those early days a husband's supremacy was often enforced in the rural districts by corporal chastisement, and it was considered by most people as quite right and proper — as much so as the correction of refractory children in like manner. I remember in my own neighborhood a Methodist class-leader and exhorter, esteemed a worthy citizen, who, every few weeks, gave his wife a beating with a horsewhip. He said it was necessary, in order to keep her in subjection, and because she scolded so much."
Mrs. Collins added that it was no wonder the poor woman sometimes scolded, as she had to care day and night for six or seven small children, besides cooking, cleaning, milking cows, making butter and cheese, and spinning, weaving and sewing all the clothes for the family. The United States in those days was mainly agricultural, and most farmers' wives led similar lives of excessive toil.
In the matter of legalized wife-beating, Massachusetts was a shining exception. Away back in the seventeenth century, Judge Sewall, of witchcraft fame, secured the passage of the following, among the "Liberties" adopted by the General Court:
"Every married woman shall be free from bodily correction or stripes by her husband, unless it be in his own defense, upon her assault. If there be any just cause of correction, complaint shall be made to authority assembled in some court, from which only she shall receive it."
But all a married woman's property and earnings belonged to her husband. He had the sole control of the children while he lived, and, if he died before her, he could will them away from their mother to strangers. A wife had hardly more legal rights than a minor child. She could not make a contract, could not sue or be sued, and could not make a valid will without her husband's consent, unless she left everything to him, in which case his consent was taken for granted.
When a wife died, her husband had the life use of all her real estate, if they had ever had a child born alive. When a husband died, the widow was entitled to stay only forty days in the house without paying rent, and she had the life use of only one third of his real estate.
The injustice of the laws was not due to any especial depravity on the part of men, but merely to the self-partiality of human nature. If the laws had been made by women alone, they would probably have been just as one-sided, only it would have been the other way around. Even the best men thought that the existing conditions were right. As Henry B. Blackwell said, "No governed class was ever yet without a grievance. Yet no governing class has ever been able to see that the grievance existed."
Public opinion was even harder upon women than the law. All the learned professions were closed to them. Women who had their living to earn were limited to a very few poorly-paid occupations. When a merchant first employed a saleswoman, the men boycotted his store, and the women remonstrated earnestly with him on the sin of placing a young woman in a position of such "publicity" as behind a counter.
There were no organizations of women except the church sewing circles. Public speaking by women was unknown. Even to write for publication was thought unwomanly. The gentle Charles Lamb himself said, "The woman who lets herself be known as an author invites disrespect." Law, religion and custom affirmed the inferiority of women and their duty to remain in silence and subjection; and this belief enwrapped every baby girl in her cradle, like an invisible strait-jacket.
This state of things had lasted for centuries. It did not come to an end through the general advance of civilization. It was changed by many years of hard work on the part of brave women and just men; and they had to suffer all the persecution that usually besets the pioneers of progress.
Lucy was born on a picturesque, rocky farm on the eastern side of Coy's Hill, three miles and a half from West Brookfield, Massachusetts. It was a fortunate environment for a child always keenly alive to the beauties of nature, for the top of Coy's Hill is one of the finest viewpoints in the State. There young Lucy Stone and her sisters used to go to watch the sunset; and there Lucy used to take her little daughter to watch it in after years.
She came of Revolutionary stock. Her father, Francis Stone, was descended from Gregory Stone, who came to America in 1635 in quest of religious liberty. He settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he held various offices. He and his wife once testified in defence of a woman accused of witchcraft. In 1664 he was one of a committee of four who presented to the General Court a memorial from many citizens of Cambridge, protesting against the proposal to have New England governed by a Royal Commission, on the ground that it would be an arbitrary government by a Council or Parliament in which they were not represented. This was the first open stirring of the spirit that culminated in the Declaration of Independence.
Lucy's grandfather, Francis Stone, when a boy of seventeen, accompanied his father to the French and Indian War. His father was killed at the battle of Quebec, and he was sent home by General Wolfe, because he was left as the sole support of his mother. The boy shed tears at having to quit the army. He was afterwards a captain in the Revolutionary War, and later the leader of four hundred men in Shays' Rebellion.' Lucy's mother, Hannah Matthews, was connected with the Forbush (Forbes) and Bowman families, and came of educated and public-spirited lineage. Lucy's father was a tanner by trade, brought up in his father's tanyard at North Brookfield. In his youth he taught school for some years. He was bright and witty, and so good a teacher that he always had the offer of more schools than he could take. But he went back to tanning and established himself in New Braintree. He was a man of strong character and of great physical and mental energy. Like all the men of his time, he believed in the divine right of a husband to rule over his wife and family. "There was only one will in our home, and that was my father's," said Lucy, long after.
Lucy's mother was an excellent Christian woman, beautiful, gentle, conscientious and kind. She too believed devoutly in a husband's right to rule. But, finding in her early married life that her children were surrounded by bad influences at the tannery, she insisted upon the removal of the family to the farm where Lucy was born, and her husband yielded to her wish. Though constantly overworked, she commanded the respect and the devoted affection of her children.
From her father Lucy inherited her courage, her sturdy physique and resolute will; from her mother, her sympathy and kindness, her clear moral perceptions and strong sense of duty.
Little Lucy grew up a healthy and vigorous child, noted for fearlessness and truthfulness, a good student at school, and a hard worker in the home and on the farm. Often she drove the cows to pasture by starlight, before the sun was up, when the dew on the grass was so cold that she would stop on a flat stone and curl one small bare foot up against the other leg to warm it. The children watched out eagerly for the first dandelion blossom, because when it appeared they were allowed to take off their stockings and shoes.
Father Stone was an early riser. The sound of his clear, sonorous voice calling the cows in the morning carried a long way and was regarded by the neighboring farmers as their rising bell. Every one on the farm worked. Even the small children were taught to creep after their father in the cornfield and plant two or three pumpkin seeds in every hill of corn.
Mother Stone wove all the cloth for the family's wearing, and little Lucy used to sit for hours together under the loom, handing up the threads to her mother, who praised her for being very accurate, and always handing them up in the right order.
Lucy and Luther, the brother next older, learned hymns as they filled the woodbox. The mother read a verse aloud, and the children repeated as much of it as they could remember, while they went in and out, bringing the armfuls of wood. Lucy always knew the verse first. She could learn more quickly than Luther, and could run faster, and he was afraid of the dark, while she was not; yet he was always given the preference over her because he was a boy, and she felt the injustice keenly.
In addition to all the usual work of an old-time farming family, Lucy and her sisters sewed coarse shoes, intended for farmers and for the slaves. Lucy was required to sew nine pairs a day, because
