Women and Reform in a New England Community, 1815-1860
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Women and Reform in a New England Community, 1815-1860

Carolyn J. Lawes

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Women and Reform in a New England Community, 1815-1860

Carolyn J. Lawes

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About This Book

Interpretations of women in the antebellum period have long dwelt upon the notion of public versus private gender spheres. As part of the ongoing reevaluation of the prehistory of the women's movement, Carolyn Lawes challenges this paradigm and the primacy of class motivation. She studies the women of antebellum Worcester, Massachusetts, discovering that whatever their economic background, women there publicly worked to remake and improve their community in their own image. Lawes analyzes the organized social activism of the mostly middle-class, urban, white women of Worcester and finds that they were at the center of community life and leadership. Drawing on rich local history collections, Lawes weaves together information from city and state documents, court cases, medical records, church collections, newspapers, and diaries and letters to create a portrait of a group of women for whom constant personal and social change was the norm. Throughout Women and Reform in a New England Community, conventional women make seemingly unconventional choices. A wealthy Worcester matron helped spark a women-led rebellion against ministerial authority in the town's orthodox Calvinist church. Similarly, a close look at the town's sewing circles reveals that they were vehicles for political exchange as well as social gatherings that included men but intentionally restricted them to a subordinate role. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the women of Worcester had taken up explicitly political and social causes, such as an orphan asylum they founded, funded, and directed. Lawes argues that economic and personal instability rather than a desire for social control motivated women, even relatively privileged ones, into social activism. She concludes that the local activism of the women of Worcester stimulated, and was stimulated by, their interest in the first two national women's rights conventions, held in Worcester in 1850 and 1851. Far from being marginalized from the vital economic, social, and political issues of their day, the women of this antebellum New England community insisted upon being active and ongoing participants in the debates and decisions of their society and nation.

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1
Keeping the Faith
Women’s Leadership in an Orthodox Congregational Church
I believe that those who are once regenerated and united to Christ by a true faith will never finally fall away, but will be preserved, by divine power, and in fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose of grace, unto final salvation.
—Articles of Faith and Covenant,
adopted by the Calvinist Church in Worcester, 1834
It was half past nine on a quiet Monday night in April 1818. Elizabeth Tuckerman Salisbury, known throughout Worcester as “Madame Salisbury” in deference to her family’s wealth and social position, was passing a serene evening at home with her niece and adopted daughter, Eliza Weir. Her husband Stephen, a merchant and the town’s wealthiest citizen, was away on business. The Salisbury mansion’s drawing room was pleasant, graced by Elizabeth’s harp and a piano bought expressly for Eliza.1
Suddenly the peace was shattered as something crashed violently against the front window. Salisbury immediately “call’d in the people” (the servants) for protection. Venturing outside, they spotted no one lurking about, but did find two good-sized stones, one weighing over half a pound. Peering out into the now still night, Elizabeth Salisbury noted that “it was very dark, & no one appeared to be in the street. [Y]ou may suppose I did not recover my tranquil[l]ity very soon.”2
The next morning Salisbury summoned her nephew by marriage, Daniel Waldo, a merchant and investor, and the town’s second-wealthiest citizen. Waldo hurried to her side with disturbing news of his own: “he had his trees broken that night, & the one preceeding [sic], he supposed by the same person or persons” who had thrown the rocks. Musing over the broken trees and shattered glass, Waldo suspected a political motive behind the attacks, which had occurred on the evening of an election to decide whether he retained his seat in the state senate. Waldo explained that “there had been great exertions made by some disaffected person,” costing him not just a few trees but one hundred votes as well. If indeed the vandalism had been linked to the election, it would cease now that the votes had been cast. Heartened by Waldo’s conjecture, Salisbury wrote confidently to her husband that there was no cause for alarm, since “there is not the least probability of [the attack] being repeated.” A reward of one hundred dollars for information about the “evil-minded” vandals yielded no suspects, and the night visitors were never identified.3
Yet if the destruction of Waldo’s property was indeed an act of his political opposition, then why the attack on the Salisbury home? None of the Salisburys was active in politics, nor could the women vote. But the senate election was not the only source of intense conflict in Worcester. In the spring of 1818, Daniel Waldo’s unmarried sisters, Rebecca Waldo and Sarah Waldo, and their aunt, Elizabeth Salisbury, were embroiled in a feud that threatened to tear apart the community’s oldest institution, the First (Congregational) Church. From 1815 through 1820, the three women defied gender conventions by challenging the authority of their church and their minister. Rather than “trifle with holy time,” as Elizabeth Salisbury expressed it, the women withdrew from the First Church to found the orthodox Congregational Calvinist Church, sparking an acrimonious debate over the nature of religious authority.4
As Anne Hutchinson had two centuries before, these women laid claim to religious autonomy and self-determination, and exercised the power implicit in their spiritual equality to command and to criticize the male church leadership. Unlike Anne Hutchinson, however, they were able to do so while remaining within the fellowship of Congregational churches. The Worcester dissidents were assisted in their revolt by their unusual wealth which, in the era of disestablishment, gave them considerable power. By 1820, the dissidents and their male allies had founded the orthodox Congregational Calvinist Church, whose tax structure and disciplinary practices reveal the significant leadership role religious women played in the antebellum church.
CHALLENGING THE BRETHREN
In 1815, after twenty-five years in the pulpit, the minister of Worcester’s First Church, the Reverend Samuel Austin, announced his intention to assume the presidency of the University of Vermont. As was true for many congregations at this time, the harmony of the First Church dissipated in the course of settling upon a successor.5 At the eye of the maelstrom were Rebecca and Sarah Waldo, and Elizabeth Salisbury. The Waldos and Salisbury were unusual women in that each controlled a sizable fortune in her own right. The unmarried Waldos had inherited large sums of money from their father, a merchant, and by 1827 each was worth more than $35,000. Rebecca Waldo, moreover, was an active capitalist who put her inheritance to work: like her brother Daniel, Rebecca was an important local moneylender who invested in farm mortgages. Elizabeth Salisbury was even wealthier; in 1846, her estate was appraised at more than $125,000. Their fortunes not only landed Rebecca Waldo, Sarah Waldo, and Elizabeth Salisbury at the very top of local tax lists, far ahead of almost all of the men in Worcester, but also among the nation’s elite.6 Barred by their sex from holding formal positions of leadership and power, these economically independent women asserted themselves in the church. They thus did not hesitate to speak out when the Reverend Austin’s replacement, Charles A. Goodrich, proved disappointing.
Through no fault of his own, Goodrich’s ministry in the First Church began under a cloud. Samuel Austin was a preacher of firm and outspoken beliefs, a New Divinity Calvinist who once declined a post because the congregation refused to repudiate the Halfway Covenant. He had prepared for the ministry under the theologian Jonathan Edwards, Jr., whose father’s works he later collected and published, and was married to Jerusha Hopkins, daughter of renowned conservative theologian Samuel Hopkins. In his commanding appearance and “fearless spirit and firmness,” Austin reminded his parishioners, for good or for ill, of the Puritan martyrs of old. A minister of local and national prominence, much in demand as a speaker, Austin had set a precedent of forceful and austere spirituality that might have proved difficult for anyone to equal.7
The task facing his successor was all the more trying because Austin did not officially vacate the First Church’s pulpit. The growing heterodoxy of Protestantism had prompted calls from dissenting sects for the disestablishment of Congregationalism and raised the question of who owned the ministerial lands that had long since been set aside to support the town’s church. In 1815, the First Church was in the midst of protracted litigation with the Second (Unitarian) Church over the disposition of Worcester’s ministerial lands. As joint plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Austin and the First Church considered it improvident to sever their official connection until the case was resolved. Thus, although settled in Vermont, Austin remained the official pastor of the First Church, a technicality that would spawn numerous complications. When the Reverend Charles A. Goodrich rode into town in the autumn of 1816, it was as junior pastor to an absent and, to some, a greatly missed patriarch.8
Signs that Goodrich’s tenure would be contentious first arose during the year-long search to fill the pulpit. According to the church’s version of events, the Waldos proved “unusually solicitous” about Austin’s replacement, forcing the congregation to pay “a scrupulous regard to the views, feelings and advice of this family.”9 The Waldos could command such deference because of their critical financial support. Although Congregationalism was not formally disestablished until 1833, Massachusetts passed the Religious Freedom Act in 1811 requiring towns to apportion the church tax among its denominations according to the size of each church’s membership. Some towns, such as Worcester, ceased collecting the tax altogether, compelling churches to raise money on their own by levying a tax on the property of communicants who were heads of households.10 The Waldos were by far the wealthiest taxpayers in the First Church and their financial contributions were considerable: in 1816, the year the schism began, the Waldo family alone supplied slightly more than one-quarter of the First Church’s tax revenues. (As a married woman whose husband did not belong to the First Church, Elizabeth Salisbury was not subject to its tax.) Money bought the Waldos influence, prompting bitter complaints about those whose “claims to consideration over most others are founded entirely on property.”11
The new minister thus had good reason to court the endorsement of the Waldos. Goodrich boasted that he had been selected with their blessing because they had had “a presentiment . . . that he would come up to their prescribed standard of excellence.” In fact, Goodrich insisted, the family was so pleased that it offered “to furnish the pulpit with a curtain and cushion.” It was thus all the more shocking when Daniel Waldo, on behalf of his sisters and Salisbury—who, as women, were not entitled to vote—cast his ballot against hiring Goodrich. But the church decided “it was now time to act with decision and independence” and soundly outvoted Waldo, sixty-four to two. The Waldos and Salisbury found themselves increasingly isolated within the church that, under Austin, had shown deference to and respect for their social and economic standing.12
The election of Goodrich over the objections of the Waldos and Salisbury sparked a four-year battle for control of the First Church. The dissidents’ aversion to Goodrich formally focused upon their suspicion that he was insufficiently orthodox, a potentially serious allegation. Yet they could name no specific breach of Congregational doctrine. When pressed, they offered only vague examples. At tea one day, the Waldos declared, Goodrich had disparaged John Calvin and derided “those who wanted the cords of orthodoxy as large as cart-ropes.”13 The Waldos vehemently denied ever having championed Goodrich; his “frequent visits at our house,” they charged, were merely the result of his clumsy attempts to curry their favor. Daniel Waldo insisted that the family had treated Goodrich with the civility due a gentleman and no more; perhaps, he insinuated, Goodrich was unaccustomed to simple respect. The Waldos denied unduly influencing the search committee and haughtily rejected the implication of bribery.14 The dissidents then accused the new minister of taking lightly his duties as spiritual shepherd. Goodrich frequently absented himself from the pulpit, they alleged, recycled his sermons, ignored the sick, neglected to baptize children, and seldom attended religious conferences. Such a minister, the Waldos and Salisbury concluded, was “unworthy [of] our esteem and confidence.”15
Amorphous though these charges were, they were potentially devastating. In New England’s orthodox Congregational churches, a sinner’s redemption depended upon the intensely personal process of spiritual development and conversion. Only God could save a soul but the minister played a pivotal role. It was his responsibility to promote an awareness of sin in the unconverted, to guide the penitent through conversion, and to keep the converted on the path of righteousness through example and constant exhortation. A minister who did not inspire his congregation was the wrong minister for it, regardless of his doctrinal fitness. Thus the accusation that Goodrich’s ministry was ineffectual was, quite literally, a damning one.16
Most important in stimulating and driving the dissent, however, was gender. By tradition, Congregational women had no formal role in the governance of the church; the selection of ministers, disciplinary proceedings, and questions of doctrine were the unique province of the brethren. The Waldos and Salisbury did not explicitly object to their secondary status but their acceptance of gender subordination proved contingent upon the minister meeting their definition of ministerial masculinity. The women and the brethren of the First Church agreed that a minister rightfully exercised “paternal watchfulness” over his flock and acted “as a father and a friend.” In return, he could command their deference. But the middle-aged Waldos and Salisbury found it difficult to accept Goodrich, only twenty-six years old, in this role. Although the Waldos and Salisbury never objected specifically to Goodrich’s age, they referred repeatedly to his undeveloped character, a likely synonym for youth. In comparison, the dissenters were close friends with the slightly older Austins.17 The Waldos and Salisbury also found Goodrich’s style of discourse unimpressive. Accustomed to Austin’s trenchant preaching, which was notorious for being “of that sort which permits no hearer to be indifferent,” the Waldos and Salisbury described Goodrich’s prayers as “cold and heartless” and scorned his sermons as “pretty,” never “sound, weighty, and impressive.” The dissenters criticized what they viewed as Goodrich’s “lightness of mind” and “foolish and extravagant conversation,” which to them was a mode of expression more suitable to the parlor than the pulpit. Goodrich was “a lover of pleasure more than a lover of God,” Daniel Waldo wrote implacably, and was once spied dallying “in a mixed company” when he was supposed to be leading prayer services.18
For their part, the Waldo sisters enjoyed a reputation for piety and stern sobriety that even family friends found intimidating. When the formidable “Misses Waldo” went calling, neighbor women not feeling up to the task of hosting were known to hide behind their curtains, and “were not visible or did not choose to be.” Similarly, Rebekah Dean Salisbury, Elizabeth Salisbury’s daughter-in-law, once described to her sister a friendly discussion of the doctrine of total depravity. Salisbury confessed her admiration for John Locke, prompting her to wonder, “What would the Miss Waldos say to me?”19
At the heart of the ensuing schism was the role these women could legitimately play in their church. Their wealth, their reputations for piety, and their unmarried status placed the women in an anomalous position: full church members and wealthy taxpayers who nonetheless were excluded from church decision making. As far as the brethren of the First Church were concerned, the problem was nakedly one of the power of wealth. From their perspective, “the peace and harmony of the Society . . . were nothing: the almost unexampled unanimity of the Church and Parish, after such a succession of Candidates, was nothing: the estimation in which Mr. Goodrich was held by neighbouring Pastors and Churches was nothing—so long as they were not gratified.” Throughout the dispute, the brethren staunchly maintained that the Waldos’ objections “would have sunk into its merited insignificance, had it not been for the money which upheld it.”20
In a sense, they were correct: the dissenters’ money was a critical element, for had they not been wealthy the dispute would likely have ended in disciplinary proceedings against the women as “disorderly walkers” for trampling on the covenant. The covenant was the theological and constitutional foundation of the decentralized Congregational churches. By owning the covenant, church members signified their acceptance of the authority of the congregation to pass judgment on their spiritual and temporal lives. In theory, the church was a gathering of spiritually equal souls. In reality, religious authority was reserved for the brethren alone. By withdrawing from worship and refusing to accept that the “decisions of Providence” had been manifested by the election of the Reverend Goodrich, the women repudiated the presumption of male authority and, in essence, denied that the brethren spoke for God. In this contest over who rightfully exercised authority within the church, the women’s wealth gave them a measure of power.21
Unwilling or unable to take seriously the women’s protest at their exclusion from church decision making, the brethren insisted that the dispute was fundamentally a question of the control of the majority by a wealthy minority. Indeed, the church was forced to focus on their money because the Waldos and Salisbury had comported themselves impeccably. Not for them was the fate of Betsey Flagg of the neighboring town of Boylston. In 1814, Flagg expressed her dissatisfaction with the pastor of her church “in an improper and injudicious manner & in a way calculated to irritate and offend,” thus shifting the discussion from the minister’s conduct to her own. An ecclesiastical council, of which Samuel Austin was a member, successfully mediated the dispute but not before requiring that Flagg apologize to the offended Boylston brethren.22 In sum, the schism of Worcester’s First Church occurred with the two sides fighting different battles. For the dissidents, the issue was a question of gender, the right of spiritually equal women to decide their own religious futures. For the brethren and the new minister, the issue was a question of democracy, the right of the (male) voting majority to decide the future of the church, including the women’s religious futures.23
Throughout 1817 and into 1818, a stalemate ensued as Goodrich solidified his position, conducting a revival that brought in eighty new members, and organizing a Sunday Scho...

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