GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM FRIEND ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE 1803 Friends Arnold Buffum and Sarah Gould were wed. In Smithfield and Fall River, Rhode Island, this Quaker couple would produce ten children seven of whom would survive, and like their parents be actively involved in the antislavery movement. The daughters Elizabeth, Lydia, Rebecca, and Lucy would become writers. Elizabeth in particular would be prolific under her married name Elizabeth Buffum Chace, championing causes such as women’s suffrage, temperance and working conditions in the New England mills. Elizabeth also would produce a daughter who would become an author, Lillie Buffum Chace Wyman (refer to VIRTUOUS LIVES — FOUR QUAKER SISTERS REMEMBER FAMILY LIFE, ABOLITIONISM, AND WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE, by Lucille Salitan and Eve Lewis Perera. NY: Continuum Publishing Company, 370 Lexington Avenue). FEMINISM HDT WHAT? INDEX ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141 2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1806 Elizabeth Buffum Chace was born as Elizabeth Buffum in a Quaker family of Smithfield, Rhode Island. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1822 Friend Elizabeth Buffum, daughter of Friends Arnold Buffum and Rebecca Gould Buffum, is stated in documents as during this year to have been attending the Friends Boarding School on College Hill on the East Side in Providence, Rhode Island. There is, however, an apparent discrepancy on the record, for she was said to be eighteen years of age when she attended the school, and since she was born in 1806, she would not be eighteen until 1824.) MOSES BROWN ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 4 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1824 After having attended village schools, Friend Elizabeth Buffum Chace (then known of course as Friend Elizabeth Buffum) boarded for one year at the Quakers’ Yearly Meeting Boarding School, the establishment which is now known as the “Moses Brown” School on College Hill on the East Side of Providence, Rhode Island. Friend Abby Kelley was during the same year attending this Friends School. (There is, however, an apparent discrepancy on the record. Elizabeth Buffum was stated to be eighteen years of age when she attended the Friends school in Providence, which would put her year of attendance as 1824 since she was born in 1806, and yet other documents put her year of attendance as 1822.) Note that these two Quaker scholars, being girls, would have been in “Girls School,” a facility held distinct not only in reports and catalogues but also by means of gender segregation of classrooms, and gender segregation of walks, and gender segregation of groves and playgrounds and dining areas (over and above rigid racial segregation that was making certain that Rhode Island’s black and red populations would remain forever entirely in the dark). In this year superintendents Friends Matthew Purinton and Betsy Purinton of Salem, Massachusetts departed and were replaced by Friends Enoch Breed and Lydia Breed. Superintendents. 1819-1824. Purinton, Matthew and Betsy. 1824-1835. Breed, Enoch and Lydia. 1829-1835. Gould, Stephen Wanton and Gould, Han- nah, Asst. Supts. 1835-1836. Davis, Seth and Mary. 1837. Breed, Enoch and Lydia. 1838-1839. Rathbun, Rowland and Alice. 1840-1844. Wing, Allen and Olive. 1845-1846. Thompson, Olney and Lydia. 1847. Congdon, Jarvia and Lydia. 1847-1852. Cornell, Silas and Sarah M. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1825 The Buffum family relocated to Fall River (this city would be in Rhode Island rather than in Massachusetts until the Civil War) where Elizabeth would get married with Samuel Chace, an employee at his family’s prosperous cotton mill.1 ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE 1. Evidently by this point the following had already happened as described in Elizabeth C. Stevens’s ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE AND LILLIE CHACE WYMAN: A CENTURY OF ABOLITIONIST, SUFFRAGIST, AND WORKERS’ RIGHTS ACTIVISM (McFarland. 2003): “Chace’s own father, Arnold Buffum, was apparently disowned by the Smithfield (Rhode Island) monthly meeting for his radical abolitionist labors although he ‘remonstrated’ against the action and proved the allegations against him to be false.” 6 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM While teaching at Friends School in Lynn, Friend Abby Kelley met Friend James N. Buffum, father of her classmate, Friend Elizabeth Buffum Chace from Friends Yearly Meeting School in Providence, Rhode Island, and Friend Buffum and Friend William Bassett, two leading abolitionists in Lynn, introduced Abby to the growing number of state and local anti-slavery societies that were beginning since the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Abby joined the Female Anti-Slavery Society in Lynn and began distributing petitions door-to-door, sewing and selling fancy articles at the fairs to raise money for the American Anti-Slavery Society. During her school breaks Abby was visiting Boston and Worcester to attend meetings of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, meetings which women attended but at which they were expected not to speak. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1835 Elizabeth Buffum Chace and her sisters founded the Fall River Anti-Slavery Society, trekking door-to-door collecting signatures on petitions calling for the immediate freeing of slaves; for the following decade, until 1845, she and her husband would hide fugitive slaves in their home at the corner of Hunt Street and Broad Street in Central Falls, operating as a station on the Underground Railroad. After much soul-searching, Chace, who lost a series of five children to illness, would leave her Quaker monthly meeting over its refusal to take a tougher stand against slavery. (She would eventually be brought to the opinion that “the prejudice against color, throughout New England, was even stronger than the pro-slavery spirit.”) Here are the Rhode Islanders believed to have been active in the Underground Railroad: 8 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM Newport: Jethro and Anne Mitchell (related to Maria Mitchell of Nantucket? –Jethro was born on January 27, 1784 on Nantucket Island) Providence: Robert Adams Friend Arnold Buffum William Buffum Samuel B. Chace and Mrs. Elizabeth Buffum Chace Daniel Mitchell of Foster and Pawtucket (related to Maria Mitchell of Nantucket? –her father’s name was William Mitchell) Captain Jonathan Walker UNDERGROUND RAILROAD 1836 Abby Kelley took a teaching job at the Religious Society of Friends school in Lynn, between Boston and 1 Salem. At that time the fee for teaching an older child was usually about a shilling or 12 /2 cents and teaching usually brought in an income of about $200.00 per year, or perhaps rather less than that for a female teacher. There Friend Abby would meet Friend James N. Buffum, father of her classmate, Friend Elizabeth Buffum Chase from the Yearly Meeting School in Providence, Rhode Island, and Friend Buffum and Friend William Bassett, two leading abolitionists in Lynn, would introduce Abby to the growing number of state and local anti- slavery societies that were beginning since the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Abby would join the Female Anti-Slavery Society in Lynn and begin distributing petitions door-to-door, sewing and selling fancy articles at the fairs to raise money for the cause. During her school breaks she would be visiting Boston and Worcester to attend meetings of that Society, meetings which women attended but at which there was an expectation that there would be no attempts to speak. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 9 HDT WHAT? INDEX ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE ELIZABETH BUFFUM CHACE GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1843 June 1 (Pentecost Thursday): Joseph Smith, Jr. “got married with” Elvira Anie Cowles. Go East, 46-year-old black woman, go East: Isabella2 experienced a command to “go east” and testify, adopted the monicker Sojourner Truth, and departed New-York with but an hour’s notice, with two York shillings in her pocket, carrying her worldly belongings in a pillowcase, to move on foot through Long Island and Connecticut, testifying to whatever audiences she was able to attract. –It is the life of a wandering evangelist, is mine. In the course of attending Millerite meetings to testify, she would accommodate to a number of the apocalyptic tenets of that group. 2. Isabella Bomefree van Wagenen, “Bomefree”