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A HOME OF ONE’S OWN: THE LIFE OF

Helen Hunt Jackson was a famous nineteenth-century American author whose twelve years in Colorado Springs were the most productive of her career. She arrived in 1873 an invalid in search of health, and a woman who had suffered a devastating series of losses. She was an orphan, a widow and a childless mother. In Colorado Springs she built a new life and discovered the cause she championed until her death in 1885.

In retrospect, Helen was both an unlikely westerner and a reluctant activist. She initially found the treeless plains and stark scenery of the region dreary and depressing. However, her health improved and daily carriage rides into the foothills improved her outlook. She met and married William Sharpless Jackson who accepted her on equal terms affirming, “You will lead your life in your work & in which you are doing good. I will lead mine in a business line…I promise you will find me meeting you even more than half way.”

A prolific author in a variety of genres including poetry, travel writing and domestic essays, Jackson insisted publishers pay her well. Her work appeared in Scribner’s, Century Magazine, Harper’s and the Atlantic among others. She was financially independent and maintained a tight circle of literary friends, most of whom were reform-minded. However, Jackson claimed to detest “women with a cause” and found them tiresome.

Perhaps no one was more surprised than Helen when she “found a cause” in 1879. For the next six years, Jackson worked feverishly as an advocate for American Indian Rights in an era when it was unpopular to do so. She declared to William, “…I am stirred to the core…I do feel as earnest & solemn a ‘call’ as ever a human being felt to work for this cause.” At first Helen Hunt Jackson was a writer who used words to overcome grief. In doing so, she changed her life. Later, she used words to champion the rights of American Indians. In doing so, she changed the world.

AT HOME IN COLORADO

William Sharpless Jackson came to Colorado Springs in 1871 as Secretary-Treasurer of the Denver & Rio Grande under General William Jackson Palmer. In 1873 he helped found the El Paso County Bank (later the El Paso National), served as a member of the first Colorado Springs school board from 1872-1874

Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum – Leah Davis Witherow, Curator of History – October 2018 2 and was a trustee of Colorado College for four decades. After his death in 1919, he was eulogized as a brilliant businessman, a loving father, and a generous reform-minded benefactor.

Helen Fiske Hunt arrived in Colorado Springs in 1873 and took up residence at the Colorado Springs Hotel, where she met Jackson. In October 1875, the couple married and moved into 228 East Kiowa. For thirty-five year old Helen, this was her first permanent home and the next decade was the most productive of her career. However, she continued to travel seasonally due to persistent bronchitis and sore throats. Helen also took trips to conduct research, spend time with literary friends, and to avoid bouts of loneliness when William was away on business.

In June 1884, Helen fell down the stairs of her home and broke her leg. Bedridden for months and seeking relief, she travelled to Los Angeles where her health conditions only worsened. In August of 1885, HHJ died of stomach cancer in San Francisco with William at her side. She was buried according to her wishes on Mountain, “the spot I love best of the whole world.” However, her gravesite became such a tourist attraction that William had her body reburied in Evergreen Cemetery in 1891.

Prior to her death, Helen encouraged her husband to remarry, and to consider her own niece as a potential wife. In 1888, William married Helen Fiske Banfield, twenty-three years his junior, and the daughter of Helen Hunt Jackson’s sister Anne. The couple had seven children, six of whom survived to adulthood. They raised their large brood at 228 East Kiowa and their marriage lasted until Helen’s death in 1899. After college, the Jackson children had distinguished careers in medicine, law, education and journalism. Sons Roland and Everett served in World War I. To this day, members of the Jackson Family continue to reside in Colorado.

228 EAST KIOWA STREET

The rooms seen here are part of the real home of Helen Hunt Jackson. This is not a model. Although the house was razed in 1961 to make way for a new police department building, these original rooms and their contents were preserved and reassembled in the museum.

This house was built in 1873 by Joseph Dozier and Winfield Scott Stratton, the latter eventually famous as a Cripple Creek mining millionaire. Of note is the wooden stairway bordered by stars, and the library alcove known as “flirtation corner.” Master woodworker Fred Ege reportedly built the bookshelves, mantels, and built-in cabinets in the dining room.

William Sharpless Jackson purchased the house for $4,000 in 1874, prior to his marriage to Helen Hunt (HHJ) in October, 1875. The home that William boasted to Helen as, “one of the best in town,” faced

Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum – Leah Davis Witherow, Curator of History – October 2018 3 east on Weber Street. She requested it be reoriented to face south on Kiowa in order to achieve a picturesque view of Cheyenne Mountain in the distance.

Today, the interior is very similar to how it looked when HHJ lived in the home from 1875-1885. She loved decorating and filled her home with objects from around the world, artwork, hundreds of books, and bits of nature. At home in Colorado or while traveling, she collected shells, leaves, pinecones, and ferns. She gathered kinnikinnick by the armfuls in Cheyenne Canon and trailed the vines around furniture and wall hangings.

After Helen Hunt Jackson died in August 1885, William married her niece Helen Fiske Banfield. The couple had seven children, six of whom lived to adulthood. In 1893 the house was expanded to accommodate the growing family. Their son William S. Jackson Jr. later raised his family in the home, after which his sister Helen Jackson resided there until 1961. For the third Helen Jackson, the home was filled with happy memories and stories. As she described it, “I think the house was the loveliest place in the world.”

HELEN HUNT JACKSON IN COLORADO

After arriving in Colorado Springs in the fall of 1873, Helen Hunt Jackson remarked that "one might die of such a place alone…death by disease would be more natural." The dry tendrils of shortgrass that surrendered before the ominous darkness of the mountains distressed her; the sheer expanse of land around her was as foreboding as the health problems that had brought her there. Adrift between it all was Colorado Springs, a town too small and too new for Jackson to feel assured by.

However, as time passed the sorrowful prose that marked her early literary career gave way to verses of enchantment, lifting her words out of the darkness she had sheltered in for nearly a decade. She had traveled far and frequently in her life, often publishing articles on the places she had visited, but never did she write about another place with the same reverence as she did Colorado. There was a sanctity she found in her surroundings, and it struck both fear and awe within her.

What lay hidden beyond the pines of Cheyenne Mountain captured her imagination the most, as she personified the landscapes there and established them as the central characters in her narratives. She wrote of ruins that were once alive, slowly hushed by the passage of time; of storms that lassoed the tops of mountains that stood like gods. For Jackson, this was no ordinary place. She found that it was one imbued with spirit, one with a distinct sense that there is something living — yet undeniably ancient that rests just below our feet.

Despite the allure of returning East, Jackson had forgiven the landscape that once terrified her and chose to remain in Colorado Springs, eventually remarrying and making the house on Kiowa Street her

Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum – Leah Davis Witherow, Curator of History – October 2018 4 permanent home. She later wrote in Bits of Travel at Home that there had never been another day like the first she had experienced in Colorado, her terror fading away in time as if it had only been a nightmarish dream. Once she had witnessed the true beauty of the place, she returned to it time and again.

THE AUTHOR

Helen Hunt Jackson was a prolific author who left a rich literary legacy. In just two decades of work she demonstrated mastery in many styles including: poetry, travel essays, novels and finally — protest literature. She defied easy labels and successfully avoided most stereotypes. She belonged to elite literary circles with the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who once remarked when asked if she was the best woman-poet on the continent, “Perhaps we might as well omit the woman.” While most writers in the era struggled to make a living, HHJ demanded and received among the highest rates of pay. Despite all this, she was an unlikely author.

Helen Maria Fiske was born in October 1830 in Amherst Massachusetts to parents Deborah and Nathan Fiske. Her childhood was dominated by Deborah’s struggle with consumption (now known as tuberculosis) and Nathan’s near-obsessive devotion to his work as a Professor at Amherst College and a Classics scholar. Orphaned by age sixteen, she and younger sister Ann received financial support from their maternal grandfather while family friend Julius Palmer served as their guardian.

Helen attended the Ipswich Female Seminary and later the Abbott Institute in New York City, which she loved. After finishing her studies she taught there as well. When the school temporarily shut down, Helen made an extended visit to Albany, New York. There, she met Edward Hunt, a civil engineer in the Army Corps of Engineers. The couple married in 1852, and Helen described herself as, “…almost too happy to trust the future.” Her words were prophetic as the couple’s first son Murray died before the age of one. In 1863, Edward was killed in a tragic accident and in April 1865, Helen’s constant companion, nine year old son Rennie died of diphtheria.

Helen donned her ever-present mourning clothes and shut herself away. When she emerged two months later, her first poem, “The Key of the Casket,” was published in the New York Evening Post. Remarkably, she had swiftly channeled her loss into words. The following years were spent traveling seasonally both in search of health and of new people and places to write about. She wrote rapidly and well. For the next two decades she published on average three periodical pieces per month, and wrote over twenty books — an enviable literary output by any measure.

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LITERARY AND ARTISTIC FRIENDSHIPS

Throughout the course of her life and career, Helen Fiske Hunt Jackson had notable literary mentors and artistic friendships. As author Kate Phillips documented in Helen Hunt Jackson: A Literary Life, Helen’s first mentors were her parents, Nathan and Deborah Vinal Fiske. Her father Nathan was a fastidious classics scholar who imparted his strong work ethic in his daughter. Mother Deborah was a children’s author who encouraged Helen to write vivid letters full of detailed descriptions, a practice that would later serve her well in both her non-fiction essays and novels.

After the death of her husband Edward Hunt in 1863 and their nine year old son Rennie two years later, Helen emerged from mourning a published author. She travelled to the literary enclave of Newport, Rhode Island and met Thomas Wentworth Higginson, an author and influential critic who had a profound impact on Helen’s career. Though more famous for his role as an advisor to , Higginson encouraged Helen to continue to write poetry and offered his counsel for years to come.

Helen immersed herself in the literary scene with fellow authors Charles Dudley Warner; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, pen name Susan Coolidge; and Sara Jane Lippincott, pen name Grace Greenwood; among many others. Woolsey, author of the “What Katy Did” series remained great friends with Jackson throughout their careers, despite Helen’s fame far surpassing her own. She artfully described Helen, “She loved, when she did love, with her whole heart, but she hated as thoroughly as she loved, and what she hated or doubted she resisted. Her will was like an iron rod; you could influence but never bend her.”

In addition to becoming a prolific author, Helen Hunt Jackson also excelled at the business side of writing. She demanded and received among the highest wages per page of any living American author, and encouraged her female colleagues to do the same. She was also extremely generous. Upon her death she willed the copyright and dividends of Procession of Flowers to artist Alice Stewart Hill, and left her niece Helen Fiske Banfield, “the residue and remainder of my said personal estate, including the copyrights of my books and publications…” She could never have known that her rich literary legacy would continue into the twenty-first century.

THE ADVOCATE

Helen Hunt Jackson’s advocacy on behalf of American Indians began not in Colorado — but in Boston. There, in November 1879, she attended a talk given by Chief of the . He described the merciless removal of his people from their homelands to the Indian Territory. Galvanized with new purpose, Jackson declared to fellow author Charles Dudley Warner, “I shall be found with ‘Indians’

Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum – Leah Davis Witherow, Curator of History – October 2018 6 engraved on my brain when I am dead. – A fire has been kindled within me, which will never go out. What I want to do now is write a little book – simply and curtly a record of our broken treaties.”

Published in 1881, A Century of Dishonor was a damning condemnation of government policy toward American Indians. A copy was sent to every member of Congress, with covers emblazoned by Benjamin Franklin’s quote, "Look upon your hands! They are stained with the blood of your relations!” Although the book received largely positive reviews, it sold less than 2,000 copies and failed to generate policy changes.

After writing a series of articles about Southern California for The Century Magazine, Jackson requested an appointment in 1882 as special agent for the Department of the Interior to document conditions and needs of the Mission Indians. Working with Abbot Kinney, HHJ published a report and authored a bill derived from her findings. Interior Secretary Henry Teller presented the bill to Congress in 1884. Six years later, a revised version of her original bill titled the Mission Indian Relief Act was passed by Congress on January 12, 1891.

With the disappointing response to A Century of Dishonor, HHJ returned to the familiar genre of fiction. With her 1884 novel Ramona, she changed her reform strategy. “…I tried to attack people’s consciences directly, and they would not listen. Now I have sugared my pill and it remains to be seen if it will go down.” Ramona was wildly successful, and is still in print. Unfortunately, the public fell in love with the story and missed the message. But she never gave up. On her deathbed in August 1885, Jackson penned a note to President Grover Cleveland, imploring him to continue reform work on behalf of American Indians.

RAMONA

Helen Hunt Jackson devoted the last six years of her life, from 1979-1885, to advocacy on behalf of American Indians. Published in 1880, her book A Century of Dishonor, chronicled the mistreatment of American Indians by the United States Government but failed to influence official policy.

While writing a series of articles for The Century Magazine in 1881, Jackson met American Indians in Southern California and heard their stories. She made another trip the following year as a special agent for the Department of the Interior, documenting conditions and needs of the Mission Indians. Jackson then decided to return to the familiar genre of fiction. She hoped to produce a protest novel similar to ’s landmark work Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which would sway popular opinion in favor of American Indian rights.

Conceiving the entire plot in a sudden inspiration, HHJ sequestered herself in a New York hotel room and wrote the novel in less than four months. Ramona was first serialized in the Christian Union before

Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum – Leah Davis Witherow, Curator of History – October 2018 7 being published by Roberts Brothers in 1884. It went on to become one of the most popular American novels of all time and is still in print.

Unfortunately, few readers found Helen Hunt Jackson’s message within the book’s pages. However, the dramatic tale struck a chord in the imagination of Americans who were increasingly travelling to California as tourists. As a result, The Ramona Pageant, an outdoor dramatization of the story premiered in Hemet, California in 1923 and is still performed each spring. The novel also inspired a hit song and multiple film versions starring Mary Pickford (1910); Dolores del Rio (1925); and Loretta Young (1935).

SUSETTE LA FLESCHE

Susette La Flesche, also known as Inshata Theumba (Bright Eyes), was a Ponca journalist and activist. La Flesche was an early voice in publicizing the brutal living conditions of the Ponca after their removal to the Indian Territory, and served as an interpreter for Chief Standing Bear during his trial in the spring of 1879. She later accompanied Chief Standing Bear on his East Coast speaking tour, where she took the opportunity to address crowds directly about the rights and treatment of American Indians, inspiring future reformers including Helen Hunt Jackson to take action.

TRAVELS

Travel was essential in Helen Hunt Jackson’s life. Due to her mother’s persistent struggle with consumption (now known as tuberculosis) young Helen was frequently sent away to live with relatives or family friends for weeks or months at a time. As a child, Helen became a “good houseguest,” eternally cheerful and always helpful. During her marriage to Army Engineer Edward Hunt, the couple relocated several times as he was ordered to different duty stations.

After the death of Edward in 1863 and their son Rennie two years later, Helen traveled seasonally in search of health. From childhood she grappled with frequent sore throats and bronchitis, never feeling well for any length of time. After becoming an author, she wintered with the literary crowd in Newport, Rhode Island and traveled throughout New England seeking mild climates and interesting people and places to write about.

With her growing success, she focused less on poetry and more on travel essays. She made keen observations about regional differences in America, yet her writing was as scholar Kate Phillips described, “paradoxical.” Helen railed against the changes to quaint rural towns after the arrival or

Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum – Leah Davis Witherow, Curator of History – October 2018 8 railroads and tourists, despite being a tourist herself. Ironically, her travel essays popularized the isolated communities she described and encouraged more travelers to visit.

In November 1868, Helen sailed to Europe and stayed for over a year visiting England, Germany, France, Italy and Austria. She published a series of travel essays in U.S. periodicals and continued her passion for collecting interesting objects from her travels. In Europe she purchased copies of artwork from the Louvre Museum in Paris and pottery from Germany among other items.

In 1872, HHJ made her first journey to California, spending two months including a visit to Yosemite. She later traveled extensively through Southern California while serving as a Special Agent for the Department of the Interior and researching her novel Ramona. For Helen Hunt Jackson — collecting was synonymous with traveling. Her collection of Mission Indian baskets illustrates her enduring curiosity with history, people and cultures.

THE JACKSON FAMILY

William S Jackson (1836-1919) William Sharpless Jackson, a Pennsylvania Quaker, began working for the Denver & Rio Grande Railway Company and helped found Colorado Springs in 1871. In 1873, he was one of the founders of the El Paso County Bank, later called the El Paso National Bank. He invested in various mines, organized the El Paso Electric Company, part of owner of the Colorado Springs Gazette, member of the school board, and a trustee of Colorado College. He was married twice – once to author Helen Hunt and later to Helen Banfield, mother of his seven children.

Helen B Jackson (1859-1899) Helen Banfield Jackson graduated from Vassar College. She was a teacher, before marrying William S. Jackson in 1888 and gave birth to seven children. After the youngest child, Margaret, died at 9 months of age, Helen became deeply depressed and took her own life in 1899.

William S Jackson Jr (1889-1981) After graduating from Colorado College, William S. Jackson Jr. attended the Harvard University and then the University of Denver, where he received his law degree. He practiced law in Colorado Springs until 1942, when he was elected to the Colorado Supreme Court. He was involved in many organizations such as the El Paso County Bar Association, the Denver Legal Aid Society, Colorado College, the Webb-Waring Institute for Medical Research, the Chamber of Commerce and the First National Bank of Colorado Springs.

Helen Jackson (1890 – 1987)

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Helen Jackson graduated from Vassar College, and then received a Master’s Degree from Colorado College. She was a teacher until her retirement. Helen lived in the family home until the City of Colorado Springs purchased and razed the home in 1961. She was a charter member of the Friends of the Pioneers Museum, and regularly gave tours at the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, specifically of the Jackson home and Helen Hunt Jackson.

Everett Jackson (1891-1924) Everett Jackson graduated Colorado College early to attend Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Everett spent his summer vacation as a member of the American Ambulance section in France during World War I. He continued to serve and recruit fellow classmates at Oxford to join the service. Due to his meritorious service during the battles around Verdun, France, he received the Croix du Guerre, a military decoration given by the French government. After serving, Everett taught mathematics at Harvard University. In 1924, Everett was fatally injured from a fall in South Cheyenne Canon.

Roland Jackson (1893-1918) After attending Colorado College, Roland graduated from Harvard University in three years. He was a talented pianist and musician. He worked as a translator in Madrid, Spain before joining the U.S. Army. He served as a Second Lieutenant in the Infantry and died in the Chateau Thierry Battle in France in 1918.

Edith Jackson (1895-1977) Dr. Edith B. Jackson graduated from Vassar College and then Johns Hopkins University receiving a Medical Degree. Dr. Edith Jackson was the only female to receive an internship at the University of Iowa Medical School. After this internship, she taught at Yale University School of Medicine. In 1930, she studied with Dr. Sigmund Freud. Dr. Jackson returned to the Pediatrics and Psychiatry unit at Yale Medical School in 1936. During this time, she developed a rooming-in unit for mothers and newborns. Rooming in allowed women and their newborns to stay in the same hospital room. Prior to her research, newborns and mothers were kept in separate hospital rooms. This was an effort to humanize hospitals, allowing for mothers to have access to their child during the hospital stay. Upon retirement, Dr. Jackson became a visiting professor at the University of Colorado, implemented at rooming-in unit at Colorado General Hospital, and counseled single mothers.

Gardner Jackson (1897-1965) Before his service in the United States Army during World War I, Gardner Jackson attended Amherst College. He became a reporter with multiple national and international newspapers. He moved to Washington D.C. in 1933 to work for the Department of Agriculture under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. During his time with the administration, Gardner worked with , Albert Einstein and Dorothy Thompson on the American Board of Guardians for Basque

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Refugee Children in an effort to sponsor children displaced by the Spanish Civil War. Gardner later became a lobbyist.

Margaret Jackson (1898) Margaret Jackson died at 9 months of age

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