first, there was no significant change at the school. Sarah enrolled and joined the other students in class. The students knew Sarah not only through her visits to the school, but also through her family’s membership in the local Congregational Church at Westminster, where “racial background seems to have offered no barrier to Sarah’s acceptance as a member of the predominantly white congregation.”63 No one objected when young black children attended the local district school, in part because of the young age of the children and the small number of black students.64 The white women at Crandall’s school accepted Sarah as a fellow student without incident or complaint.65
It did not take long for word of the school’s new black student to spread among the adult population of Canterbury. Crandall expected some criticism, but thought it “quite as likely that they would acquiesce, if nothing was said to them on the subject, as most of them were acquainted with the character of the girl.”66 The parents of the other students did not react favorably. Some approached Prudence’s father and said they would remove their daughters from the school.67 Crandall’s older brother, Hezekiah, told Prudence that business at his cotton mill had declined because of her decision to admit Sarah Harris.68 The patrons of the school told Crandall that, unless she dismissed Sarah Harris, the school would lose many students.69 “By this act,” Crandall conceded, “I gave great offence.”70
As townspeople increased pressure on Crandall to reverse her decision, she responded with greater determination to keep Sarah as a student. The wife of an Episcopal minister told Crandall that she must dismiss her black student or else her school would fail. Crandall replied, “that it might sink, then, for I should not turn her out!”71 Crandall presented herself with firmness and certainty when publicly challenged, but privately she had grave doubts about the survival of her school. “I very soon found that some of my school would leave not to return if the colored girl was retained,” Crandall wrote.72
Only twelve months had passed since the citizens of Canterbury had embraced Prudence Crandall’s school with enthusiasm. Now Crandall faced limited and troubling options. She could dismiss Sarah Harris or wait for the parents to withdraw their daughters and close her school. Under mounting pressure she thought of an alternative. She would not dismiss Sarah Harris. “Under the circumstances,” Crandall said, “I made up my mind that, if it were possible, I would teach colored girls exclusively.”73
The decision to remake the school and teach only black women was made by Prudence Crandall alone. She did not seek input from her family, friends, or the school’s patrons.74 She knew, however, that she could not pursue this change by herself. Crandall needed help recruiting black students from throughout New England. Her plan demanded great effort and courage, and she did not have much time.
Crandall reached out to a person she had never met but who had influenced her greatly. On January 18, 1833, she wrote to William Lloyd Garrison, “I am to you, sir, I presume, an entire stranger, and you are indeed so to me save through the medium of the public print.”75 She explained that she served as principal of the Canterbury Female Boarding School, and asked Garrison what he thought of her idea of “changing white scholars for colored ones.”76 She did not mention her decision to admit a black woman, Sarah Harris, as a student, and the adverse reaction in the community. Crandall provided no other clue as to why she was considering such a dramatic change in the mission of her school other than to say, “I have for some months past determined if possible during the remaining part of my life to benefit the people of color.”77 She described the necessary number of students and the amount of tuition they needed to pay in order to meet the expenses of the school, and she also laid out a strategy to recruit students from Boston and cities throughout the Northeast.
Months and years later, opponents of her school claimed the idea for Crandall’s school for black women came from Garrison and that Crandall was merely a pawn of radical abolitionists. There is, however, no evidence that anyone other than Crandall originated the idea of transforming her school. When Crandall thought of the idea in response to the outcry after she admitted Sarah Harris, she broached the idea with Garrison in order to enlist his assistance—he did not know her or contact her; she reached out to him.78
“Will you be so kind as to write by the next mail, and give me your opinion on the subject,” Crandall asked Garrison. “If you consider it possible to obtain twenty or twenty-five young ladies of color to enter the school for the term of one year at the rate of $25 per quarter, including board, washing, and tuition, I will come to Boston in a few days and make some arrangements about it. I do not suppose that number can be obtained in Boston alone; but from all the large cities in the several States I thought that perhaps they might be gathered.”79
Crandall realized the Liberator had the potential to link allies together, facilitate a network of financial support, and provide the means for achieving specific goals. Crandall’s letter impressed Garrison, and he agreed to a meeting in Boston. Crandall discovered a unique ally in Garrison.
William Lloyd Garrison lived a life filled with uncertainty and risk. Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on December 12, 1805, Garrison had an older brother and sister, James and Caroline, and a younger sister, Maria Elizabeth. His parents, Abijah and Maria Garrison, had moved from Nova Scotia to Newburyport before Garrison was born. Abijah was a sailor, and the economy in Nova Scotia had collapsed. “The scarcity of bread and all kinds of vegetables was too well known in this part of Nova Scotia,” Abijah wrote.80 He could not find work. Newburyport, a seaside town with a busy harbor, had a thriving economy. In Massachusetts, Abijah found work sailing as far south as Guadeloupe to pick up shipments of sugar, oranges, and other tropical cargo.81
By the time Garrison was three years old, Portland, Maine, surpassed Newburyport as the center for shipping and shipbuilding. In 1807 a federal embargo forbidding the export of American cargo, combined with declining prices for fish, quickly wrecked the economy of Newburyport.82 Garrison’s father could not find work, and the family struggled to survive. Garrison and his siblings often were desperate with hunger. Garrison’s five-year-old sister Caroline ate a poisonous plant, and the family watched helplessly as she convulsed and died. Shortly thereafter Abijah left and never returned.83 Garrison’s family survived on income his mother Maria earned caring for infants of families connected with the Baptist church they attended. The two boys, James and William Lloyd, known to his family as Lloyd, sold homemade candy on the street, and the family ate leftover food from relief kitchens.84 With help from friends and the church, they stayed together as a family.
On the evening of May 13, 1811, a fire began in a stable near the Newburyport harbor. Winds quickly carried it to the commercial buildings, docks, and wharves of Newburyport. As residents fled, they carried their belongings to buildings they thought were safe, such as the Baptist meetinghouse. A shift in the wind, however, put the entire town at risk. For the rest of his life, Garrison remembered when as a five-year-old boy he heard the roar of the fire sweep through the city and was held aloft in the night to see flames shooting out of windows and through the roofs of nearby homes. Garrison and his family joined those in the streets who had lost everything; they tried to make their way to safety in the midst of “the incessant crash of falling buildings, the roaring of chimneys like distant thunder, the flames ascending in curling volumes from a vast extent of ruins,” and air filled with a shower of fire and ash.85 It was a horrifying disaster that devastated Newburyport and the Garrison family. In all, the fire destroyed 250 buildings, including all of the structures along the harbor, the Baptist church, and all homes in the sixteen-acre heart of the town. Hundreds of residents, including Garrison’s family, were homeless.86
Without a roof over their heads and without the support from the Baptist church, Garrison’s mother left Newburyport with her son James to live with friends in Lynn, Massachusetts. Lloyd and his younger sister Elizabeth stayed in Newburyport in the care
