May 31, 2021 • 40 mins
Lydia Maria Child was a writer of children’s literature, historical novels, abolitionist tracts, and poetry. She also wrote literature for children and penned a holiday poem that remains popular today.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello would welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, Oh Tracy.
Today's topic was requested by listener Amy A long way back.
(00:21):
It's been on my list ever since, and finally, after
literal years, shuffled up. Uh. Lydia Mariah Child was a
writer of children's literature, historical novels, abolitionist tracts, and even poetry.
And her writing was prolific at times, it was very
divisive in its subject matter. And she's kind of unique
(00:44):
in that she wrote so many different types of books, right.
She wrote particularly basic, friendly advice books on one end
of her spectrum, and then like really hard nosed activism
on the other side, and a variety of things in between.
She also wrote literature for children. She penned holiday poem
that listeners are definitely going to recognize when we get
to it. Uh. And because she was so prolific and
(01:06):
from a very early age, there is a lot of
ground to cover with her, so we're just going to
jump right in. She was born Lydia Francis on February
two in Medford, Massachusetts. Her parents were Converse Francis, a Baker,
and Susannah Ran Francis. Lydia had five siblings, four of
whom survived childhood, and she was the baby of the family.
(01:29):
Her family was actually part of the abolition movement even
before Lydia was born. Her mother, Susannah, died when Lydia
was twelve, and that was just the beginning of a
series of tragedies to the family. Lydia actually recalled being
in a poor mood on the day that her mother died,
and she was consequently not attentive to Susannah as she
should have been. There's a story that her mother asked
(01:50):
her for a glass of water and at first she
was like, I don't want to go downstairs and get it. Uh.
This was a guilt that she carried with her throughout
her life. Her grandmother also died that same year, several
months after Susannah, and then in the fall of that year,
Lydia was enrolled in a Medford school called Ms. Swan's Academy.
She had been homeschooled prior to her mother's death, but
(02:12):
her time there at the academy was short. The following
summer she went to live with her sister Mary and
Mary's new husband, Warren Preston. Her brother, Convers Francis Jr.
Who was a Unitarian minister, was hugely influential in her
early years. Converse had gone to Harvard when Lydia was
just nine. Lydia looked up to him just immensely and
(02:34):
wrote him numerous letters while he was at school, primarily
about what she was reading. The two of them loved
to talk about literature together. When she was eighteen, Lydia
started teaching in Gardner, Maine, but the following year she
moved in with Converse and his wife in Watertown, Massachusetts,
and that's where Converse was working. She was not fond
(02:54):
of her first name, and when she was baptized in
her late teen years, she chose the name Lydia Mariah,
and she preferred at that point to be called Mariah.
So we are going to respect her wishes and call
her by that name as we go forward. The time
she spent with Convers Jr. Ended up setting her on
the path of writing. It was through a conversation with
her older brother that Mariah decided to write her first novel,
(03:17):
Hobba Mock, which was a story about life in the
early colonies. This book, which was published in eighteen twenty four,
features a romance between a white woman and an Indigenous man.
They marry and they have a child together, and then
the book follows their story as the woman and her
son become pariah's of white society. This book, which Mariah
(03:37):
wrote in just a month and a half, really challenged
other social norms. In addition to racist ideas about Native Americans,
examined the roles of women and the expectations they lived under,
and it told the story from a woman's perspective. She
also makes the case that the rigidity of Puritan life
was deeply problematic and a hindrance to the establishment of
(03:58):
the colonies. This story, of course, gave a mind early
eighteen hundreds did not sit well with a lot of people,
and it established Maria, who had published the book under
the author listing of an American, as something of a firebrand,
willing to tackle problematic subjects and stir the social pot
in doing so. And even though her name was not
(04:19):
on that initial printing of the novel, she was well
known in some of New England's literary circles thanks to
her brother's connections through Harvard, so it really was not
any kind of secret that it was her work. Additionally,
the book was supported by Boston literati George Tickner, which
lent it clout and gave it broader exposure. Her follow
up was a totally different type of book entirely. It
(04:41):
was Evenings in New England, intended for juvenile amusement and instruction,
was also released in eighteen twenty four. It's framed as
an aunt that's Aunt Maria telling didactic stories to two
children about issues of the day, including topics like slavery,
science and history. And this was a huge of success. Yeah,
she immediately like really hit on something with her her
(05:04):
works for the juvenile market. In Mariah's second novel, The
Rebels or Boston Before the Revolution, was published, and this
work was a melodrama, again centered on women, but it
led to a bit of confusion which persisted for quite
a long time. There was an oration that she wrote
for the book, which was historical fiction, but in the
(05:24):
book it was delivered by someone who was actually a
real historical figure and political activist, James Otis Jr. And
that oration she wrote was taken as historically accurate by
many readers, so much so that it actually ended up
in some school books, and many children in the eighteen
hundreds learned to recite this fictional speech as though it
(05:44):
were historically significant. Uh moment in time this um, this
reminds me of the very first episode I ever worked
on for this show, which was the one about Chief
Seattle's oration that he did not say at all. Um.
For a very brief period just through the winter, Mariah
(06:07):
attended a Boston boarding school called Madame Kanda's Academy. When
she returned to Watertown in the fall of eighteen twenty six,
she founded a children's magazine called Juvenile Miss Laney. She
used this as a platform to educate children about injustice,
and she also opened a school, although it lasted just
a year. She started writing short stories during this time
(06:29):
as well. Mariah meant and began a courtship with lawyer,
editor and political hopeful David Lee Child in eighteen twenty four.
He was, like her brother Converse, a Harvard graduate, and
David was eight years older than Mariah. He was well
traveled and was the editor of the Massachusetts Journal as
well as its publisher, and he was a very vocal
political activist. Mariah and David shared many interests, but they
(06:54):
were a very different temperaments. Mariah was frugal, romantic, and
drawn to mysticism. He loved to spend money, and his
idealism was dedicated to reform. The couple were engaged in
eighty seven, but the Francis family was really not in
favor of the marriage. David's irresponsibility with money was a concern,
(07:16):
But as this tension with the family was playing out,
Mariah started making more money through her own work as
a writer, so the issue of finances became a lot
less of an obstacle. She and David were finally married
in eight All that money things going to come up
a bunch. After their marriage, the newlyweds collaborated on each
other's projects. Mariah became more active in David's political work,
(07:39):
and she also started writing for the Massachusetts Journal. The
journal offered a platform for both husband and wife to
speak out against President Andrew Jackson's position regarding the people
of the Cherokee Nation and its culmination in the Trail
of Tears that, of course played out over years, and
throughout all of it they were writing articles and essays
for the Journal. About it, yet also included multiple indigenous
(08:01):
nations in addition to the Cherokee. So even before that, though,
the Childs were no strangers to controversy for their outspoken
political writings. But things became a little bit more serious
in eighty eight when David was charged with libel in
the case of the Commonwealth Versus David Lee Child for
publishing in the Massachusetts Journal a libel on the Honorable
(08:23):
John Keys. David had published several pieces and his periodical
and The Flyers, saying that John Keys, while serving as
Committee of Accounts chairman for the county, had misused and
manipulated county funds, including participating in a bid rigging scheme
to benefit himself. David Child was found guilty. He lost
(08:44):
his appeal when he served six months of jail time.
He was also named in another libel suit during this
time as well, And coming up, we'll talk about how
Mariah dealt with the circumstance of her husband's legal and
financial difficulties, and we'll do that right after we pause
for us sponsor break. So this whole legal situation, which
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of course led to a significant drop in subscriptions to
the Massachusetts Journal, made it clearer than ever that Mariah's
income was really crucial to the child's financial stability. Knowing
about the differences in how Mariah and David handled money,
it is to me a little bit funny, or perhaps
just very telling that less than a year into her
(09:30):
life as a married woman, Mrs Child published an advice
book titled The Frugal Housewife, dedicated to those who are
not ashamed of economy. In the beginning of the book,
she included the proverb economy is a poor man's revenue,
extravagance a rich man's ruin. The introduction of the book
opens with quote, the true economy of housekeeping is simply
(09:54):
the art of gathering up all the fragments so that
nothing be lost. I mean fragments of time as well
as material. Nothing should be thrown away so long as
it is possible to make any use of it, however
trifling that use maybe, And whatever the size of the family,
every member should be employed either and earning or saving money.
(10:15):
And this book is full of useful, no nonsense tips,
like keeping up with your vegetables to make sure they
don't go bad. Tracy and I have often talked about
her brilliant term aspirational vegetables that go bad in the
crisper I have them too. Mariah would be very disappointed
in us. She also talks about doing your own mending
rather than sending it out to a seamstress, and to
(10:36):
prioritize baking your own bread and cake rather than paying
for the convenience of the baker to do it. This
all sounds pretty obvious, but the writing here is important
because it's aimed at a lower income woman than most
of the books for ladies of the day were really doing,
and this was an astute approach. Child's writing appealed to
a far larger reader base with generally usable information shan
(11:00):
than most books about being a housewife. Those were often
directed at people who were more affluent, so this book
got into the real day to day tasks that a
wife and a mother without a staff might face at
a time when her own income was really important. She
saw that mass appeal was more lucrative than writing for
a more high brow crowd. The Frugal Housewife was very popular,
(11:24):
and it was followed up with two other advice books
with slightly different target audiences. In the introduction to her book,
The Mother's Book, Child commented on the market success of
her previous volume, writing quote, when I wrote The Frugal Housewife,
some booksellers declined publishing it on account of the great
variety of cookery books already in the market. I was
(11:47):
perfectly aware of this circumstance, but among them all, I
did not know of one suited to the wants of
the middling class in our own country. I believed such
a book was needed, and the sale of more than
six thousand copies in one year has proved that I
was right in my conjecture. She also acknowledges that the
information that she shares, particularly in The Mother's Book, isn't new,
(12:09):
but that it comes from conversations with mothers. And this
book is interesting because it puts forth the idea that
the manner in which tiny babies are cared for has
a great deal of influence on their quote, future dispositions,
and characters. That was not a commonly held idea, and
so it was way ahead of its time. Her other
book that's usually grouped with The Frugal Housewife and The
(12:31):
Mother's Book is titled The Little Girl's Own Book, and
this book features games and advice for girls and foundational lessons,
very much in line with those two previous books. It
includes a rather charming game called the French Role, in
which one player is the purchaser, one is the baker,
and all the other players form a line called the Oven,
(12:51):
with the last in line being called the French Role.
This was a sort of complicated variation on Duck Duck
Goose and other games where one person has to outrun
another in an effort to move into a different category.
And according to child quote, this play is a very
active and rather noisy one. There are a lot of
(13:12):
games in this book, and and there's another contributor that
she mentions helped her with the games. But like they're
all to me hilarious because they're like sort of needlessly complicated.
But I guess that would keep children active and also engaged.
But they are very, very funny. Mariah's writing was prolific
during this early time in her marriage, as she strove
(13:34):
to truly make a living at it, making her one
of the first women to do so in the US.
She wrote another novel with similar themes to those in
Hobbamock in the new work, which was titled The First
Settlers of New England or Conquest of the Peaquad's, Narragansetts
and Poconoc. It's as related by a mother to her
children and designed for the instruction of youth. The story
(13:55):
here centers around white protagonists, the children finding that they
id n I find more with the indigenous people in
the stories than the colonists. And this book was incredibly
radical at the time. Among other things, it once again
promoted the idea of interracial marriage. But it also was
kind of kept on the down low. It did not
have any published reviews, and perhaps because it was expected
(14:19):
that it would court a lot of controversy, it seemed
to have a very minimal and limited release. While Mariah
had grown up in an abolitionist household, it was meeting
William Lloyd Garrison through her husband David in eighteen thirty
one that really cemented her commitment to the cause. Garrison,
who started his paper The Liberator the same year, had
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already published some of Child's writings, notably her essay Comparative
Strength of Male and Female Intellect. He gave her the
nickname the First Woman in the Republic. Child turned her
pen to the cause of abolition, and she wrote an
appeal in favor of that class of Americans called Africans
in eighteen thirty three. This book, which is considered uh,
(15:03):
you know, fairly important in in the lexicon, detailed the
history of enslavement in North America, and it advocated for
the end of slavery and for freed people who had
been enslaved to become part of society in the US.
She proposed a multi racial country of equality with educational
opportunities for all. An Appeal is often referred to as
(15:25):
the first anti slavery book. There had certainly been essays
and pamphlets before it, but this was a deeper and
more expansive examination of the topic than previous writings had
taken on, and it made Child a target in a
lot of ways. She was no longer welcome among many
of her white peers, and that mass appeal that she
(15:45):
had cultivated through her books for women and girls really
dried up pretty quickly after this. The year after An
Appeal was published, Juvenile Miscellany, which had lost a huge
portion of its subscribers due to Child's outspoken stance on abolition, folded.
She also lost her borrowing privileges at the Boston Athenaeum.
This did not diminish Mariah Child's dedication to ending slavery.
(16:09):
She made no effort to win back readers she lost
through her writing in an appeal, at least not initially,
and instead she just wrote more on the subject, including
the story collection The Oasis, which featured stories, poems, and
essays about black enslaved people, but it was intended for
a white audience. The idea that she had was that
these stories within it would help people see enslaved people
(16:31):
as people, and it might help stoke the fires of
abolitionist ideals in readers who had perhaps been reluctant to
join the cause. Amidst all of this, David's money problems
continued to mount. His law office had folded, and he
was arrested for his unpaid debts. For six months, the
Child's lived with Joseph and Margaret Carpenter, who were Quakers
(16:53):
in New Rochelle, New York. Mariah helped at the school there,
including working on its desegregation plan. She published another book,
Authentic Anecdotes of American Slavery, in eighteen thirty five, and
that book collects stories and accounts of witnesses to enslavement,
some of which are unsurprisingly incredibly dark in their content.
(17:14):
All of this done to illustrate the inherent in humanity
of the practice of enslavement. In one passage, child rights quote,
a prominent feature in the system of slavery is the
bluntness of moral feelings and the dimness of moral perception
inevitably induced by it. Even conscientious men and women often
find it difficult and apparently impossible to apply to this
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subject the most universal rules of justice and the most
common maxims of humanity. This great evil originates in a
fixed habit of not regarding the colored race as brethren
and sisters of the human family. In eighteen thirty five,
Child's book Antislavery Catechism was published. This is, as its
name suggests, a series of questions regarding slavery and treatment
(18:00):
of enslaved persons answered an essay formed by the writer
debunking a lot of the myths and watered down accounts
of enslavement. Of note is the inclusion of the story
of the Lulltery Mansion in New Orleans burning and the
torture of enslaved people there that was revealed in the
aftermath of the blaze, and Mariah's writing she gets the
(18:22):
name wrong Instead of lulltery, she writes it as salary.
That fire happened on April tenth, thirty four, the year
before Antislavery Catechism was released, and the horrendous revelations of
it were undoubtedly on the minds of abolitionists. There's been
some discussion about that particular discovery. The last time we've
(18:43):
talked about that on our social media, we had some
folks that became like lollery defenders um saying that a
lot of the descriptions were really overblown and it was
still a place where people were being bound and physically punished.
It's another one of those it wasn't that bad narratives
that are kind of horrifying when you really stop and
(19:05):
think about what they're talking about. In eighteen thirty six,
Child also published a historical romance called Philothea, which was
set in the fifth century b c. E. Early twentieth
century critic Carl Van Doren once described this book as
quote a gentle, ignorant romance of the Athens of Pericles,
the fruit of a real desire to escape from the
(19:26):
clang of current life. It was a little bit of
an escape for Mariah to write about something other than
than social justice issues at the time, but in the
time that it was released, the reviews for Philothea were
really quite good Lydia Mariah Child did try to write
one more book of advice for women in eighteen thirty seven,
that was The Family Nurse, but sales were port due
(19:48):
to her more controversial writings. While the reaction to her
work had immediate and unfortunate impacts on her life, including
her finances, she continued to champion abolition and Why an
Appeal and other writings cost her personally, they really helped
the movement gain support. Yeah, there were a lot of
of prominent people in her time who said, I read
(20:09):
an Appeal in it it really changed my mind about
how I thought about this issue. So, I mean there
is documentation of it really having a strong influence in
its own contemporary writings, just as her audience for her
more sort of popular culture books was lagging, though she
did get a job offer. In eighteen forty one, Child
started working as the editor of the National Anti Slavery Standard,
(20:31):
that was the weekly paper published by the American Anti
Slavery Society. David also joined the staff, but in eighteen
forty four they had reached a point where they had
some conflict with William Lloyd Garrison, who was running the
American Anti Slavery Society, over the editorial direction of the
paper The Child's Both resigned officially in eighteen forty four.
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There were strains on their marriage during this period, though
David filed for bankruptcy in eighteen forty two. There his
law career tanks. He had tried to farm beats for
a while to provide an alternative to cane sugar because
of its ties to slavery. He had not done well
with this enterprise. He had also accreed a number of
other debts through poor management of his money, and early
(21:16):
eighteen forty three, Mariah chose to separate her finances from
his completely. She also made the choice that she was
going to stay in New York whether he did the
same or not. Yeah, you'll sometimes see this discussed in
biographies as like a break that was really ultimately good
for her because she did some of her best writing
in this gap where they were kind of not officially separated,
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but they weren't together all the time. Letters from New
York was a two volume set that published in eighteen
forty three and eighteen forty five, and it featured an
assortment of essays, mostly that child had written for the
National Anti Slavery Standard while living in New York for
that job. And the title got its name from a
column that Mariah had written for the paper. And the
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book covers a wide range of topics such as abolition,
women's rights, temperance, poverty, her first visit to a Jewish synagogue,
and the experience of ringing in the new year in
New York City for the first time. Her writing on
women's rights is sharp and at times it's biting, she wrote, quote,
on no other theme, probably has there been uttered so
(22:20):
much false mawkish sentiment, shallow philosophy, and sputtering farthing candle wit.
When it came to the various ways in which men
treat women in social setting, she cut right through it
in this book, writing quote, this sort of politeness to
women is what men call gallantry, an odious word to
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every sensible woman, because she sees that it is merely
the flimsy veil which Foppery throws over sensuality to conceal
its grossness. So far is it from indicating sincere esteem
and affection for women that the profligacy of a nation
may in general be fairly measured by its gallantry. This
taking away rights and condescending to grant privileges is an
(23:03):
old trick of the physical force principle, and with the
immense majority who only look on the surface of things,
this mask effectually disguises an ugliness which would otherwise be abhorred.
We're about to talk about a slightly surprising event and
Child's life, but first we will pause for a little
break and a word from one of the sponsors that
(23:24):
keep Stuffy miss and history class going. As her essays
were being collected into letters from New York Lydia, Mariah
Child became involved in an attempted murder case. Also in
New York, a woman of twenty five named Amelia Norman
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had stabbed businessman Henry Ballard on the steps of the
Astor House hotel. Uh tried to kill him. Ballard survived,
but as the story of his relationship with Amelia Norman
came to light, he started to look too many people,
less like a victim and more like a predator. Ballard
had really pursued Norman until she started a relationship with
(24:07):
him when she had a child as a result of
this affair, he abandoned her when she was able to
see him again and asked him to support their child.
Ballard was said to have suggested that she turned to
sex work to support herself and the baby. Lydiam Ryan
Child heard about Amelia's story while the young woman was
in jail awaiting trial, and she took up her cause,
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and this was actually kind of a tricky space for
her to navigate. While Child was adamant that the treatment
of women, even in the most polite seeming societies, was
always based on a power imbalance, in part because of
the physical power many men had over women, she was
also staunchly anti violence. Norman had stabbed Ballard, that was
not a question. She had openly admitted to not only
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having done so, but having regrets that she had not
actually managed to kill him, so that was not quite
in line with Child's non violent ideology. When Mariah wrote
an article about Amelia's story for The Boston Courier, she
was clear that she was not excusing or condoning the stabbing,
but made the case that it was an unsurprising reaction
(25:14):
of a desperate woman who had been the victim of
the inherent violence of a sexist society. Child's support and
similar writings of other journalists created a surge of more
public support, and by the time of the trial it
seemed like the whole thing was more about Ballard as
a seducer than Norman as an attempted murderer. So despite
(25:35):
all of the evidence involved, Amelia Norman was acquitted. From
eighteen forty four to eighteen forty seven, Child published three
books in a series that were titled Flowers for Children,
and this project was, according to Child, a response to
many requests that she had had since the closing of
Juvenile Miss Laney to collect the works from that periodical,
(25:55):
but most of this was new writing. The second volume
in Flowers for Children features a Thanksgiving poem that's incredibly
well known and has outlived most of her other work
in terms of popularity. It was called the New England
Boys Song about Thanksgiving Day, but listeners will probably recognize
it better by its first line, which is over the
(26:15):
river and through the wood. While most modern versions invoke
Grandmother's house as the destination, the actual first stanza was
written as over the river and through the wood to
Grandfather's house, we go the horse knows the way to
carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow. I
feel like that song comes up everywhere all the time
during the holiday. Does um, it doesn't actually snow that
(26:39):
often in November in Massachusetts there. Maybe it did more
back then, because we've seen plenty of evidence of spring
being earlier in winters being warmer over the last century
and however long, or maybe she just liked the idyllic
imagery of snow. Uh. This was, of course, not her
only writing project during that time time. Her book Fact
(27:01):
and Fiction came out in eighteen forty six, and this
group of stories kind of hints at what might have
been going on in the child's marriage, but that's generally
speculation by literary analysts. It's fiction, like many of her
works that explore real world issues, so it's hard to
know when she talks about marriage and and how women
(27:21):
are treated in marriage, if she's talking about her own
or just in general. This book did not do well
with critics. She talked about sexuality more than I think
most people were comfortable with at the time, which did
not help it. In eighteen fifty three, Lydia and David,
who had bounced around through various rental properties and the
homes of friends, both together and separately, moved together to Whaland,
(27:43):
Massachusetts and to Mariah's father's house. Maria looked after her
father for the remaining three years of his life, and
then after he died, Mariah and David remained there in
that home for the rest of their lives. Yeah, there's
a lot of um speculation about her relations and ship
with her father. He was kind of a brusque man,
(28:04):
and she always felt like she never lived up to
what he wanted, and so some people thought it was
kind of interesting that the second he wanted her help,
she just ran to his side without question. Um. But
that's how that all played out. Uh. Another book, The
Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages, came out in
(28:25):
eighteen fifty five, and this book is a history and
analysis of various world religions through time, and Child's hope
with it was that the three volume work would help
people tolerate one another's religious views, although it is really
quite clearly very pro Christianity in particular. In eighteen fifties,
seven autumnal Leaves, Tales and Sketches in pros and Rhyme
(28:48):
was published and This, like other works by Child, is
a collection of fictional shorts that address issues that she
had written about pretty often, including women's rights, abolition, and religion,
among others. So we've talked on a previous episode about
John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in eighteen fifty nine,
and that attempted slave revolt galvanized a lot of abolitionists
(29:10):
into fresh action, and that included Maria, who wrote a
new pamphlet titled Correspondence between Lydia Mariah Child and Governor
Wise and Mrs Mason of Virginia, and this was published
by the Anti Slavery Society. Prior to this point, Child
had kind of pulled away from her work with abolitionist
groups because there was constant in fighting. She still believed
(29:33):
in abolition, but she just didn't want to associate with
any of the organizations around it. Bickering factions among William
Lloyd Garrison's followers during her time editing the National Anti
Slavery Standard had really soured her opinions on the movement,
although certainly not the ideals of abolition. Inequality. In it,
Child denounced a myth that she had been trying to
break for years and that was the myth of the
(29:55):
benevolent and slaver. Leading up to this point, Senator James M.
Mason of Virginia had made a statement in a letter
to Child characterizing the treatment of enslaved people as kind
and caring, noting that white ladies of southern households often
assisted in enslaved women's births. Mason also went after Child herself,
(30:16):
suggesting that meddling in other communities instead of worrying about
her own, indicated that she was not a true woman,
and Child responded bitingly and famously that almost all of
the women she knew in the North cared for the
people in their communities in various ways, and that she
had quote never known an instance where the pangs of
maternity did not meet with requisite assistance. And here in
(30:39):
the North, after we have helped the mothers, we do
not sell the babies. More than three hundred thousand copies
of this pamphlet were distributed. Child and her husband were
advocating for an end to slavery right up to the
Civil War. She wrote a number of pamphlets in eighteen
sixty using different rhetoric aimed at different audiences. In eighteen
(31:00):
sixty one, and just as the tension in the country
over the issue of slavery was really boiling over, Harriet Jacob,
who had escaped enslavement and lived in terrifying conditions on
the run, told her life story in a book titled
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Lydia Mariah
Child edited this book and it opened up the discussion
(31:21):
about sexual abuse of enslaved women in a way that
had never really been done before. Yeah, it was so
frank in some ways that even some abolitionists were like,
this is very uncomfortable. I'm not sure we should be
publishing this um. But after the war, Mariah continued her
advocacy she had from the time of writing her book
An Appeal trumpeted the need for education for the black community,
(31:43):
as well as for the end of misgenation laws as
a way to truly enable full and equal integration. And
to help on the educational front, she published a book
called The Freedman's Book in eighteen sixty five. The Freedman's
Book opens with the following passage quote to the Freedman,
I have prepared this book expressly for you, with the
(32:04):
hope that those of you who can read, will read
it aloud to others, and that all of you will
derive fresh strength and courage from this true record of
what colored men have accomplished under great disadvantages. I have
written all the biographies over again in order to give
you as much information as possible in the fewest words.
I take nothing for my services, and the book is
(32:25):
sold to you at the cost of paper, printing, and binding.
Whatever money you pay for any of the volumes will
be immediately invested in other volumes to be sent to
freedmen in various parts of the country on the same terms.
And whatever money remains in my hands when the book
ceases to sell will be given to the Freedman's Aid Association,
to be expended in schools for you and your children.
(32:46):
This book contains writings by Child, including, as she said,
biographies of notable black figures, including previous podcast subjects like
Ignatia Sancho and James Forton. And it also includes a
number of advice essays, similar to her early books for women,
so practical advice about everyday things like maintaining good health
by drinking water and getting fresh air and good nutrition,
(33:07):
or caring for animals, but it also contains writing by
a lot of other people. The poem The Last Night
of Slavery by James Montgomery is included, as is Frederick
Douglas is a Pertinent Question and Phyllis Wheatley's The Works
of Providence. In eighteen sixty seven, Child published a new
novel called A Romance of the Republic. This story, about
(33:28):
two sisters and an enslaved New Orleans household, uses fiction
to once again examine the ideas of racism and patriarchy.
The idea of interracial marriage is held up as both
the natural thing and ultimately good for society, while she
works to show in egalitarian society is the ultimate goal.
We should mention that this definitely features black people in
(33:50):
the story integrating into white society by assimilating to white ways.
This novel was not a success in any way. She
also took up the cause of indigenous cultures in the
United States once again at this phase of her life,
publishing An Appeal for Indians in eighteen sixty eight. In
this work mirrors an appeal in favor of that class
(34:11):
of Americans called Africans in that it calls out the
many ways that Indigenous people have been mistreated and offers
ideas about how justice might be brought to those communities.
David Child died in eighteen seventy four, and though they
had bumpy phases over the years because of his financial
problems and their last years together, the couple had actually
grown very close. David had become her best friend and supporter,
(34:35):
and so his loss was acute. In eighteen seventy eight,
Mariah wrote Aspirations of the World, a chain of opals,
which she referred to as her eclectic Bible. This was
a collection of religious stories from various cultures and various
time periods, intended to show how similar humankind was around
the world. Lydia Mariah Child died on October twentie, eighteen
(34:57):
eighty at her home in Whaland, Massachusetts. In two thousand seven,
she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
I'm glad that you picked this one, me too. She
has never been like at the tippy top of my
to do list, but sometimes when I've been looking for
winter holiday themed episodes, she has come up, specifically because
(35:21):
of Over the River and through the Woods. But of
course there was a whole lot more to talk about
than that. Yeah, she's she's interesting for that reason obviously,
But I I had this moment where I was like, oh,
should we have saved this for the holidays, But as
I look at her story, that's such a tiny piece
of it that it would have felt really weird. Yeah, tiny,
(35:41):
tiny bit, and she is really interesting. We'll talk a
little bit more in our behind the scenes about kind
of my perceptions of of her writing and where it
falls on the spectrum of um viewing all of these
things through the lens of a white woman of the time, UM,
and how it's a little bit different than some other
writings in that regard, but also you know, someone similarity.
(36:03):
So but I did find her really really charming and fascinating,
and I love that she was not afraid. She's so
smart about calibrating who she thought the reader of any
given piece might be, to make it as impactful as
possible for them and like appeal to their sensibilities. But
(36:24):
I love that once she got into that that last pamphlet,
she just was not afraid to throw the way amity
blam at all and was just like, no, you're horrible.
Let me tell you all the ways you're horrible. Prior
to that She had really seemed to try to foster
this idea of like, surely we can find some kind
(36:46):
of compromise between the Northern States and the Southern States.
And by that point she was like, there's no compromise possible,
Like this is wrong and we have to end it
right now. Um, which is why she is So. I
don't know if tart is the right word in her
her writing in it, but she is. She's not holding
back at all. Uh. I encourage people to read her writing.
It is because it's across so many genres. Sometimes it's
(37:09):
very charming and sweet, and other times it is very
biting and direct, and and it's I saw one thing
that mentioned that she was not what anyone would call
a phenomenal writer in terms of being a word smith,
but she was very smart about how she put together
narrative and like I said, who who might be reading it?
So I really enjoyed doing the research on this one. Um.
(37:33):
I have fun listener mail about another show that I
had really enjoyed doing the research on, which is the
Tacoma Naro's Bridge episode. Uh. And that is from our
listener Jeff, who writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy, my husband
and I always enjoy your show. We were fortunately able
to see you live on stage before the pandemic at
You're Buried, a live show at the Neptune Theater in Seattle.
It was such a great crowd and so fun to
(37:54):
see all the different people who enjoy the show. I
couldn't agree more. I miss touring so much. Um. He
goes on to say, we recently listened to your episode
on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. I had no idea. Gertie
opened the same week as the first floating bridge over
Lake Washington. That bridge, originally the Lake Washington Floating Bridge,
eventually renamed Lacey V. Marow Memorial Bridge, was the world's
(38:16):
longest permanent floating pontoon bridge when it opened. At over
sixty feet long, it connected Seattle with its eastern suburbs
over what eventually became I ninety. However, it, like the
first Tacoma Narrows Bridge, also suffered an unfortunate fate in
it sank after workers accidentally left the pontoon doors opened
(38:37):
during a windstorm over the long Thanksgiving weekend while the
bridge was being resurfaced. Local TV news footage at the
time shows floating cars and accounts of people narrowly escaping
the collapse. Part of the sunken bridge still lies in
shallow water underneath its replacement, now the home of many crawdads.
I have attached some photos of the bridge from when
we scuba dived it several years ago, and he linked
(38:59):
us to his his Flicker account. Um one, thank you
so much for writing. I actually didn't know that much
about the bridge over Lake Washington, like I said, even
though I lived there when I was a kid. For
some reason, that one was never really on my radar.
But I have to say this, Jeff's pictures of craw
dad's managed to make them look like the cutest things
on earth. And I enjoy ocean creatures, but these are
(39:23):
like animated film level cuteness. In some cases, some of
them are really really adorable. So thank you so much
one for sharing that info about the other bridge in
the area that didn't go so well, although because of
a moment of forgetfulness rather than a structural error. Uh.
And also for sharing these adorable pictures. Thank you, thank
(39:43):
you so much. If you would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. You can also find us on social media
as Missed in History. If you would like to subscribe,
that is easiest pie You can do it on the
I heart Radio app, at Apple podcast or wherever it
is you listen to your favorite shows. M Stuff you
(40:04):
Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello would welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, Oh Tracy.
Today's topic was requested by listener Amy A long way back.
(00:21):
It's been on my list ever since, and finally, after
literal years, shuffled up. Uh. Lydia Mariah Child was a
writer of children's literature, historical novels, abolitionist tracts, and even poetry.
And her writing was prolific at times, it was very
divisive in its subject matter. And she's kind of unique
(00:44):
in that she wrote so many different types of books, right.
She wrote particularly basic, friendly advice books on one end
of her spectrum, and then like really hard nosed activism
on the other side, and a variety of things in between.
She also wrote literature for children. She penned holiday poem
that listeners are definitely going to recognize when we get
to it. Uh. And because she was so prolific and
(01:06):
from a very early age, there is a lot of
ground to cover with her, so we're just going to
jump right in. She was born Lydia Francis on February
two in Medford, Massachusetts. Her parents were Converse Francis, a Baker,
and Susannah Ran Francis. Lydia had five siblings, four of
whom survived childhood, and she was the baby of the family.
(01:29):
Her family was actually part of the abolition movement even
before Lydia was born. Her mother, Susannah, died when Lydia
was twelve, and that was just the beginning of a
series of tragedies to the family. Lydia actually recalled being
in a poor mood on the day that her mother died,
and she was consequently not attentive to Susannah as she
should have been. There's a story that her mother asked
(01:50):
her for a glass of water and at first she
was like, I don't want to go downstairs and get it. Uh.
This was a guilt that she carried with her throughout
her life. Her grandmother also died that same year, several
months after Susannah, and then in the fall of that year,
Lydia was enrolled in a Medford school called Ms. Swan's Academy.
She had been homeschooled prior to her mother's death, but
(02:12):
her time there at the academy was short. The following
summer she went to live with her sister Mary and
Mary's new husband, Warren Preston. Her brother, Convers Francis Jr.
Who was a Unitarian minister, was hugely influential in her
early years. Converse had gone to Harvard when Lydia was
just nine. Lydia looked up to him just immensely and
(02:34):
wrote him numerous letters while he was at school, primarily
about what she was reading. The two of them loved
to talk about literature together. When she was eighteen, Lydia
started teaching in Gardner, Maine, but the following year she
moved in with Converse and his wife in Watertown, Massachusetts,
and that's where Converse was working. She was not fond
(02:54):
of her first name, and when she was baptized in
her late teen years, she chose the name Lydia Mariah,
and she preferred at that point to be called Mariah.
So we are going to respect her wishes and call
her by that name as we go forward. The time
she spent with Convers Jr. Ended up setting her on
the path of writing. It was through a conversation with
her older brother that Mariah decided to write her first novel,
(03:17):
Hobba Mock, which was a story about life in the
early colonies. This book, which was published in eighteen twenty four,
features a romance between a white woman and an Indigenous man.
They marry and they have a child together, and then
the book follows their story as the woman and her
son become pariah's of white society. This book, which Mariah
(03:37):
wrote in just a month and a half, really challenged
other social norms. In addition to racist ideas about Native Americans,
examined the roles of women and the expectations they lived under,
and it told the story from a woman's perspective. She
also makes the case that the rigidity of Puritan life
was deeply problematic and a hindrance to the establishment of
(03:58):
the colonies. This story, of course, gave a mind early
eighteen hundreds did not sit well with a lot of people,
and it established Maria, who had published the book under
the author listing of an American, as something of a firebrand,
willing to tackle problematic subjects and stir the social pot
in doing so. And even though her name was not
(04:19):
on that initial printing of the novel, she was well
known in some of New England's literary circles thanks to
her brother's connections through Harvard, so it really was not
any kind of secret that it was her work. Additionally,
the book was supported by Boston literati George Tickner, which
lent it clout and gave it broader exposure. Her follow
up was a totally different type of book entirely. It
(04:41):
was Evenings in New England, intended for juvenile amusement and instruction,
was also released in eighteen twenty four. It's framed as
an aunt that's Aunt Maria telling didactic stories to two
children about issues of the day, including topics like slavery,
science and history. And this was a huge of success. Yeah,
she immediately like really hit on something with her her
(05:04):
works for the juvenile market. In Mariah's second novel, The
Rebels or Boston Before the Revolution, was published, and this
work was a melodrama, again centered on women, but it
led to a bit of confusion which persisted for quite
a long time. There was an oration that she wrote
for the book, which was historical fiction, but in the
(05:24):
book it was delivered by someone who was actually a
real historical figure and political activist, James Otis Jr. And
that oration she wrote was taken as historically accurate by
many readers, so much so that it actually ended up
in some school books, and many children in the eighteen
hundreds learned to recite this fictional speech as though it
(05:44):
were historically significant. Uh moment in time this um, this
reminds me of the very first episode I ever worked
on for this show, which was the one about Chief
Seattle's oration that he did not say at all. Um.
For a very brief period just through the winter, Mariah
(06:07):
attended a Boston boarding school called Madame Kanda's Academy. When
she returned to Watertown in the fall of eighteen twenty six,
she founded a children's magazine called Juvenile Miss Laney. She
used this as a platform to educate children about injustice,
and she also opened a school, although it lasted just
a year. She started writing short stories during this time
(06:29):
as well. Mariah meant and began a courtship with lawyer,
editor and political hopeful David Lee Child in eighteen twenty four.
He was, like her brother Converse, a Harvard graduate, and
David was eight years older than Mariah. He was well
traveled and was the editor of the Massachusetts Journal as
well as its publisher, and he was a very vocal
political activist. Mariah and David shared many interests, but they
(06:54):
were a very different temperaments. Mariah was frugal, romantic, and
drawn to mysticism. He loved to spend money, and his
idealism was dedicated to reform. The couple were engaged in
eighty seven, but the Francis family was really not in
favor of the marriage. David's irresponsibility with money was a concern,
(07:16):
But as this tension with the family was playing out,
Mariah started making more money through her own work as
a writer, so the issue of finances became a lot
less of an obstacle. She and David were finally married
in eight All that money things going to come up
a bunch. After their marriage, the newlyweds collaborated on each
other's projects. Mariah became more active in David's political work,
(07:39):
and she also started writing for the Massachusetts Journal. The
journal offered a platform for both husband and wife to
speak out against President Andrew Jackson's position regarding the people
of the Cherokee Nation and its culmination in the Trail
of Tears that, of course played out over years, and
throughout all of it they were writing articles and essays
for the Journal. About it, yet also included multiple indigenous
(08:01):
nations in addition to the Cherokee. So even before that, though,
the Childs were no strangers to controversy for their outspoken
political writings. But things became a little bit more serious
in eighty eight when David was charged with libel in
the case of the Commonwealth Versus David Lee Child for
publishing in the Massachusetts Journal a libel on the Honorable
(08:23):
John Keys. David had published several pieces and his periodical
and The Flyers, saying that John Keys, while serving as
Committee of Accounts chairman for the county, had misused and
manipulated county funds, including participating in a bid rigging scheme
to benefit himself. David Child was found guilty. He lost
(08:44):
his appeal when he served six months of jail time.
He was also named in another libel suit during this
time as well, And coming up, we'll talk about how
Mariah dealt with the circumstance of her husband's legal and
financial difficulties, and we'll do that right after we pause
for us sponsor break. So this whole legal situation, which
(09:10):
of course led to a significant drop in subscriptions to
the Massachusetts Journal, made it clearer than ever that Mariah's
income was really crucial to the child's financial stability. Knowing
about the differences in how Mariah and David handled money,
it is to me a little bit funny, or perhaps
just very telling that less than a year into her
(09:30):
life as a married woman, Mrs Child published an advice
book titled The Frugal Housewife, dedicated to those who are
not ashamed of economy. In the beginning of the book,
she included the proverb economy is a poor man's revenue,
extravagance a rich man's ruin. The introduction of the book
opens with quote, the true economy of housekeeping is simply
(09:54):
the art of gathering up all the fragments so that
nothing be lost. I mean fragments of time as well
as material. Nothing should be thrown away so long as
it is possible to make any use of it, however
trifling that use maybe, And whatever the size of the family,
every member should be employed either and earning or saving money.
(10:15):
And this book is full of useful, no nonsense tips,
like keeping up with your vegetables to make sure they
don't go bad. Tracy and I have often talked about
her brilliant term aspirational vegetables that go bad in the
crisper I have them too. Mariah would be very disappointed
in us. She also talks about doing your own mending
rather than sending it out to a seamstress, and to
(10:36):
prioritize baking your own bread and cake rather than paying
for the convenience of the baker to do it. This
all sounds pretty obvious, but the writing here is important
because it's aimed at a lower income woman than most
of the books for ladies of the day were really doing,
and this was an astute approach. Child's writing appealed to
a far larger reader base with generally usable information shan
(11:00):
than most books about being a housewife. Those were often
directed at people who were more affluent, so this book
got into the real day to day tasks that a
wife and a mother without a staff might face at
a time when her own income was really important. She
saw that mass appeal was more lucrative than writing for
a more high brow crowd. The Frugal Housewife was very popular,
(11:24):
and it was followed up with two other advice books
with slightly different target audiences. In the introduction to her book,
The Mother's Book, Child commented on the market success of
her previous volume, writing quote, when I wrote The Frugal Housewife,
some booksellers declined publishing it on account of the great
variety of cookery books already in the market. I was
(11:47):
perfectly aware of this circumstance, but among them all, I
did not know of one suited to the wants of
the middling class in our own country. I believed such
a book was needed, and the sale of more than
six thousand copies in one year has proved that I
was right in my conjecture. She also acknowledges that the
information that she shares, particularly in The Mother's Book, isn't new,
(12:09):
but that it comes from conversations with mothers. And this
book is interesting because it puts forth the idea that
the manner in which tiny babies are cared for has
a great deal of influence on their quote, future dispositions,
and characters. That was not a commonly held idea, and
so it was way ahead of its time. Her other
book that's usually grouped with The Frugal Housewife and The
(12:31):
Mother's Book is titled The Little Girl's Own Book, and
this book features games and advice for girls and foundational lessons,
very much in line with those two previous books. It
includes a rather charming game called the French Role, in
which one player is the purchaser, one is the baker,
and all the other players form a line called the Oven,
(12:51):
with the last in line being called the French Role.
This was a sort of complicated variation on Duck Duck
Goose and other games where one person has to outrun
another in an effort to move into a different category.
And according to child quote, this play is a very
active and rather noisy one. There are a lot of
(13:12):
games in this book, and and there's another contributor that
she mentions helped her with the games. But like they're
all to me hilarious because they're like sort of needlessly complicated.
But I guess that would keep children active and also engaged.
But they are very, very funny. Mariah's writing was prolific
during this early time in her marriage, as she strove
(13:34):
to truly make a living at it, making her one
of the first women to do so in the US.
She wrote another novel with similar themes to those in
Hobbamock in the new work, which was titled The First
Settlers of New England or Conquest of the Peaquad's, Narragansetts
and Poconoc. It's as related by a mother to her
children and designed for the instruction of youth. The story
(13:55):
here centers around white protagonists, the children finding that they
id n I find more with the indigenous people in
the stories than the colonists. And this book was incredibly
radical at the time. Among other things, it once again
promoted the idea of interracial marriage. But it also was
kind of kept on the down low. It did not
have any published reviews, and perhaps because it was expected
(14:19):
that it would court a lot of controversy, it seemed
to have a very minimal and limited release. While Mariah
had grown up in an abolitionist household, it was meeting
William Lloyd Garrison through her husband David in eighteen thirty
one that really cemented her commitment to the cause. Garrison,
who started his paper The Liberator the same year, had
(14:39):
already published some of Child's writings, notably her essay Comparative
Strength of Male and Female Intellect. He gave her the
nickname the First Woman in the Republic. Child turned her
pen to the cause of abolition, and she wrote an
appeal in favor of that class of Americans called Africans
in eighteen thirty three. This book, which is considered uh,
(15:03):
you know, fairly important in in the lexicon, detailed the
history of enslavement in North America, and it advocated for
the end of slavery and for freed people who had
been enslaved to become part of society in the US.
She proposed a multi racial country of equality with educational
opportunities for all. An Appeal is often referred to as
(15:25):
the first anti slavery book. There had certainly been essays
and pamphlets before it, but this was a deeper and
more expansive examination of the topic than previous writings had
taken on, and it made Child a target in a
lot of ways. She was no longer welcome among many
of her white peers, and that mass appeal that she
(15:45):
had cultivated through her books for women and girls really
dried up pretty quickly after this. The year after An
Appeal was published, Juvenile Miscellany, which had lost a huge
portion of its subscribers due to Child's outspoken stance on abolition, folded.
She also lost her borrowing privileges at the Boston Athenaeum.
This did not diminish Mariah Child's dedication to ending slavery.
(16:09):
She made no effort to win back readers she lost
through her writing in an appeal, at least not initially,
and instead she just wrote more on the subject, including
the story collection The Oasis, which featured stories, poems, and
essays about black enslaved people, but it was intended for
a white audience. The idea that she had was that
these stories within it would help people see enslaved people
(16:31):
as people, and it might help stoke the fires of
abolitionist ideals in readers who had perhaps been reluctant to
join the cause. Amidst all of this, David's money problems
continued to mount. His law office had folded, and he
was arrested for his unpaid debts. For six months, the
Child's lived with Joseph and Margaret Carpenter, who were Quakers
(16:53):
in New Rochelle, New York. Mariah helped at the school there,
including working on its desegregation plan. She published another book,
Authentic Anecdotes of American Slavery, in eighteen thirty five, and
that book collects stories and accounts of witnesses to enslavement,
some of which are unsurprisingly incredibly dark in their content.
(17:14):
All of this done to illustrate the inherent in humanity
of the practice of enslavement. In one passage, child rights quote,
a prominent feature in the system of slavery is the
bluntness of moral feelings and the dimness of moral perception
inevitably induced by it. Even conscientious men and women often
find it difficult and apparently impossible to apply to this
(17:36):
subject the most universal rules of justice and the most
common maxims of humanity. This great evil originates in a
fixed habit of not regarding the colored race as brethren
and sisters of the human family. In eighteen thirty five,
Child's book Antislavery Catechism was published. This is, as its
name suggests, a series of questions regarding slavery and treatment
(18:00):
of enslaved persons answered an essay formed by the writer
debunking a lot of the myths and watered down accounts
of enslavement. Of note is the inclusion of the story
of the Lulltery Mansion in New Orleans burning and the
torture of enslaved people there that was revealed in the
aftermath of the blaze, and Mariah's writing she gets the
(18:22):
name wrong Instead of lulltery, she writes it as salary.
That fire happened on April tenth, thirty four, the year
before Antislavery Catechism was released, and the horrendous revelations of
it were undoubtedly on the minds of abolitionists. There's been
some discussion about that particular discovery. The last time we've
(18:43):
talked about that on our social media, we had some
folks that became like lollery defenders um saying that a
lot of the descriptions were really overblown and it was
still a place where people were being bound and physically punished.
It's another one of those it wasn't that bad narratives
that are kind of horrifying when you really stop and
(19:05):
think about what they're talking about. In eighteen thirty six,
Child also published a historical romance called Philothea, which was
set in the fifth century b c. E. Early twentieth
century critic Carl Van Doren once described this book as
quote a gentle, ignorant romance of the Athens of Pericles,
the fruit of a real desire to escape from the
(19:26):
clang of current life. It was a little bit of
an escape for Mariah to write about something other than
than social justice issues at the time, but in the
time that it was released, the reviews for Philothea were
really quite good Lydia Mariah Child did try to write
one more book of advice for women in eighteen thirty seven,
that was The Family Nurse, but sales were port due
(19:48):
to her more controversial writings. While the reaction to her
work had immediate and unfortunate impacts on her life, including
her finances, she continued to champion abolition and Why an
Appeal and other writings cost her personally, they really helped
the movement gain support. Yeah, there were a lot of
of prominent people in her time who said, I read
(20:09):
an Appeal in it it really changed my mind about
how I thought about this issue. So, I mean there
is documentation of it really having a strong influence in
its own contemporary writings, just as her audience for her
more sort of popular culture books was lagging, though she
did get a job offer. In eighteen forty one, Child
started working as the editor of the National Anti Slavery Standard,
(20:31):
that was the weekly paper published by the American Anti
Slavery Society. David also joined the staff, but in eighteen
forty four they had reached a point where they had
some conflict with William Lloyd Garrison, who was running the
American Anti Slavery Society, over the editorial direction of the
paper The Child's Both resigned officially in eighteen forty four.
(20:53):
There were strains on their marriage during this period, though
David filed for bankruptcy in eighteen forty two. There his
law career tanks. He had tried to farm beats for
a while to provide an alternative to cane sugar because
of its ties to slavery. He had not done well
with this enterprise. He had also accreed a number of
other debts through poor management of his money, and early
(21:16):
eighteen forty three, Mariah chose to separate her finances from
his completely. She also made the choice that she was
going to stay in New York whether he did the
same or not. Yeah, you'll sometimes see this discussed in
biographies as like a break that was really ultimately good
for her because she did some of her best writing
in this gap where they were kind of not officially separated,
(21:38):
but they weren't together all the time. Letters from New
York was a two volume set that published in eighteen
forty three and eighteen forty five, and it featured an
assortment of essays, mostly that child had written for the
National Anti Slavery Standard while living in New York for
that job. And the title got its name from a
column that Mariah had written for the paper. And the
(21:59):
book covers a wide range of topics such as abolition,
women's rights, temperance, poverty, her first visit to a Jewish synagogue,
and the experience of ringing in the new year in
New York City for the first time. Her writing on
women's rights is sharp and at times it's biting, she wrote, quote,
on no other theme, probably has there been uttered so
(22:20):
much false mawkish sentiment, shallow philosophy, and sputtering farthing candle wit.
When it came to the various ways in which men
treat women in social setting, she cut right through it
in this book, writing quote, this sort of politeness to
women is what men call gallantry, an odious word to
(22:40):
every sensible woman, because she sees that it is merely
the flimsy veil which Foppery throws over sensuality to conceal
its grossness. So far is it from indicating sincere esteem
and affection for women that the profligacy of a nation
may in general be fairly measured by its gallantry. This
taking away rights and condescending to grant privileges is an
(23:03):
old trick of the physical force principle, and with the
immense majority who only look on the surface of things,
this mask effectually disguises an ugliness which would otherwise be abhorred.
We're about to talk about a slightly surprising event and
Child's life, but first we will pause for a little
break and a word from one of the sponsors that
(23:24):
keep Stuffy miss and history class going. As her essays
were being collected into letters from New York Lydia, Mariah
Child became involved in an attempted murder case. Also in
New York, a woman of twenty five named Amelia Norman
(23:45):
had stabbed businessman Henry Ballard on the steps of the
Astor House hotel. Uh tried to kill him. Ballard survived,
but as the story of his relationship with Amelia Norman
came to light, he started to look too many people,
less like a victim and more like a predator. Ballard
had really pursued Norman until she started a relationship with
(24:07):
him when she had a child as a result of
this affair, he abandoned her when she was able to
see him again and asked him to support their child.
Ballard was said to have suggested that she turned to
sex work to support herself and the baby. Lydiam Ryan
Child heard about Amelia's story while the young woman was
in jail awaiting trial, and she took up her cause,
(24:29):
and this was actually kind of a tricky space for
her to navigate. While Child was adamant that the treatment
of women, even in the most polite seeming societies, was
always based on a power imbalance, in part because of
the physical power many men had over women, she was
also staunchly anti violence. Norman had stabbed Ballard, that was
not a question. She had openly admitted to not only
(24:52):
having done so, but having regrets that she had not
actually managed to kill him, so that was not quite
in line with Child's non violent ideology. When Mariah wrote
an article about Amelia's story for The Boston Courier, she
was clear that she was not excusing or condoning the stabbing,
but made the case that it was an unsurprising reaction
(25:14):
of a desperate woman who had been the victim of
the inherent violence of a sexist society. Child's support and
similar writings of other journalists created a surge of more
public support, and by the time of the trial it
seemed like the whole thing was more about Ballard as
a seducer than Norman as an attempted murderer. So despite
(25:35):
all of the evidence involved, Amelia Norman was acquitted. From
eighteen forty four to eighteen forty seven, Child published three
books in a series that were titled Flowers for Children,
and this project was, according to Child, a response to
many requests that she had had since the closing of
Juvenile Miss Laney to collect the works from that periodical,
(25:55):
but most of this was new writing. The second volume
in Flowers for Children features a Thanksgiving poem that's incredibly
well known and has outlived most of her other work
in terms of popularity. It was called the New England
Boys Song about Thanksgiving Day, but listeners will probably recognize
it better by its first line, which is over the
(26:15):
river and through the wood. While most modern versions invoke
Grandmother's house as the destination, the actual first stanza was
written as over the river and through the wood to
Grandfather's house, we go the horse knows the way to
carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow. I
feel like that song comes up everywhere all the time
during the holiday. Does um, it doesn't actually snow that
(26:39):
often in November in Massachusetts there. Maybe it did more
back then, because we've seen plenty of evidence of spring
being earlier in winters being warmer over the last century
and however long, or maybe she just liked the idyllic
imagery of snow. Uh. This was, of course, not her
only writing project during that time time. Her book Fact
(27:01):
and Fiction came out in eighteen forty six, and this
group of stories kind of hints at what might have
been going on in the child's marriage, but that's generally
speculation by literary analysts. It's fiction, like many of her
works that explore real world issues, so it's hard to
know when she talks about marriage and and how women
(27:21):
are treated in marriage, if she's talking about her own
or just in general. This book did not do well
with critics. She talked about sexuality more than I think
most people were comfortable with at the time, which did
not help it. In eighteen fifty three, Lydia and David,
who had bounced around through various rental properties and the
homes of friends, both together and separately, moved together to Whaland,
(27:43):
Massachusetts and to Mariah's father's house. Maria looked after her
father for the remaining three years of his life, and
then after he died, Mariah and David remained there in
that home for the rest of their lives. Yeah, there's
a lot of um speculation about her relations and ship
with her father. He was kind of a brusque man,
(28:04):
and she always felt like she never lived up to
what he wanted, and so some people thought it was
kind of interesting that the second he wanted her help,
she just ran to his side without question. Um. But
that's how that all played out. Uh. Another book, The
Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages, came out in
(28:25):
eighteen fifty five, and this book is a history and
analysis of various world religions through time, and Child's hope
with it was that the three volume work would help
people tolerate one another's religious views, although it is really
quite clearly very pro Christianity in particular. In eighteen fifties,
seven autumnal Leaves, Tales and Sketches in pros and Rhyme
(28:48):
was published and This, like other works by Child, is
a collection of fictional shorts that address issues that she
had written about pretty often, including women's rights, abolition, and religion,
among others. So we've talked on a previous episode about
John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in eighteen fifty nine,
and that attempted slave revolt galvanized a lot of abolitionists
(29:10):
into fresh action, and that included Maria, who wrote a
new pamphlet titled Correspondence between Lydia Mariah Child and Governor
Wise and Mrs Mason of Virginia, and this was published
by the Anti Slavery Society. Prior to this point, Child
had kind of pulled away from her work with abolitionist
groups because there was constant in fighting. She still believed
(29:33):
in abolition, but she just didn't want to associate with
any of the organizations around it. Bickering factions among William
Lloyd Garrison's followers during her time editing the National Anti
Slavery Standard had really soured her opinions on the movement,
although certainly not the ideals of abolition. Inequality. In it,
Child denounced a myth that she had been trying to
break for years and that was the myth of the
(29:55):
benevolent and slaver. Leading up to this point, Senator James M.
Mason of Virginia had made a statement in a letter
to Child characterizing the treatment of enslaved people as kind
and caring, noting that white ladies of southern households often
assisted in enslaved women's births. Mason also went after Child herself,
(30:16):
suggesting that meddling in other communities instead of worrying about
her own, indicated that she was not a true woman,
and Child responded bitingly and famously that almost all of
the women she knew in the North cared for the
people in their communities in various ways, and that she
had quote never known an instance where the pangs of
maternity did not meet with requisite assistance. And here in
(30:39):
the North, after we have helped the mothers, we do
not sell the babies. More than three hundred thousand copies
of this pamphlet were distributed. Child and her husband were
advocating for an end to slavery right up to the
Civil War. She wrote a number of pamphlets in eighteen
sixty using different rhetoric aimed at different audiences. In eighteen
(31:00):
sixty one, and just as the tension in the country
over the issue of slavery was really boiling over, Harriet Jacob,
who had escaped enslavement and lived in terrifying conditions on
the run, told her life story in a book titled
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Lydia Mariah
Child edited this book and it opened up the discussion
(31:21):
about sexual abuse of enslaved women in a way that
had never really been done before. Yeah, it was so
frank in some ways that even some abolitionists were like,
this is very uncomfortable. I'm not sure we should be
publishing this um. But after the war, Mariah continued her
advocacy she had from the time of writing her book
An Appeal trumpeted the need for education for the black community,
(31:43):
as well as for the end of misgenation laws as
a way to truly enable full and equal integration. And
to help on the educational front, she published a book
called The Freedman's Book in eighteen sixty five. The Freedman's
Book opens with the following passage quote to the Freedman,
I have prepared this book expressly for you, with the
(32:04):
hope that those of you who can read, will read
it aloud to others, and that all of you will
derive fresh strength and courage from this true record of
what colored men have accomplished under great disadvantages. I have
written all the biographies over again in order to give
you as much information as possible in the fewest words.
I take nothing for my services, and the book is
(32:25):
sold to you at the cost of paper, printing, and binding.
Whatever money you pay for any of the volumes will
be immediately invested in other volumes to be sent to
freedmen in various parts of the country on the same terms.
And whatever money remains in my hands when the book
ceases to sell will be given to the Freedman's Aid Association,
to be expended in schools for you and your children.
(32:46):
This book contains writings by Child, including, as she said,
biographies of notable black figures, including previous podcast subjects like
Ignatia Sancho and James Forton. And it also includes a
number of advice essays, similar to her early books for women,
so practical advice about everyday things like maintaining good health
by drinking water and getting fresh air and good nutrition,
(33:07):
or caring for animals, but it also contains writing by
a lot of other people. The poem The Last Night
of Slavery by James Montgomery is included, as is Frederick
Douglas is a Pertinent Question and Phyllis Wheatley's The Works
of Providence. In eighteen sixty seven, Child published a new
novel called A Romance of the Republic. This story, about
(33:28):
two sisters and an enslaved New Orleans household, uses fiction
to once again examine the ideas of racism and patriarchy.
The idea of interracial marriage is held up as both
the natural thing and ultimately good for society, while she
works to show in egalitarian society is the ultimate goal.
We should mention that this definitely features black people in
(33:50):
the story integrating into white society by assimilating to white ways.
This novel was not a success in any way. She
also took up the cause of indigenous cultures in the
United States once again at this phase of her life,
publishing An Appeal for Indians in eighteen sixty eight. In
this work mirrors an appeal in favor of that class
(34:11):
of Americans called Africans in that it calls out the
many ways that Indigenous people have been mistreated and offers
ideas about how justice might be brought to those communities.
David Child died in eighteen seventy four, and though they
had bumpy phases over the years because of his financial
problems and their last years together, the couple had actually
grown very close. David had become her best friend and supporter,
(34:35):
and so his loss was acute. In eighteen seventy eight,
Mariah wrote Aspirations of the World, a chain of opals,
which she referred to as her eclectic Bible. This was
a collection of religious stories from various cultures and various
time periods, intended to show how similar humankind was around
the world. Lydia Mariah Child died on October twentie, eighteen
(34:57):
eighty at her home in Whaland, Massachusetts. In two thousand seven,
she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
I'm glad that you picked this one, me too. She
has never been like at the tippy top of my
to do list, but sometimes when I've been looking for
winter holiday themed episodes, she has come up, specifically because
(35:21):
of Over the River and through the Woods. But of
course there was a whole lot more to talk about
than that. Yeah, she's she's interesting for that reason obviously,
But I I had this moment where I was like, oh,
should we have saved this for the holidays, But as
I look at her story, that's such a tiny piece
of it that it would have felt really weird. Yeah, tiny,
(35:41):
tiny bit, and she is really interesting. We'll talk a
little bit more in our behind the scenes about kind
of my perceptions of of her writing and where it
falls on the spectrum of um viewing all of these
things through the lens of a white woman of the time, UM,
and how it's a little bit different than some other
writings in that regard, but also you know, someone similarity.
(36:03):
So but I did find her really really charming and fascinating,
and I love that she was not afraid. She's so
smart about calibrating who she thought the reader of any
given piece might be, to make it as impactful as
possible for them and like appeal to their sensibilities. But
(36:24):
I love that once she got into that that last pamphlet,
she just was not afraid to throw the way amity
blam at all and was just like, no, you're horrible.
Let me tell you all the ways you're horrible. Prior
to that She had really seemed to try to foster
this idea of like, surely we can find some kind
(36:46):
of compromise between the Northern States and the Southern States.
And by that point she was like, there's no compromise possible,
Like this is wrong and we have to end it
right now. Um, which is why she is So. I
don't know if tart is the right word in her
her writing in it, but she is. She's not holding
back at all. Uh. I encourage people to read her writing.
It is because it's across so many genres. Sometimes it's
(37:09):
very charming and sweet, and other times it is very
biting and direct, and and it's I saw one thing
that mentioned that she was not what anyone would call
a phenomenal writer in terms of being a word smith,
but she was very smart about how she put together
narrative and like I said, who who might be reading it?
So I really enjoyed doing the research on this one. Um.
(37:33):
I have fun listener mail about another show that I
had really enjoyed doing the research on, which is the
Tacoma Naro's Bridge episode. Uh. And that is from our
listener Jeff, who writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy, my husband
and I always enjoy your show. We were fortunately able
to see you live on stage before the pandemic at
You're Buried, a live show at the Neptune Theater in Seattle.
It was such a great crowd and so fun to
(37:54):
see all the different people who enjoy the show. I
couldn't agree more. I miss touring so much. Um. He
goes on to say, we recently listened to your episode
on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. I had no idea. Gertie
opened the same week as the first floating bridge over
Lake Washington. That bridge, originally the Lake Washington Floating Bridge,
eventually renamed Lacey V. Marow Memorial Bridge, was the world's
(38:16):
longest permanent floating pontoon bridge when it opened. At over
sixty feet long, it connected Seattle with its eastern suburbs
over what eventually became I ninety. However, it, like the
first Tacoma Narrows Bridge, also suffered an unfortunate fate in
it sank after workers accidentally left the pontoon doors opened
(38:37):
during a windstorm over the long Thanksgiving weekend while the
bridge was being resurfaced. Local TV news footage at the
time shows floating cars and accounts of people narrowly escaping
the collapse. Part of the sunken bridge still lies in
shallow water underneath its replacement, now the home of many crawdads.
I have attached some photos of the bridge from when
we scuba dived it several years ago, and he linked
(38:59):
us to his his Flicker account. Um one, thank you
so much for writing. I actually didn't know that much
about the bridge over Lake Washington, like I said, even
though I lived there when I was a kid. For
some reason, that one was never really on my radar.
But I have to say this, Jeff's pictures of craw
dad's managed to make them look like the cutest things
on earth. And I enjoy ocean creatures, but these are
(39:23):
like animated film level cuteness. In some cases, some of
them are really really adorable. So thank you so much
one for sharing that info about the other bridge in
the area that didn't go so well, although because of
a moment of forgetfulness rather than a structural error. Uh.
And also for sharing these adorable pictures. Thank you, thank
(39:43):
you so much. If you would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. You can also find us on social media
as Missed in History. If you would like to subscribe,
that is easiest pie You can do it on the
I heart Radio app, at Apple podcast or wherever it
is you listen to your favorite shows. M Stuff you
(40:04):
Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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