of the continent at a future period. History is very silent upon their record; not a name has been preserved; but we do know that they lived, and how they died, and it is but fitting that a record of woman's work for freedom should embalm their memory in its pages. Many other women defended homes and children against the savage foe, but their deeds of heroism have been forgotten.
There is scarcely a portion of the world so far from civilization as Indiana was at that day. No railroads spanned the continent, making neighbors of people a thousand miles apart; no steamboat sailed upon the Western lakes, nor indeed upon the broad Atlantic; telegraphy, with its annihilation of space, was a marvel as yet unborn; even the Lucifer match, which should kindle fire in the twinkling of an eye, lay buried in the dark future. Little was known of these settlements; the Genesee Valley of New York was considered the far West, to which people traveled (the Erie Canal was not then in existence) in strong, spring less wagons, over which large hoops, covered with white cloth, were securely fastened, thus sheltering the inmates from sun and storm. These wagons, afterward known as "Prairie Schooners," were for weeks and months the traveling homes of many a family of early settlers.
But even in 1816 Indiana could boast her domestic manufactures, for within the State at this time were "two thousand five hundred and twelve looms and two thousand seven hundred spinning-wheels, most of them in private cabins, whose mistresses, by their slow agencies, converted the wool which their own hands had often sheared, and the flax which their own fingers had pulled, into cloth for the family wardrobe."55
Thus in 1816 the manufactures of Indiana were chiefly in the hands of its women. It is upon the industries of the country that a nation thrives. Its manufactures build up its commerce and make its wealth. From this source the Government derives the revenue which is the life-blood circulating in its veins. Its strength and its perpetuity alike depend upon its industries, and when we look upon the work of women through all the years of the Republic, and remember their patriotic self-devotion and self-sacrifice at every important crisis, we are no less amazed at the ingratitude of the country for their services in war than at its non-recognition of their existence as wealth-producers, the elements which build up and sustain every civilized people.
Viewing its early record, we are not surprised that Indiana claims to have organized the first State Woman's Rights Society, though we are somewhat astonished to know that at the time of the first Convention held in Indianapolis, a husband of position locked his wife within the house in order to prevent her presence thereat, although doubtless, as men have often done before and since, he deemed it not out of the way that he himself should be a listener at a meeting he considered it contrary to family discipline that his wife should attend.
December 11, 1816, Indiana was admitted into the Union. William Henry Harrison, who had been Governor of the Territory, and Brigadier-General in the army, with the command of the Northwest Territory, was afterward President of the United States. He encountered the Indians led by Tecumseh at Tippecanoe, on the Wabash, and after a terrible battle they fled. This was the origin of the song, "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," that was sung with immense effect by the Whigs all over the country in the presidential campaign of 1840, when Harrison and Tyler were the candidates; and when women, for the first time, attended political meetings.
Indiana, though one of the younger States, by her liberal and rational legislation on the questions of marriage and divorce, has always been the land of freedom for fugitives from the bondage and suffering of ill-assorted unions. Many an unhappy wife has found a safe asylum on the soil of that State. Her liberality on this question was no doubt partly due to the influence of Robert Owen, who early settled at New Harmony, and made the experiment of communal life; and later, to his son, the Hon. Robert Dale Owen, who was in the Legislature several years, and in the Constitutional Convention of 1850. The following letter from Mr. Owen gives a few facts worth perusing:
Lake George, N. Y., Sept. 20, 1876.
Dear Miss Anthony:—I know you will think the reply I am about to make to your favor of September 18th unsatisfactory, but it is the best I can do.
1. As regards Frances Wright: All the particulars regarding her and her noble but unsuccessful experiment at Nashoba, near Memphis, which I thought it important to make public, are contained in an article of mine entitled "An Earnest Sowing of Wild Oats," in the Atlantic Monthly for July, 1874.
2. As to Ernestine L. Rose, I think it probable that you know more of her than I do. I remember that she was the daughter of a Polish rabbi; the wife of William Rose, a silversmith; and that she came with her husband to this country at an early day. She was a great admirer and follower of my father, Robert Owen, and was a skeptic as to any future beyond the grave; greatly opposed to Spiritualism.
3. As to my action in the Indiana Legislature: I was a member of that body during the sessions of 1836-'7, and '8, and in 1851, but I have not the materials here that would enable me to give particulars. In a general way I had the State law so altered that a married woman owned and had the right to manage her own property, both real and personal; and I had the law of descents so changed that a widow, instead of dower, which is a mere tenancy or life interest, now has, in all cases, an absolute fee in one-third of her husband's estate; if only one child, then a half; and if no children, I think two-thirds. I also had an additional clause added to the divorce law, making two years' habitual drunkenness imperative cause for divorce.
I took no action in regard to suffrage while in the Legislature. In those days it would have been utterly unavailing.
All this is very meagre, which I the more regret, sympathizing as I do with the object you have in view.
Give my kindest regards to my old friend, Mrs. Stanton, and believe me,
Faithfully your friend,
Robert Dale Owen.
Miss Anthony.
Before 1828, Frances Wright had visited Mr. Owen's colony, and assisted him in the editorial department of the New Harmony Gazette, changed afterward to the Free Enquirer, published in New York. Such a circle of remarkably intelligent and liberal-minded people, all effective speakers and able writers, was not without influence in moulding the sentiment of that young community. As a glimpse into the domestic life of this remarkable family may be interesting to the reader, we give a pleasing sketch from the pen of Mr. Owen's daughter. No monument of the whitest parian marble could shed such honor on the memory of a venerated father and mother as this tribute from an affectionate, appreciative child:
ROBERT DALE OWEN AND MARY ROBINSON.
BY ROSAMOND DALE OWEN.
Some fifty years ago a large audience was gathered in one of the public halls of New York listening to a lecture. In the sea of faces upturned to him, the speaker read a cold response, the opinions he was expounding being exceedingly unpopular, and rarely expressed in those days. The theme was the equality of the sexes, the right of woman to control person and property in the marriage relation, the right to breathe, to think, to act as an untrammeled citizen, the co-equal of man. His eyes searched tier after tier, seeking in vain for that magnetism of sympathy which is as wine to a man who stands before his people pleading with them that he may save them from their errors.
Suddenly his wandering gaze was arrested by a face, a child's face, with short, clustering curls, but a strong soul steadied the deep eyes, and on the rounded cheek paled and glowed the earnestness of a woman's searching thought. His words grew clear and strong as he looked into the upturned eyes, as he answered the listening face. The speaker was Robert Dale Owen; the hearer, Mary Robinson.
That night when she reached her own
