Caroline Severance

By Virginia Elwood-Akers

CAROLINE SEVERANCE present s the biography of one of the forgot ten heroines of the American womans suffrage movement of the nineteenth century.

Based upon twenty years of exhaustive research, this is the biography of a woman who was in the forefront of every human rights movement of her time. Caroline was an abolitionist, a suffragist, an advocate for womens health and women physicians, a peace activist, and a socialist. She was a leader of the suffrage movement before the Civil War and afterward lived to vote in an American presidential election.

Born in western New York when it was the frontier of the United States, she ended her life on another western frontier, in Los Angeles, California. She has been recognized as one of the builders of the city of Los Angeles. She witnessed the opening of the Erie Canal, and more than eighty years later, the first air show ever held in Los Angeles. Always advocating the rights of women and realizing their potential as full citizens, she was a founder of the Womens Club Movement, which, far from being a purely social movement, was designed to allow women to discover that they had brains and leadership abilities. This movement was instrumental in the final passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 23, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450236287

Virginia Elwood-Akers

VIRGINIA ELWOOD-AKERS is a retired librarian who worked for thirty years at California State University, Northridge, as the subject specialist in the field of women’s studies. She is a second-generation native of Los Angeles who received her BA from UCLA and her MLS from the University of Oregon.

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Table of Contents

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AUTHOR’S NOTE

PROLOGUE

1912

CHAPTER ONE

1820 – 1840

CHAPTER TWO

1840 – 1852

CHAPTER THREE

1853 – 1855

CHAPTER FOUR

1855 – 1861

CHAPTER FIVE

1862 – 1865

CHAPTER SIX

1865 – 1868

CHAPTER SEVEN

1869 – 1871

CHAPTER EIGHT

1872 – 1875

CHAPTER NINE

1875 – 1880

CHAPTER TEN

1881 – 1889

CHAPTER ELEVEN

1890 – 1891

CHAPTER TWELVE

1892 – 1894

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

1895 – 1896

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

1897 – 1900

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

1901 – 1902

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

1903 – 1905

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

1906 – 1910

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

1911 – 1913

EPILOGUE

1913 – 1914

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I had barely heard of Caroline Severance twenty years ago, when a historian named Jeanne McDonnell invited me to contribute a chapter to a proposed book on distinguished women in California history. She asked if I would write about Caroline Severance since I was from Los Angeles, where Caroline had lived. Already a reader at the Huntington Library, I began to go through their collection of Severance papers, which at that time was unprocessed. It was fun going through the boxes of letters, calling cards, and, indeed, apparently, every piece of paper Caroline Severance had touched after she moved to Los Angeles in 1875. I was already intrigued by this woman, who seemed to have been involved in endless projects, when I came upon a letter addressed to a Mr. Smith, asking him to check out a man named Mr. Hewes at the Earl Carriage Shop. Caroline Severance assured Mr. Smith that he would find Mr. Hewes to be worthy of his support, as Mr. Hewes was involved in self denying work for the people of his neglected district.¹ I was thunderstruck! She was talking about George Henry Hewes, my great-grandfather, who supported his family as a carpenter at the Earl Carriage Shop, but also ran a settlement house and church in one of the scruffier sections of Los Angeles.² How had this humble man come to the attention of such an important woman? Who would have thought that my family, although they came to Los Angeles at around the same time as the Severances, would have known them? My fate was sealed. I had to write about Caroline Severance. The proposed biographical anthology of California women has yet to be written, but I had set myself on a path that I would not have left even if I had realized that I would have to consult twenty-eight archival collections, travel to four other states, spend endless hours reading microfilm of newspapers and copies of letters written in impossible handwriting, and go through forty-four volumes of the badly indexed periodical The Woman’s Journal page by page, before I was finished. I have worked on this book so long that my late husband Roy, who has been gone since 2003, called it Virginia’s alleged book sometime back in the 1990s.

At this point most authors humbly suggest that all errors in their book are their fault, but I am not prepared to take this responsibility. The source material I used is filled with contradictions and whimsical behavior. For instance, the words women and woman are used interchangeably, and with no discernible pattern. In two articles only one week apart in 1898, the Los Angeles Times reported on the Women’s Parliament (April 18) and the Woman’s Parliament (April 27) being held in the town of Redlands at that time. Two recent books on the subject of woman suffrage in California refer to the same organization as the Women’s Congress in one book and the Woman’s Congress in the other. During the nineteenth century the preferred word was generally woman, but for no reason that was ever explained, the women of Boston named their new organization in 1868 the New England Women’s Club. The club is called that in every publication except Caroline Severance’s own book, The Mother of Clubs, which blithely refers to the New England Woman’s Club. And so it goes. If there are inconsistencies in this book, I am not sure I am willing to take the blame.

Over the years, various words have been used to politely describe people of African descent. I have decided upon the word black, even though I am aware that it is not the most currently politically correct word. In the nineteenth century the most commonly used words were Negro and colored, although I have also seen black and Afro-American used. I apologize if my word choice offends or annoys anyone, but it is a perfectly beautiful word.

I am also quite aware that it is not politically correct to call women by their first name, and men by their last names. I have chosen to do this because I am absolutely certain that nineteenth century women would have been insulted to be called by their last names. They referred to each other, and often called each other, Mrs. Severance and Miss Anthony even if they had been friends for many years. Sometimes they called each other by their first name, or even a nickname. I call them either by their full name, or by their first name. On the other hand, it seemed silly not to use the men’s last names, as this is traditional.

Names are also something of a problem in this book because so many people in Caroline Severance’s life seemed to have the same name. Caroline, her mother, and her grandmother were all named Caroline Maria. Fortunately, her grandmother was always called Maria. In this book I refer to Caroline Severance’s mother as Caroline Seymour or as Caroline Clarke before she was married. I refer to Caroline Severance as Caroline Severance even before she was married, or as Caroline. Caroline Severance’s niece was named Caroline Seymour, but was called Carrie Seymour. Her granddaughter was named Caroline Severance Burrage, but was called Caro. There are two James Seymours in the book. Caroline Severance’s uncle is called either Uncle James, or James Seymour. Her brother is called James O, which is what the family called him. There are two Orson Seymours in the book. Caroline father, who makes an early exit, is referred to in the book by this name. Her nephew is called simply Orson. I hope that I have clearly differentiated between these people, and also between the various Harriets, Julias, and Marys who were part of Caroline Severance’s life.

I have tried as much as possible to present Caroline Severance as a private person as well as a public figure. This was made difficult by the fact that Caroline, who wrote thousands of words in her long life, rarely divulged a feeling or a private thought. In her correspondence there were brief flashes of temper, and, on one occasion, a sweet profession of love to her oldest son, Seymour.³ In most cases her letters, even to her husband and those closest to her, were light-hearted in tone and limited to facts. For nearly forty years she and Seymour wrote to each other almost every day. These letters are invaluable for the information they offer on the day-to-day life of the family, but when writing to her son, Caroline almost always maintained a façade. Letters between Caroline and Seymour are fascinating for what they do not say. For instance, Caroline was a serious socialist, which Seymour had to know, since he held the purse strings and she subscribed to socialist publications and joined socialist organizations. Yet the subject was never discussed between them, even during the time when the railroad for which Seymour worked was involved in a terrible labor dispute with the American Railway Union, led by the famous socialist Eugene Debs.

There is an emotional letter addressed to My own darling S who was undoubtedly her second son Sibley, but it is possible that this letter was never mailed. In the letter she begged him to give up alcohol and try to come to terms with what she believed to be his unhappy marriage. She was probably unaware that the tone of the letter was judgmental and unlikely to change Sibley’s behavior, or maybe she did realize this and for that reason, kept the letter. Or perhaps she realized that the situation was under control, because Sibley remained married, presumably happily, until his wife Annie’s death, and lived to a healthy old age. And finally, there is another emotional, pleading letter which reads almost as a love letter, but which contains no salutation or date. From the handwriting it can be discerned that it was written late in her life. To whom did Caroline write "But I need you all the more & cannot let you think of forsaking me … "⁴ Most likely the letter was written, if not sent, to one of Caroline’s late-life companions, but to which one cannot be known. Even this letter has a slightly false tone. As in the letter to Sibley, the letter is an odd mixture of pleading and accusation.

For the most part, however, Caroline’s written legacy is sadly devoid of personal insight. To further complicate the matter, she was an adept dissembler, sometimes to the point of telling an outright fib, and she was skilled at putting the best light on situations, what we would today call spin. Her husband, for instance, was not a banker, as she often wrote, but was a cashier, or teller, for various banks. When the family moved from Cleveland to Boston in 1855, she gave as reasons for the move the need to provide her sons with quality educations, and the desire to be near the eastern centers of culture. As you will learn from this book, there was another, less positive, reason for making the move.

Caroline Severance usually presented herself as a shy, soft-spoken homebody, but the facts of her life make it clear that she was really strong, self-confident, and quite capable of assuming leadership roles in the many organizations she joined. She was involved in virtually every social reform movement of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and was an acknowledged leader of both the woman suffrage movement and the women’s club movement. She joined the woman suffrage movement in 1850, only two years after it began, and was a leader of the movement within a year. Nearly sixty years later, she voted in 1912 for President of the United States. As near as I have been able to determine, she was one of only two leaders of the woman suffrage movement prior to the Civil War who lived to vote in a presidential election. In 1920 Antoinette Brown Blackwell, who lived to be ninety-five years old, also voted for president. Caroline Severance deprecated her powers of oratory and persuasion, yet was successful as a public speaker long before many other women had even dared to open their mouths in front of an audience. She was quite obviously personally charismatic. Many of the most intelligent and important figures of her time admired her and sought her company and advice. If the guest book she kept for nearly fifty years was any indication, she knew, or had at least met, virtually every famous person of her time. Many of them became close personal friends. She was a loyal friend, and supportive of her family to the point where she often did not see their flaws.

Caroline Severance was an unwavering believer in human rights and social justice She saw in Christian socialism the answer to society’s problems, and truly believed that, once women were allowed to have a voice in politics, the world was bound to improve. A feminist long before the word was commonly used in the United States, she said in 1853 that what woman may become she does not truly know herself, since no opportunities have been given to test her power of mind and body.⁵ Nearly fifty years later, as the century came to a close, she said … the nineteenth century is not more remarkable for its marvelous achievements in science … than it is in the awakening of women to a sense of their abilities, and broader duties.⁶ And, despite her protestations to the contrary, she took considerable personal pride in having been an important part of that awakening.

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PROLOGUE

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1912

Tuesday, May 14, 1912, was a warm day in Los Angeles. By noon the temperature had reached eighty degrees as the people of the city turned out for the presidential primary election. A voter turnout of less than 50 percent was expected, despite the fact that this was the first national election in which the women of Los Angeles would be able to vote. Seven months earlier, on October 11, 1911, California voters had granted women the right of suffrage by the narrowest of margins. Now the Los Angeles Evening Herald, which had supported woman suffrage, reminded its female readers in an editorial that they paid taxes and created future citizens and should therefore exercise their right to vote. Women voters, concluded the Herald, are going to have their say in the laws that rule them and their children. They are going to add morality, benevolence, and kindness to man’s governing selfishness. AND NOTHING WILL STOP IT.⁷

On the corner of West Adams and Figueroa Streets, on the south side of the city, a tent had been erected for Precinct 451’s polling booths. Inside the tent the air was hot and stuffy. The poll workers probably would have recognized the old woman who entered the tent, leaning on the arm of her niece. Her face was well known to the people of Los Angeles. She had been driven to the tent in a friend’s motorcar from her home a short distance away. She was bent with arthritis and partially blind from cataracts, but she was determined to cast her vote. When she had celebrated her ninety-second birthday earlier in the year, she had told a reporter that she was deeply interested in the coming presidential election. Although she would not say which candidate she supported, she probably voted for the Progressive Party candidate, Theodore Roosevelt. As a socialist, she might have preferred a more liberal candidate, but she was a practical woman. She believed that Roosevelt had a chance of winning, and that progressivism was at least a step toward better government.

The woman was Caroline Maria Seymour Severance, at ninety-two the elder stateswoman of California suffragists, and one of only two leaders of the suffrage movement who had lived long enough to vote in a United States presidential election. If indeed she did vote for Roosevelt, she would have been pleased that her candidate won in the California primary election on that warm May day. In the November presidential election, however, she would be disappointed. The Democratic Party candidate, Woodrow Wilson, swept into office, and Caroline Severance received a note of condolence from her son Seymour, who lived in San Francisco. It will not cause you much regret that you were not on the winning side, he wrote, for we have been used to being in the minority on every question and are only confirmed in such an event by the thought that the principle is the main thing and popularity but a minor issue.⁸

Seymour was undoubtedly correct in his assessment of his mother’s mood on Election Day, because November 5, 1912, had been a day of triumph for her. Once again driven by her friend, she arrived at the polling tent at 2:00 p.m. on a cool and cloudy day. As she dropped her ballot into the box, a photographer from the Los Angeles Examiner took her photograph. Dressed in her old-fashioned bonnet and cape, she looked into the camera with a serene and determined expression. She told the reporter from the Examiner that she had voted for Roosevelt, for free textbooks, and against a racing amendment. I am more than proud of California women today, she said, and I am so thankful to be able to do my share. California women have thoroughly vindicated their right to the ballot; let us look forward to the time when over all the world men and women shall be equal and free.⁹

Later that day Caroline wrote Seymour of her triumph, adding that his cousin Carrie, in her excitement at being able to vote, voted for all three candidates because she wanted to be on the winning side. As for herself, Caroline told Seymour that it had been a perfect day. Having … had this experience I think I will live a little longer; it has rested me, she wrote. And she added, I feel like a girl again!¹⁰

CHAPTER ONE

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1820 – 1840

On January 12, 1820, only nine months after they were married, Orson and Caroline Seymour welcomed their first child. She was a healthy girl, and they named her Caroline Maria, after both her mother and grandmother. The town in which the young family lived was Canandaigua, New York, prettily situated on a lake with the same name in the far west of what was then the civilized part of the United States. Orson Seymour had come to Canandaigua several years earlier from Utica, New York, to take a position as cashier of the Canandaigua branch of the Utica Bank. One of the job’s benefits was an apartment at the rear of the bank building, with a little flower and vegetable garden at the side. It was in this apartment that the baby who would become Caroline Severance was born.

Orson Seymour most likely met Caroline Maria Clarke in the nearby town of Auburn, where his brother James worked as cashier for the Auburn bank. She was the vivacious daughter of a businessman and physician named Peter Clarke, who lived with his large family in the little hamlet of Montezuma several miles from Auburn. The young couple fell in love and wanted to marry, but the romance was not without obstacles. Peter Clarke and his wife Caroline Maria, who called herself Maria, were members of the Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Seymours were Presbyterian. This was a time in which belonging to different sects of the Christian religion was taken very seriously. There was also the difference in their ages to consider. Orson was twelve years older than Caroline Clarke, who was only twenty-two. On the positive side were the facts that Orson held an excellent position at the bank in Canandaigua, which was not so far away, and that James Seymour was well thought of in Auburn. The main obstacle was overcome when Orson agreed to join the Episcopal Church. The marriage took place on April 23, 1819.

The town to which Orson brought his young bride was a prosperous and fairly sophisticated little town, already the home of several wealthy families, and the county seat of Ontario County. Although far from the urban centers of eastern New York, and accessible only by a bumpy stagecoach road called a corduroy road which was made of whole logs laid side by side, Canandaigua had attracted retired capitalists from New England and New York, and boasted several large, impressive buildings and an active social life. Incorporated in 1812, Canandaigua was established on the site of a Seneca Indian village with the same name, which meant either a place selected for settlement, or the chosen spot. The Seneca village was destroyed in 1779 during the expedition led by Generals John Sullivan and James Clinton to subdue the Iroquois Nation, which included the Seneca. It was left to real estate developers to finally remove the Indians from their land.

Massachusetts and New York had both claimed the land where the village of Canandaigua stood. In 1786 the Hartford Convention gave Massachusetts the right to sell the land, and New York the right to govern it. Two years later Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham purchased six million acres of Seneca land west of Geneva, New York, to the shore of Lake Erie. They paid one million dollars for the land to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which, of course, had no actual right to sell it.

It remained for Phelps and Gorham to negotiate with the Seneca Indians. On July 7, 1788, Oliver Phelps personally met with the Seneca at Buffalo Creek, a site now within the city limits of Buffalo, New York. The Seneca would agree only to sell the eastern portion of their land, however. The speculators had to settle for a mere two million, six hundred thousand acres, which they purchased for about one-half cent per acre. Phelps and Gorham then opened what is said to be the first land office in the United States, on Main Street in Canandaigua. Orson and Caroline Seymour set up housekeeping on that same Main Street in the Utica Bank’s substantial brick building just north of the town square. In the square, which marked the spot where the 1794 Pickering treaty had finally established peace between the United States and the Iroquois Nation, stood the three-story Blossom Hotel and the county court house, built in 1824 with an elegant cupola topped by a codfish weathervane. On upper Main Street, above the town square, were the homes, churches, and banks of the busy little town, and below the square were the commercial buildings.

Caroline Seymour might have found the move to Canandaigua difficult, as she had never been away from home before, and she probably missed her large and boisterous family. The rooms behind the bank might have looked small after living in the largest house in her hometown. Still, for a fun-loving young woman, Canandaigua must have seemed lively and exciting, after sleepy Montezuma. The young couple became part of Canandaigua’s social scene. Orson Seymour’s friends included some of the town’s most substantial citizens, such as his best friend Mark Sibley, a lawyer whose home and office were in the matching brick building next to the bank on Main Street. Caroline Seymour was the belle of Canandaigua, much valued by the choice society of that cultivated town.¹¹ She must have accomplished her social success with some difficulty because, for most of her five-year marriage, Caroline Seymour was pregnant.

On May 31, 1821, when little Caroline was only sixteen months old, she was joined by twins James Orson, called James O by his family, and Harriet Eliza, who was always called Hattie. In 1823 John Earle was born, and in 1824 the baby, Orsena, was named for her father. Caroline Seymour was not, however, a dutiful and attentive mother. To her children she was a beautiful, but remote, presence. The children were cared for by servants.

It was a beloved servant named Valera who was remembered by Caroline Severance when she recalled her early childhood in Canandaigua. She remembered playing in the garden by the side of the bank with the twins under the watchful eye of Valera. And it was Valera who marched her home in disgrace when little Caroline took the twins for an unauthorized walk. Caroline wistfully recalled visits to the home of neighbor children, whose warm, jolly mother offered a marked contrast to her own. She had no distinct memory of her own mother during these early years.

In contrast, she recalled quite clearly being held in her father’s arms and looking down on swirling water, a memory which she believed was of a trip to Niagara Falls taken by the family when she was only two and a half years old. And it was her father who held her hand as they walked the short distance from their home to the town square one Fourth of July, and who lifted her to stand on the large rock that commemorates the signing of the Pickering Treaty so she could watch the fireworks. Then, quite suddenly, he was gone.

Caroline was not yet five years old when her father died of typhoid on October 11, 1824, leaving his wife with five children, the youngest only a few months old. Caroline Seymour dissolved into hysterical grief, and was still prostrate when her family arrived from Montezuma for the funeral and to take her home with them. In the quiet house, filled with whispering relatives and the muffled sound of weeping, little Caroline went to look for her father. Many years later she wrote of the terror of finding him.

I crept … through a partially opened door into a darkened room … so dark and so still. But I soon saw, below the draperies which hung from the posts of the high bedstead … a still white face, with copper cents upon the eyelids … I knew the face to be my father’s, and the vague terror of the sight made me rush back, and close the door tightly behind me.

The Clarkes whisked their distraught daughter and her children back to Montezuma as soon as the funeral was over. Maria Clarke, who had twelve other children still at home, was unfazed by the additions to the household. There would be little help from Caroline Seymour, who had broken down completely and spent her time weeping. Tragedy followed tragedy as first two-year-old John Earle, and then the infant Orsena also died. Children’s lives were fragile in those days, and Orsena had been frail even before her father’s death. Nevertheless, five-year-old Caroline, left with the twins, blamed her mother’s lack of attention for the deaths of the other two children. Still little more than a baby herself, she moved into a maternal role with Hattie and James O. She put herself in charge of dressing the twins each day until they were old enough to care for themselves. She was particularly protective of James O, who had been lame from birth, and was cruelly called hop, skip, and jump by Maria Clarke’s youngest child Fisher, who was only slightly older than James O.

The surviving Seymour children found themselves part of a large, noisy, loving family. Caroline Seymour, who was the eldest, was the only one to have left the family home. Still at home were four sons and eight daughters. The household also included Maria Clarke’s mother Maria Fisher, who had come out from New York with the family by coach over the rough road. The youngest Clarkes were peers of their young nieces and nephew. Caroline Severance’s twin aunts Helen and Julia were almost exactly her age, and Helen became one of Caroline’s closest friends. Maria Clarke wasted no time in bringing order to the crowd of little children now in her household. The Clarkes called James O the little baby to differentiate him from Fisher, the baby boy. Older Clarke children referred to their nieces and nephew as well as their own younger sisters and brothers as the little People. Maria Clarke assigned each of her own children responsibility for one of the Seymour children. Caroline was assigned to the care of her Aunt Kate; James O was adopted by Aunt Maria; and Hattie by Aunt Ellen, who was already in charge of her own baby sister Lulu. The large three-story Clarke house, which sat on a hill overlooking the town and the salt marshes near Montezuma, was called the hive by amazed and admiring townspeople. The dining room table was regularly set for twenty-four.

Serenely oblivious to the chaos surrounding her, Maria Clarke became a role model for Caroline, a mother image to which her own mother did not measure up. It was Maria Clarke who walked the floor with baby Orsena as the infant was dying. Maria was always calm, a marked contrast to the sobbing Caroline Seymour. Caroline was not sympathetic to her mother’s mental breakdown. She remembered her mother as a broken-hearted widow who would not be comforted for her loss. Her mother’s mental state was hard on Caroline, who was shy, sensitive, and easily frightened by the sound of thunder and the fires which sometimes raged across the marshes near Montezuma. The little girl shared a downstairs bedroom with her mother. Often unable to sleep, Caroline Seymour would pace the path outside the bedroom windows at night, weeping. Little Caroline would cry herself to sleep every night until awakened by her mother’s crying and moaning. Then she would slip out of bed and run through the darkened house to crawl in bed with her aunt Maria. All of her life Caroline Severance dreaded the night. She suffered from chronic insomnia and was never able to sleep soundly. Although she offered various reasons for her sleep disorder over the years, she privately blamed her mother and wondered why none of the adults in the Clarke household had noticed the effect Caroline Seymour’s emotional problems were having on her sensitive child.

Except for her mother’s distress, Caroline Severance was happy in the Clarke home. Busy, blissful life, she later wrote. It had captured the secret of lasting happiness and success, in co-operative work and pleasure. In her grandmother’s household little Caroline learned valuable lessons of hard work, discipline, piety, and proper manners. It was also in the Clarke home that she learned respect for people of other races. The Clarkes employed a black cook named Hettie who had been given to Maria Clarke at the age of nine, possibly as a slave. By the mid 1820s she was a respected member of the household who lived in rooms above the kitchen with her two daughters, Betty and Marcella, who often played with the Clarke and Seymour children. The piazza, which connected the kitchen to the main house, was a favorite play area for children both black and white. It was an important lesson for Caroline when Peter Clarke decided to send Marcella to the village school. Some of the citizens of Montezuma objected, but Peter Clarke, who was a member of the school board, prevailed.

Caroline Severance did not attend the village school, however. The Clarke and Seymour children were schooled at home. In the mornings, after prayers and breakfast, the young children were given lessons, which Caroline loved. Her brother James O, like his young aunt Lulu, was less attentive. There were no children’s books, so the children read classic authors like Alexander Pope and John Bunyan. Caroline developed a thirst for learning that continued to the end of her life. The family encouraged reading, which was done every evening after supper at the large dining table, with the sperm oil lamp lowered on its chain for light. Caroline also loved to listen to the political discussions of her grandfather and his friends. Her uncle George teased her about her interest in politics, which he thought was unusual for a little girl, but his teasing did not dissuade her.

At the same time, Caroline and the other little girls were taught the skills that they were thought to need in life, such as sewing, darning, and quilting. To Caroline, politics and literature were much more interesting than the domestic skills, but she did her part in the many tasks which were required to maintain a household in the 1820s. Few household goods could be bought ready-made, so there was always sewing, candle-making, preserving, and other domestic work to be done. Even the youngest children could help with the making of candles, sausage, dried fruits, and mincemeat for pies. Peaches, apples, and apricots had to be picked and preserved. Each child was assigned daily chores or housework, and all would turn out together in the spring for the annual housecleaning. Maria Clarke set all of the children to work cleaning the yard and polishing the furniture with beeswax and turpentine.

There was also play and laughter in the home. In the evenings the young family members gathered around the piano, which was said to be one of the first made in the United States. John, the eldest Clarke son, taught Caroline and Lulu to sing Blue-eyed Mary, a popular song of the time, with Lulu singing contralto and Caroline contributing the soprano part. John teased Caroline about her blue eyes, which were unusual in the family. Even Caroline Seymour would call her daughter bonnie blue-eyes when in a rare light-hearted mood. There were also games, such as hurley-burley and shuttlecock,¹² and there was dancing. To the children’s delight, Peter Clarke would put on old-fashioned knee breeches and buckles to dance the minuet with his wife. Even Grandmother Fisher, who rarely left her room except for a daily walk with her son-in-law, came into the parlor for the games and dances. To the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Maria Fisher was a much-admired figure who seemed to be as regal as a queen. Immensely dignified, she spent most of her time in her room, sitting in a straight, low-backed rocking chair which she thought it improper to rock, her feet resting on a warming box containing live coals. She sewed and read her bible and joined the rest of the family only during games and dances.

It was a happy life, and it is not surprising that it was the Clarke home which Caroline Severance re-created many years later when she wrote an autobiographical children’s story called Caro’s Childhood, which was never published. She recalled the big house on the hill with a view of three counties from its roof. She wrote of little Caro playing with the other children in the long upper hall, and of closets that ran the length of the houses and were places for the children to play in the winter. She wrote of the wind rattling the chains that held the oil lamp and of trunks filled with antique clothing, which was used to play dress up. In one draft of the story, Caroline called the little girl Carol, which was the name she herself was called by her grandmother Maria Clarke, who disliked the nickname Carrie.

At almost the same moment that the Seymour children arrived in Montezuma, the world arrived as well. In 1825 the Erie Canal was opened, connecting the eastern United States to the Great Lakes. Caroline Severance insisted that she remembered this event. Although she was only five years old, it is possible that she did remember, because it was a time of great excitement, both in the community and in the Clarke household. Before the canal was opened, visitors from the east could reach Montezuma only by stagecoach, and the children of the house watched each day for the arrival of the stage. Now they could watch for the New York boat to arrive on the canal. They were particularly excited at the time of the canal’s opening because Peter and Maria Clarke were due to return from a trip to New York City. The Clarkes did not return