Susan Calafate Boyle
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Women in Missouri History Women in IN SEARCH OF Edited by LeeAnnWhites, Mary C. Neth, and Gary R. Kremer .......................................... .......................................... University of Missouri Press Columbia and London Copyright © 2004 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 5 4 3 2 1 08 07 06 05 04 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Women in Missouri history : in search of power and influence / edited by LeeAnn Whites, Mary C. Neth, and Gary R. Kremer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8262-1526-2 (alk. paper) 1. Women—Missouri—History. 2. Women—Missouri—Social conditions. I. Whites, LeeAnn. II. Neth, Mary. III. Kremer, Gary R. HQ1438.M8W65 2004 305.4’09778—dc22 2004002549 This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984. Designer: Kristie Lee Typesetter: Crane Composition, Inc. Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc. Typefaces: Sabon and Gillies Antique For photo credits, see p. 275. Contents Introduction LeeAnn Whites and Mary C. Neth . 1 French Women in Colonial Missouri, 1750–1805 Susan Calafate Boyle . 15 Esther and Her Sisters: Free Women of Color as Property Owners in Colonial St. Louis, 1765–1803 Judith A. Gilbert . 31 German-Speaking Women in Nineteenth-Century Missouri: The Immigrant Experience Linda Schelbitzki Pickle . 45 “May We as One Family Live in Peace and Harmony”: Relations between Mistresses and Slave Women in Antebellum Missouri Diane Mutti Burke . 64 City Sisters: The Sisters of St. Joseph in Missouri, 1836–1920 Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith . 82 The Tale of Two Minors: Women’s Rights on the Border LeeAnn Whites . 101 vi Contents The Changing Role of Protection on the Border: Gender and the Civil War in Saline County Rebekah Weber Bowen . 119 Her Will against Theirs: Eda Hickam and the Ambiguity of Freedom in Postbellum Missouri Kimberly Schreck . 134 Sedalia’s Ladies of the Evening: Prostitution and Class in a Nineteenth-Century Railroad Town Rhonda Chalfant . 152 Domestic Drudges to Dazzling Divas: The Origins of African American Beauty Culture in St. Louis, 1900–1930 De Anna J. Reese . 168 “We Are Practicable, Sensible Women”: The Missouri Women Farmers’ Club and the Professionalization of Agriculture Rebecca S. Montgomery . 180 Euphemia B. Koller and the Politics of Insanity in Ralls County, 1921–1927 Gregg Andrews . 200 Breaking into Politics: Emily Newell Blair and the Democratic Party in the 1920s Virginia Laas . 219 The Doctor’s Wife: Fannie Cook and Social Protest in Missouri, 1938–1949 Bonnie Stepenoff . 236 Bibliography of Secondary Works . 253 Contributors . 261 Index . 265 Acknowledgments Coordinating the computer programs of our many contributors was a challenge that was ably met by Patty Eggleston, staff member of the Uni- versity of Missouri–Columbia Department of History, and Kristine Stilwell, a Ph.D. candidate in history, who not only stepped in at a crucial time to put all of the manuscripts into the same format, but also went beyond the call of duty and did some editing as well. We thank both of them for mak- ing our work on this manuscript much easier. We also would like to thank Sandy Rubinstein Peterson, also a Ph.D. candidate in history, who com- piled and prepared the bibliography for the anthology. For many of the contributors to this volume, interest in the history of women in Missouri began with a request on the part of the Cooper County American Association of University Women to research the history of women for the 125th anniversary of the founding of their county. We would like to thank the members of that organization, especially Mary Ellen McVicker, as well as the Missouri Humanities Council, for their funding of that initial project. We would also like to thank the staffs of the State Historical Society of Missouri, the Western Historical Manuscript Collec- tion, and the Missouri State Archives for their generous research assistance over the years. vii ......................................... ......................................... Women in Missouri History ......................................... ......................................... .................................... Introduction LeeAnn Whites and Mary C. Neth In 1971, the University of Missouri Press published the first volume of A History of Missouri, the beginning of what would culminate in 1997 as a five-volume, multiauthored survey of the history of the state. In the close to thirty years that the authors—Lawrence O. Christensen, William E. Foley, Richard S. Kirkendall, Gary R. Kremer, Perry McCandless, and William E. Parrish—labored over the writing of this milestone achievement, our very understanding of the nature of history itself was simultaneously being rad- ically reassessed and redefined. The rise in social activism in the 1960s, be- ginning with the Civil Rights movement but moving on to other social movements, percolated into the thinking and writing of historians, causing us to look at our state histories anew and ask, Where are the workers? Where are the women? Where are the ethnic, racial, and religious minori- ties?1 We can see the impact of this new, more inclusive way of thinking about what constitutes the proper subjects for historical study in the way this five-volume history varies from the first volume, which was published in 1971, to the last, which was published in 1997. Nowhere is the contrast more apparent than in the treatment of the history of women. Reflecting the prevailing historiography of the time, the initial three volumes (pub- lished in the early 1970s) included no subject entries in the index at all for “women.” However, by the publication of volume 5 in 1987, there were more than twenty-five. Indeed, prior to the great watershed of the 1960s, 1. William E. Parrish et al., A History of Missouri, vols. 1–5 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1971–1997). 1 2 LeeAnn Whites and Mary C. Neth the history of the state was arguably conceived of as corresponding largely to the activities of class- and race-privileged men, those who held formally constituted political and economic power and therefore presumably con- trolled the important events and transactions that made up the very warp and woof of the state’s history. The only time women as a social group en- tered into this narrative was when they attempted to empower themselves as these men were empowered. In Missouri history books published prior to the 1980s, the subentries under the index subject “women” generally only pertain to women’s efforts to acquire the vote through the woman suffrage movement.2 Although contributions of women as a social group were overlooked in the history of the state, some few “notable” women, such as Jessie Benton Frémont, Marie Chouteau, Philippine Duchesne, or Susan Blow have always appeared on the pages of various volumes. This practice was so widespread in the historical profession that historians of women understand it as one of the earliest stages in the development of the field. If we consider why these particular women were included, we can see that frequently, histori- ans’ perceptions of their importance lay in their connections to politically or economically powerful men. In some state histories, for example, Jessie Frémont’s name is presented, per the old custom, as “Mrs. J. C. Frémont,” underscoring the importance of her relationship to John Charles Frémont, the Civil War military general of the state. Her father, Thomas Hart Ben- ton, was also a prominent political figure in the state—a leader of the Democratic party and a longtime state senator in the antebellum period. By virtue of these familial connections, Jessie Frémont was located close to traditional centers of white male political power and positioned to at least influence some of the state’s most important political decision makers and, on occasion, to even make some important decisions in her own right. Sim- ilarly, “Madame Chouteau”—Marie Chouteau—is frequently mentioned in early state histories, for she was the matriarch of the powerful Chouteau family, the founders of St. Louis.3 2. For index subject listings, see Frederick Arthur Culmer, A New History of Mis- souri (Mexico, Mo.: McIntyre Publishing, 1938), 594; Edwin C. McReynolds, Mis- souri: A History of the Crossroads of the State (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964); Duane G. Meyer, The Heritage of Missouri: A History (Hazelwood, Mo.: State Publishing, 1970), 826; Paul C. Nagel, Missouri: A Bicentennial History (New York: Norton, 1977), 205; and Floyd C. Shoemaker, ed., Missouri: Day by Day (Co- lumbia, Mo.: State Historical Society, 1943), 2:499. 3. Gerda Lerner, “Placing Women in History: Definitions and Challenges,” in Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 145–59. For “Mrs. J. C.” Frémont and “Madame” Chouteau, see Cul- mer, New History of Missouri, 588–89. Introduction 3 The invisibility of women as a group and the scarcity of notable women arguably have the same root. As a group, women were invisible to histori- ans because most women became wives and mothers. The place of women as wives and mothers was not to make history in their own name, but rather to assist (or to use the nineteenth-century terminology, “to influ- ence”) their husbands, fathers, and sons in their exercise of economic and political power. “Notable” women in this system are the ones fortunate enough to be attached to men with political and economic position; in as- sisting these men they occasionally find their way onto the stage of history, if only through “influence.” Most women, however, whether poor or just middling in economic terms, or members of racial or ethnic minorities, or single or widowed, fall through the sieve of this approach to determining what is historically significant.