then sailed
on her again. We were too poor to return home;
indeed, we had no home to which we could return.
We were even too poor to live ashore. But we made
some penny excursions in the little boats that plied
back and forth, and to us children at least the weeks
of waiting were not without interest. Among other
places we visited Spike Island, where the convicts
were, and for hours we watched the dreary shuttle
of labor swing back and forth as the convicts car-
ried pails of water from one side of the island, only
to empty them into the sea at the other side. It
was merely ``busy work,'' to keep them occupied
at hard labor; but even then I must have felt some
dim sense of the irony of it, for I have remembered
it vividly all these years.

Our second voyage on the John Jacob Westervelt
was a very different experience from the first. By
day a glorious sun shone overhead; by night we had
the moon and stars, as well as the racing waves we
never wearied of watching. For some reason, prob-
ably because of my intense admiration for them,
which I showed with unmaidenly frankness, I be-
came the special pet of the sailors. They taught me
to sing their songs as they hauled on their ropes,
and I recall, as if I had learned it yesterday, one
pleasing ditty:
Haul on the bow-line,
Kitty is my darling,
Haul on the bow-line,
The bow-line--HAUL!

When I sang ``haul'' all the sailors pulled their
hardest, and I had an exhilarating sense of sharing
in their labors. As a return for my service of song
the men kept my little apron full of ship sugar--
very black stuff and probably very bad for me; but
I ate an astonishing amount of it during that voy-
age, and, so far as I remember, felt no ill effects.

The next thing I recall is being seriously scalded.
I was at the foot of a ladder up which a sailor was
carrying a great pot of hot coffee. He slipped, and
the boiling liquid poured down on me. I must
have had some bad days after that, for I was ter-
ribly burned, but they are mercifully vague. My
next vivid impression is of seeing land, which we
sighted at sunset, and I remember very distinctly
just how it looked. It has never looked the same
since. The western sky was a mass of crimson and
gold clouds, which took on the shapes of strange and
beautiful things. To me it seemed that we were
entering heaven. I remember also the doctors com-
ing on board to examine us, and I can still see a line
of big Irishmen standing very straight and holding
out their tongues for inspection. To a little girl
only four years old their huge, open mouths looked
appalling.

On landing a grievous disappointment awaited
us; my father did not meet us. He was in New
Bedford, Massachusetts, nursing his grief and pre-
paring to return to England, for he had been told
that the John Jacob Westervelt had been lost at sea
with every soul on board. One of the missionaries
who met the ship took us under his wing and con-
ducted us to a little hotel, where we remained
until father had received his incredible news and
rushed to New York. He could hardly believe that
we were really restored to him; and even now,
through the mists of more than half a century, I can
still see the expression in his wet eyes as he picked
me up and tossed me into the air.

I can see, too, the toys he brought me--a little
saw and a hatchet, which became the dearest treas-
ures of my childish days. They were fatidical
gifts, that saw and hatchet; in the years ahead of
me I was to use tools as well as my brothers did,
as I proved when I helped to build our frontier
home.

We went to New Bedford with father, who had
found work there at his old trade; and here I laid
the foundations of my first childhood friendship,
not with another child, but with my next-door
neighbor, a ship-builder. Morning after morning
this man swung me on his big shoulder and took me
to his shipyard, where my hatchet and saw had vio-
lent exercise as I imitated the workers around me.
Discovering that my tiny petticoats were in my way,
my new friend had a little boy's suit made for me;
and thus emancipated, at this tender age, I worked
unwearyingly at his side all day long and day after
day. No doubt it was due to him that I did not
casually saw off a few of my toes and fingers. Cer-
tainly I smashed them often enough with blows of
my dull but active hatchet. I was very, very busy;
and I have always maintained that I began to earn
my share of the family's living at the age of five--
for in return for the delights of my society, which
seemed never to pall upon him, my new friend al-
lowed my brothers to carry home from the ship-
yard all the wood my mother could use.

We remained in New Bedford less than a year,
for in the spring of 1852 my father made another
change, taking his family to Lawrence, Massa-
chusetts, where we lived until 1859. The years in
Lawrence were interesting and formative ones. At
the tender age of nine and ten I became interested
in the Abolition movement. We were Unitarians,
and General Oliver and many of the prominent citi-
zens of Lawrence belonged to the Unitarian Church.
We knew Robert Shaw, who led the first negro regi-
ment, and Judge Storrow, one of the leading New
England judges of his time, as well as the Cabots
and George A. Walton, who was the author of
Walton's Arithmetic and head of the Lawrence
schools. Outbursts of war talk thrilled me, and
occasionally I had a little adventure of my own, as
when one day, in visiting our cellar, I heard a noise
in the coal-bin. I investigated and discovered a
negro woman concealed there. I had been reading
Uncle Tom's Cabin, as well as listening to the
conversation of my elders, so I was vastly stirred
over the negro question. I raced up-stairs in a
condition of awe-struck and quivering excitement,
which my mother promptly suppressed by sending
me to bed. No doubt she questioned my youthful
discretion, for she almost convinced me that I had
seen nothing at all--almost, but not quite; and she
wisely kept me close to her for several days, until
the escaped slave my father was hiding was safely
out of the house and away. Discovery of this seri-
ous offense might have borne grave results for him.

It was in Lawrence, too, that I received and spent
my first twenty-five cents. I used an entire day in
doing this, and the occasion was one of the most
delightful and memorable of my life. It was the
Fourth of July, and I was dressed in white and rode
in a procession. My sister Mary, who also graced
the procession, had also been given twenty-five
cents; and during the parade, when, for obvious
reasons, we were unable to break ranks and spend
our wealth, the consciousness of it lay heavily upon
us. When we finally began our shopping the first
place we visited was a candy store, and I recall dis-
tinctly that we forced the weary proprietor to take
down and show us every jar in the place before we
spent one penny. The first banana I ever ate was
purchased that day, and I hesitated over it a long
time. Its cost was five cents, and in view of that
large expenditure, the eating of the fruit, I was
afraid, would be too brief a joy. I bought it, how-
ever, and the experience developed into a tragedy,
for, not knowing enough to peel the banana, I bit
through skin and pulp alike, as if I were eating an
apple, and then burst into ears of disappointment.
The beautiful conduct of my sister Mary shines
down through the years. She, wise child, had
taken no chances with the unknown; but now,
moved by my despair, she bought half of my banana,
and we divided the fruit, the loss, and the lesson.
Fate, moreover, had another turn of the screw for
us, for, after Mary had taken a bite of it, we gave
what was left of the banana to a boy who stood near
us and who knew how to eat it; and not even the
large amount of candy in our sticky hands enabled
us to regard with calmness the subsequent happiness
of that little boy.

Another experience with fruit in Lawrence illus-
trates the ideas of my mother and the character of
the training she gave her children. Our neighbors,
the Cabots, were one day giving a great garden party,
and my sister was helping to pick strawberries for
the occasion. When I was going home from school
I passed the berry-patches and stopped to speak to
my sister, who at once presented me with two straw-
berries. She said Mrs. Cabot had told her to eat
all she wanted, but that she would eat two less than
she wanted and give those two to me. To my
mind, the suggestion was generous and proper; in
my life strawberries were rare. I ate one berry,
and then, overcome by an ambition to be generous
also, took the other berry home to my mother, tell-
ing her how I had got it. To my chagrin, mother
was deeply shocked. She told me that the trans-
action was all wrong, and she made me take back
the berry and explain the matter to Mrs. Cabot.
By the time I reached that generous lady the berry
was the worse for its journey, and so was I. I was
only nine years old and very sensitive. It was clear
to me that I could hardly live through the humilia-
tion of the confession, and it was indeed a bitter
experience the worst, I think, in my young life,
though Mrs. Cabot was both sympathetic and
understanding. She kissed me, and sent a quart
of strawberries to my mother; but for a long time
afterward I could not meet her kind eyes, for I be-
lieved that in her heart she thought me a thief.

My second friendship, and one which had a strong
influence on my after-life, was formed in Lawrence.
I was not more than ten years old when I met this
new friend, but the memory of her in after-years,
and the impression she had made on my susceptible
young mind, led me first into the ministry, next into
medicine, and finally into suffrage-work. Living
next door to us, on Prospect Hill, was a beautiful
and mysterious woman. All we children knew of
her was that she was a vivid and romantic figure,
who seemed to have no friends and of whom our
elders spoke in whispers or not at all. To me she
was a princess in a fairy-tale, for she rode a white
horse and wore a blue velvet riding-habit with a
blue velvet hat and a picturesquely drooping white
plume. I soon learned at what hours she went
forth to ride, and I used to hover around our gate
for the joy of seeing her mount and gallop away.
I realized that there was something unusual about
her house, and I had an idea that the prince was
waiting for her somewhere in the far distance, and
that for the time at least she had escaped the ogre
in the castle she left behind. I was wrong about
the prince, but right about the ogre. It was only
when my unhappy lady left her castle that she was
free.

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