----------------------- BEGIN PREVIEW ----------------------- donated by Caere Corporation, 1-800-535-7226. Contact Mike Lough THE STORY OF A PIONEER BY ANNA HOWARD SHAW, D.D., M.D. WITH THE COLLABORATION OF ELIZABETH JORDAN THE STORY OF A PIONEER ---- TO THE WOMEN PIONEERS OF AMERICA They cut a path through tangled underwood Of old traditions, out to broader ways. They lived to here their work called brave and good, But oh! the thorns before the crown of bays. The world gives lashes to its Pioneers Until the goal is reached--then deafening cheers. Adapted by ANNA HOWARD SHAW. CONTENTS I. FIRST MEMORIES II. IN THE WILDERNESS III. HIGH-SCHOOL AND COLLEGE DAYS IV. THE WOLF AT THE DOOR V. SHEPHERD OF A DIVIDED FLOCK VI. CAPE COD MEMORIES VII. THE GREAT CAUSE VIII. DRAMA IN THE LECTURE FIELD IX. ``AUNT SUSAN'' X. THE PASSING OF ``AUNT SUSAN'' XI. THE WIDENING SUFFRAGE STREAM XII. BUILDING A HOME XIII. PRESIDENT OF ``THE NATIONAL'' XIV. RECENT CAMPAIGNS XV. CONVENTION INCIDENTS XVI. COUNCIL EPISODES XVII. VALE! ILLUSTRATIONS REVEREND ANNA HOWARD SHAW IN HER PULPIT ROBES LOCH-AN-EILAN CASTLE DR SHAW'S MOTHER, NICOLAS SHAW, AT SEVENTEEN ALNWICK CASTLE DR. SHAW AT THIRTY-TWO DR. SHAW AT FIFTY DR. SHAW AND ``HER BABY''--THE DAUGHTER OF RACHEL FOSTER AVERY DR. SHAW'S MOTHER AT EIGHTY DR. SHAW'S FATHER AT EIGHTY DR. SHAW'S SISTER MARY, WHO DIED IN 1883 LUCY E. ANTHONY, DR. SHAW S FRIEND AND ``AUNT SUSAN'S'' FAVORITE NIECE THE WOOD ROAD NEAR DR. SHAW'S CAPE COD HOME, THE HAVEN DR. SHAW'S COTTAGE, THE HAVEN, AT WIANNO, CAPE COD--THE FIRST HOME SHE BUILT GATE ENTRANCE TO DR. SHAW'S HOME AT MOYLAN THE SECOND HOUSE THAT DR. SHAW BUILT SUSAN B. ANTHONY MISS MARY GARRETT, THE LIFE-LONG FRIEND OF MISS THOMAS MISS M. CAREY THOMAS, PRESIDENT OF BRYN MAWR COLLEGE ELIZABETH CADY STANTON CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT LUCY STONE MARY A. LIVERMORE FOUR PIONEERS IN THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT FIREPLACE IN THE LIVING-ROOM, SHOWING AUNT SUSAN'S'' CHAIR HALLWAY IN DR. SHAW'S HOME AT MOYLAN DR. SHAW'S HOME (ALNWICK LODGE) AND HER TWO OAKS THE VERANDA AT ALNWICK LODGE SACCAWAGEA ALNWICK LODGE, DR. SHAW'S HOME THE ROCK-BORDERED BROOK WHICH DR. SHAW LOVES THE STORY OF A PIONEER FIRST MEMORIES My father's ancestors were the Shaws of Rothiemurchus, in Scotland, and the ruins of their castle may still be seen on the island of Loch-an-Eilan, in the northern Highlands. It was never the picturesque castle of song and story, this home of the fighting Shaws, but an austere fortress, probably built in Roman times; and even to-day the crumbling walls which alone are left of it show traces of the relentless assaults upon them. Of these the last and the most successful were made in the seventeenth century by the Grants and Rob Roy; and it was into the hands of the Grants that the Shaw fortress finally fell, about 1700, after almost a hundred years of ceaseless warfare. It gives me no pleasure to read the grisly details of their struggles, but I confess to a certain satisfac- tion in the knowledge that my ancestors made a good showing in the defense of what was theirs. Beyond doubt they were brave fighters and strong men. There were other sides to their natures, however, which the high lights of history throw up less appealingly. As an instance, we have in the family chronicles the blood-stained page of Allen Shaw, the oldest son of the last Lady Shaw who lived in the fortress. It appears that when the father of this young man died, about 1560, his mother married again, to the intense disapproval of her son. For some time after the marriage he made no open revolt against the new-comer in the domestic circle; but finally, on the pretext that his dog had been attacked by his stepfather, he forced a quarrel with the older man and the two fought a duel with swords, after which the vic- torious Allen showed a sad lack of chivalry. He not only killed his stepfather, but he cut off that gentleman's head and bore it to his mother in her bed- chamber--an action which was considered, even in that tolerant age, to be carrying filial resentment too far. Probably Allen regretted it. Certainly he paid a high penalty for it, and his clan suffered with him. He was outlawed and fled, only to be hunted down for months, and finally captured and executed by one of the Grants, who, in further virtuous disap- proval of Allen's act, seized and held the Shaw stronghold. The other Shaws of the clan fought long and ably for its recovery, but though they were helped by their kinsmen, the Mackintoshes, and though good Scotch blood dyed the gray walls of the fortress for many generations, the castle never again came into the hands of the Shaws. It still entails certain obligations for the Grants, however, and one of these is to give the King of England a snowball whenever he visits Loch-an-Eilan! As the years passed the Shaw clan scattered. Many Shaws are still to be found in the Mackintosh country and throughout southern Scotland. Others went to England, and it was from this latter branch that my father sprang. His name was Thomas Shaw, and he was the younger son of a gentleman--a word which in those days seemed to define a man who devoted his time largely to gambling and horse- racing. My grandfather, like his father before him, was true to the traditions of his time and class. Quite naturally and simply he squandered all he had, and died abruptly, leaving his wife and two sons penniless. They were not, however, a helpless band. They, too, had their traditions, handed down by the fighting Shaws. Peter, the older son, became a soldier, and died bravely in the Crimean War. My father, through some outside influence, turned his attention to trade, learning to stain and emboss wall- paper by hand, and developing this work until he became the recognized expert in his field. Indeed, he progressed until he himself checked his rise by inventing a machine that made his handwork un- necessary. His employer at once claimed and utilized this invention, to which, by the laws of those days, he was entitled, and thus the corner- stone on which my father had expected to build a fortune proved the rock on which his career was wrecked. But that was years later, in America, and many other things had happened first. For one, he had temporarily dropped his trade and gone into the flour-and-grain business; and, for another, he had married my mother. She was the daughter of a Scotch couple who had come to England and settled in Alnwick, in Northumberland County. Her father, James Stott, was the driver of the royal-mail stage between Alnwick and New- castle, and his accidental death while he was still a young man left my grandmother and her eight children almost destitute. She was immediately given a position in the castle of the Duke of Nor- thumberland, and her sons were educated in the duke's school, while her daughters were entered in the school of the duchess. My thoughts dwell lovingly on this grandmother, Nicolas Grant Stott, for she was a remarkable woman, with a dauntless soul and progressive ideas far in advance of her time. She was one of the first Unitarians in England, and years before any thought of woman suffrage entered the minds of her country- women she refused to pay tithes to the support of the Church of England--an action which precipitated a long-drawn-out conflict between her and the law. In those days it was customary to assess tithes on every pane of glass in a window, and a portion of the money thus collected went to the support of the Church. Year after year my intrepid grandmother refused to pay these assessments, and year after year she sat pensively upon her door-step, watching articles of her furniture being sold for money to pay her tithes. It must have been an impressive picture, and it was one with which the community became thoroughly familiar, as the determined old lady never won her fight and never abandoned it. She had at least the comfort of public sympathy, for she was by far the most popular woman in the country- side. Her neighbors admired her courage; perhaps they appreciated still more what she did for them, for she spent all her leisure in the homes of the very poor, mending their clothing and teaching them to sew. Also, she left behind her a path of cleanliness as definite as the line of foam that follows a ship; for it soon became known among her protegees that Nicolas Stott was as much opposed to dirt as she was to the payment of tithes. She kept her children in the schools of the duke and duchess until they had completed the entire course open to them. A hundred times, and among many new scenes and strange people, I have heard my mother describe her own experiences as a pupil. All the children of the dependents of the castle were expected to leave school at fourteen years of age. During their course they were not allowed to study geography, because, in the sage opinion of their elders, knowledge of foreign lands might make them dis- contented and inclined to wander. Neither was com- position encouraged--that might lead to the writing of love-notes! But they were permitted to absorb all the reading and arithmetic their little brains could hold, while the art of sewing was not only encouraged, but proficiency in it was stimulated by the award of prizes. My mother, being a rather pre- cocious young person, graduated at thirteen and carried off the first prize. The garment she made was a linen chemise for the duchess, and the little needlewoman had embroidered on it, with her own hair, the august lady's coat of arms. The offering must have been appreciated, for my mother's story always ended with the same words, uttered with the same air of gentle pride, ``And the duchess gave me with her own hands my Bible and my mug of beer!'' She never saw anything amusing in this association of gifts, and I always stood behind her when she told the incident, that she might not see the disrespectful mirth it aroused in me. My father and mother met in Alnwick, and were married in February, 1835. Ten years after his marriage father was forced into bankruptcy by the passage of the corn law, and to meet the obliga- tions attending his failure he and my mother sold practically everything they possessed--their home, even their furniture. Their little sons, who were away at school, were brought home, and the family expenses were cut down to the barest margin; but all these sacrifices paid only part of the debts. My mother, finding that her early gift had a market value, took in sewing. Father went to work on a small salary, and both my parents saved every penny they could lay aside, with the desperate determination to pay their remaining debts. It was a long struggle and a painful one, but they finally won it. Before they had done so, however, and during their bleakest days, their baby died, and my mother, like her mother before her, paid the penalty of being outside the fold of the Church of England. She, too, was a Unitarian, and her baby, therefore, could not be laid in any consecrated burial-ground in her neighborhood. She had either to bury it in the Potter's Field, with criminals, suicides, and paupers, or to take it by stage-coach to Alnwick, twenty miles away, and leave it in the little Unitarian church- yard where, after her strenuous life, Nicolas Stott now lay in peace. She made the dreary journey alone, with the dear burden across her lap. In 1846, my parents went to London. There they did not linger long, for the big, indifferent city had nothing to offer them. They moved to New- castle-on-Tyne, and here I was born, on the four- teenth day of February, in 1847. Three boys and two girls had preceded me in the family circle, and when I was two years old my younger sister came. We were little better off in Newcastle than in London, and now my father began to dream the great dream of those days. He would go to America. Surely, he felt, in that land of infinite promise all would be well with him and his. He waited for the final payment of his debts and for my younger sister's birth. Then he bade us good-by and sailed away to make an American home for us; and in the spring of 1851 my mother followed him with her six children, starting from Liverpool in a sailing- vessel, the John Jacob Westervelt. I was then little more than four years old, and the first vivid memory I have is that of being on ship- board and having a mighty wave roll over me. I was lying on what seemed to be an enormous red box under a hatchway, and the water poured from above, almost drowning me. This was the beginning of a storm which raged for days, and I still have of it a confused memory, a sort of nightmare, in which strange horrors figure, and which to this day haunts me at intervals when I am on the sea. The thing that stands out most strongly during that period is the white face of my mother, ill in her berth. We were with five hundred emigrants on the lowest deck of the ship but one, and as the storm grew wilder an unreasoning terror filled our fellow-pas- sengers. Too ill to protect her helpless brood, my mother saw us carried away from her for hours at a time, on the crests of waves of panic that sometimes approached her and sometimes receded, as they swept through the black hole in which we found our- selves when the hatches were nailed down. No mad- house, I am sure, could throw more hideous pictures on the screen of life than those which met our childish eyes during the appalling three days of the storm. Our one comfort was the knowledge that our mother was not afraid. She was desperately ill, but when we were able to reach her, to cling close to her for a blessed interval, she was still the sure refuge she had always been. On the second day the masts went down, and on the third day the disabled ship, which now had sprung a leak and was rolling helplessly in the trough of the sea, was rescued by another ship and towed back to Queenstown, the nearest port. The passengers, relieved of their anxieties, went from their extreme of fear to an equal extreme of drunken celebration. They laughed, sang, and danced, but when we reached the shore many of them returned to the homes they had left, declaring that they had had enough of the ocean. We, however, remained on the ship until she was repaired, and then sailed on her again. We were too poor to return home; indeed, we had no home to which we could return. We were even too poor to live ashore. But we made some penny excursions in the little boats that plied back and forth, and to us children at least the weeks of waiting were not without interest. Among other places we visited Spike Island, where the convicts were, and for hours we watched the dreary shuttle of labor swing back and forth as the convicts car- ried pails of water from one side of the island, only to empty them into the sea at the other side. It was merely ``busy work,'' to keep them occupied at hard labor; but even then I must have felt some dim sense of the irony of it, for I have remembered it vividly all these years. Our second voyage on the John Jacob Westervelt was a very different experience from the first. By day a glorious sun shone overhead; by night we had the moon and stars, as well as the racing waves we never wearied of watching. For some reason, prob- ably because of my intense admiration for them, which I showed with unmaidenly frankness, I be- came the special pet of the sailors. They taught me to sing their songs as they hauled on their ropes, and I recall, as if I had learned it yesterday, one pleasing ditty: Haul on the bow-line, Kitty is my darling, Haul on the bow-line, The bow-line--HAUL! When I sang ``haul'' all the sailors pulled their hardest, and I had an exhilarating sense of sharing in their labors. As a return for my service of song the men kept my little apron full of ship sugar-- very black stuff and probably very bad for me; but I ate an astonishing amount of it during that voy- age, and, so far as I remember, felt no ill effects. The next thing I recall is being seriously scalded. I was at the foot of a ladder up which a sailor was carrying a great pot of hot coffee. He slipped, and the boiling liquid poured down on me. I must have had some bad days after that, for I was ter- ribly burned, but they are mercifully vague. My next vivid impression is of seeing land, which we sighted at sunset, and I remember very distinctly just how it looked. It has never looked the same since. The western sky was a mass of crimson and gold clouds, which took on the shapes of strange and beautiful things. To me it seemed that we were entering heaven. I remember also the doctors com- ing on board to examine us, and I can still see a line of big Irishmen standing very straight and holding out their tongues for inspection. To a little girl only four years old their huge, open mouths looked appalling. On landing a grievous disappointment awaited us; my father did not meet us. He was in New Bedford, Massachusetts, nursing his grief and pre- paring to return to England, for he had been told that the John Jacob Westervelt had been lost at sea with every soul on board. One of the missionaries who met the ship took us under his wing and con- ducted us to a little hotel, where we remained until father had received his incredible news and rushed to New York. He could hardly believe that we were really restored to him; and even now, through the mists of more than half a century, I can still see the expression in his wet eyes as he picked me up and tossed me into the air. I can see, too, the toys he brought me--a little saw and a hatchet, which became the dearest treas- ures of my childish days. They were fatidical gifts, that saw and hatchet; in the years ahead of me I was to use tools as well as my brothers did, as I proved when I helped to build our frontier home. We went to New Bedford with father, who had found work there at his old trade; and here I laid the foundations of my first childhood friendship, not with another child, but with my next-door neighbor, a ship-builder. Morning after morning this man swung me on his big shoulder and took me to his shipyard, where my hatchet and saw had vio- lent exercise as I imitated the workers around me. Discovering that my tiny petticoats were in my way, my new friend had a little boy's suit made for me; and thus emancipated, at this tender age, I worked unwearyingly at his side all day long and day after day. No doubt it was due to him that I did not casually saw off a few of my toes and fingers. Cer- tainly I smashed them often enough with blows of my dull but active hatchet. I was very, very busy; and I have always maintained that I began to earn ----------------------- END PREVIEW -----------------------