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thesis entitled

HOW A SELECT GROUP
OF MICHIGAN FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS
DEPICT‘ED WOMEN IN 1849 " 1850

presented by

KENDALL JAMES WI NGROVE

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

M.A. . Journalism
degree in

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Major professor

 

 

Date May 12, 1982

 

 

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© Capyright by
KENDALL JAMES WINGROVE

1982

6w 4);;

HOW A SELECT GROUP
OF MICHIGAN FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS

DEPICTED WOMEN IN 1849-1850

BY

Kendall James Wingrove

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

SchOol of Journalism

1982

ABSTRACT
HOW A SELECT GROUP

OF MICHIGAN FRONTIER NEWSPAPERS
DEPICTED WOMEN IN 1849-1850

BY

Kendall James Wingrove

By the 18408, many Michigan communities had at least
one established newspaper. Such publications served as
recorders and historians for their communities. These
newspapers also provide an insight into the morals and
habits of frontier men and women.

This qualitative study analyzes how all 665 issues of
12 Michigan frontier weeklies depicted women for a 13-month
period, July 1, 1849 through July 31, 1850. The research
divides the depiction of women into the topics of:
courtship and marriage; role of wife and.mother; fictional
characters in literature; famous women receiving coverage;
involvement with the temperance movement and political,
employment and educational rights; and humor and ridicule
directed at women. Investigating each of these subjects
should add to the body of knoweldge of the frontier press
and the women it depicted.

An additional section provides background material on

the population and the newspapers of the Michigan frontier.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many must share my sincere appreciation for the help,

guidance and encouragement in this thesis:

The librarians at Central Michigan University,
Michigan State University and the State of Michigan
Library for their microfilm collections;

Dr. Robert V. Hudson (director), Dr. Mary

. Gardner, and Dr. Elizabeth Yamashita, my thesis
committee, for their helpful suggestions;

Dr. William Franklin and Dr. James Stanford
Bradshaw, the two professors at Central Michigan
who helped launch the first version of this study;

Kenneth S. Gregg and John Kilcoyne, who
generously provided expensive typing equipment for
my use;

Michael S. Elliott, Michael Arents and Gary
Piatek, who helped by giving constant interest to
the project;

My parents, grandparents, and cousin Beatrice,
who taught me to love history;

And most importantly to Kathy, whose love and

respect helped me daily through this lengthy study.

ii

Chapter

I.

II.

III.

Iv.

VI.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Purpose and justification of research .
Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Review of the literature . . . . . . . .
Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

THE FRONTIER AND ITS PRESS . . . . . . . . .

Overview of the frontier . . . . . . .
Population of the Michigan frontier .
Michigan frontier press . . . . . . .
Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

FOR BETTER OR WORSE: DEPICTION OF COURSHIP
AND WI AGE 0 C O O O O O O O I I O O O I 0

Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

THE DOMESTIC SPHERE: DUTIES AS WIFE AND

MOTER O I O O 0 I I 0 O O O O O O I O O O 0
Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

HEROINES, YOUNG BRIDES AND OLD MAIDS:

FEMALE CHARACTERS IN LITERATURE . . . . . .
Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

IN THE LIMELIGHT: FAMOUS WOMEN WHO RECEIVED

COVERAGE IN THE FRONTIER PRESS . . . . . . .

Findings 0 O O O O O O I I O O O O O O O O
Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page

H

30

30
38

40
40

52

52
65

67

67
76

iv
Chapter

VII. WINGS OF REBELLION: SEEKING MORE RIGHTS
AND A BETTER EDUCATION . . . . . . . . .

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Background on the women's rights
movement . . . . . . . . ... . . . .
Coverage of political rights . . . . .
Temperance cause and employment rights
Education for women . . . . . . . . .
~ Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

VIII. THE LADY EVE: HOW HUMORISTS DEPICTED
WOMEN . O C C O O O O O I C I O C C O 0

Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Endnotes 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0

IX 0 CONCLUS ION . O O O O O O O O O O O O C C

S wary O O O O O O 0 O O O O O 0 O O
Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page

78
78
'79
80
85
87

90
92

94
94
101
103
103
109

110

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The small weekly newspapers of the booming frontier
towns of the mid-18003 provided a valuable service to their
readers. Such publications provided news, literature and
political rhetoric to their communities. The frontier
newspaper was the primary source of communication for
residents of the frontier.

By the 18405, many Michigan communities had at least
one established newspaper. These publications provide an
insight into the morals and habits of the frontier men and
women. By studying how women were depicted in the press of
that time, frontier life and the frontier press can be
better understood.

This study will examine Michigan frontier neWSpapers
for a 13-month period, July 1, 1849 to July 31, 1850. This
period was chosen because it: (a) is during this time that
the women's rights movement emerged in the Midwest following
the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848; (b) is a time frame well
into the frontier era, yet before the Civil War; and (c) is
a period when there is an adequate number of frontier
newspapers to examine. The newspapers studied are the:

Jackson American Citizen, Goldwater Sentinel, Grand Rapids

Enquirer, Grand Rapids Grand River Eagle, Hillsdale Whig

Standard, Pontiac Jacksonian, Kalamazoo Gazette, Marshall

 

Statesman, Adrian Michigan Expositor, Niles Republican,

Oakland Gazette, and Centreville Western Chronicle.

 

 

By using these publications, this qualitative study
will examine how the Michigan frontier press depicted
women from July 1, 1849 to July 31, 1850. The research will
analyze the depiction of women in the topics of:

(l) courtship and marriage; (2) role of wife and mother;
(3) fictional characters in literature; (4) famous women
receiving coverage; (5) involvement with the temperance
moVement and political, employment and educational rights;
and (6) humor and ridicule directed at women.

Investigating each of these subjects should add to the
body of knowledge about the depiction of women in the
frontier press. Such research is needed and long overdue.
A congressional resolution proclaiming the 1982 Women's
History Week said that "the role of American women in
history has been consistently overlooked and undervalued in
the body of American history."1

Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger agrees. He said:

...women have constituted the most spectacular
casualty of traditional history. They have made up

at least half of the human race; yet you could

never tell that by looking at the books historians

write. The forgotten man is nothing to the forgot-

ten woman.

In recent times the women's liberation move-
ment has begun to raise the consciousness of even
male historians. The result is the belated recog-

nition that women have been around, too, and that
life could not have gone on without them.2

Pearson and Pope said there are many historical reasons
why the study of females has been neglected. With the rise
of individualism, democracy and secularism, men were
expected to develop their individual identities. Women, on
the other hand, continued to be taught to act as selfless
helpmates to husbands and children}

Historians' neglect of women has also resulted from
their ideas about historical significance. Traditionally,
wars and politics have always been a part of "history,"
while institutions affecting individuals most immediately,
such as social relationships, marriage and the family, have
been outside the scope of historical inquiryf'

Historian Mary Beard said that in general histories,
the western settlement of the pOpulation has been treated
principally in terms of politics, religion and economics.
She said that the preconceived image of the frontier, as in
tales of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, makes it appear as
if no women were there at all. But as Beard points out,
this is only a partial view. Through the study of literature
for and by women, other aspects of frontier life emerge.

In thousands of western settlements the handicrafts
were nurtured, artistic work was done and learning was
cherished. Schools appeared in forest clearings, books were
offered in stores, and newSpapers were founded and read. It
seems that those women who settled the frontier also cared
about the cultivation of the mind and the advancement of

learning.5 Women were teachers in most of the nation's

public schools during the 19th century. They staffed and
administered elaborate welfare and relief systems. And they
made a significant contribution to the growth and development
of frontier communities}

Fortunately, the Michigan frontier newspapers available
for study provide us with literature to analyze. This
material is important because the heroines in fiction of
that time depict what the "ideal" woman was supposed to be.
Learning what the culture of that era found acceptable is
crucial to understanding the morals and habits of the
frontier era and the views expressed in the frontier press.

The period is also valuable for study because of the
reform movements then taking place in America. The crusade
for women's rights was among the most radical of the reforms
and evidence shows that it was discussed in Michigan.

Two years before the Seneca Falls Convention, one of
the leaders of the movement, Ernestine L. Ross, addressed
the Michigan Legislature in an appeal for women's rights.

In 1849, a senate committee reported a resolution in favor
of a women's suffrage movement. Finally, the Michigan
constitution of 1850 gave women property rights but not the
ballot.7 With such activities in the state it is important
to see what editorial stand Michigan editors took on the
movement.

This study will also add to the body of knowledge about

the Michigan frontier. Dunbar criticized historians for

overlooking Michigan in their frontier studiesf’ Any
analysis of the Michigan frontier press would add to filling
this void.

In summary, study of how the Michigan frontier press
depicted women from July 1849 - July 1850 should be valuable
for its contribution to knowledge within these broad

dimensions:

(1) The study should contribute to an understanding of
the role women played in the home, in seciety, and in
politics.

(2) The life of pioneers should be better understood
through an analysis of the morals and habits of the time.

(3) A better understanding should be developed of what
role the frontier press played in the society of that time.
(4) It should be determined if social issues like
women's rights received coverage, favorable or unfavorable,

during this time.

(5) This study should add to the knowledge about the
Michigan frontier and its peOple.

(6) It should provide a perspective to those presently
involved in the women's rights movement on what their
predecessors experienced.

(7) The study should have heuristic value because the
evaluation of the Michigan frontier press could lead to the
formulation of hypotheses regarding the role of the frontier

press in pioneer society.

Methodology

The impossibility in a large research task of using all
the evidence remotely touching the subject indicates the need
for selection. Obviously, what is desired is a selection of
relevant data. By limiting this study to a selected group
of Michigan frontier newspapers during a 13-month period,
the amount of primary sources was kept under control.

The first task was to determine which newspapers were
"frontier" newspapers. By 1850, Detroit was too pOpulous to
be considered a frontier region and its newspapers were
excluded from the study. All other weekly newspapers
published in Michigan during this 13~month period were
considered as being frontier publications.

To be included in this study, the frontier newspaper
had to publish in both 1849 and 1850. Some newspapers, like
the Kalamazoo Telegraph ceased publication in 1849, while
others, like the Genessee Whig and Jonesville Telegraph did
not begin until 1850.

Locating the frontier newspapers available for research
was the next task. Although there were 47 weeklies
published in 1850, not all were preserved on microfilm.
After a thorough search of indexes listing Michigan
newspapers on microfilm, it was determined that 12 frontier
newspapers were available for study. The researcher read
all 665 issues of the 12 newspapers studied to see how these

publications depicted women. In addition to the primary

sources, the research also includes material from secondary
sources. Works by scholars in journalism history, women's
history, Michigan history and frontier history were
consulted for context.

This qualitative study is presented descriptively. The
researcher attempted to show what women's issues were
discussed in the Michigan frontier press. It is hoped that
an overview of how women were depicted in these newspapers
can be provided by this study. The research findings were
divided into six different categories to facilitate research
and analysis. Each of the six topics will be developed into.
a chapter of the thesis. In addition to the chapters on the
six tOpics analyzed, a section will provide background
information on the population and newspapers of the Michigan

frontier.
Review of the Literature

After an extensive search, it appears that few studies.
have been completed about the depiction of women in the
frontier press before the Civil War. Several factors could
explain this lack of completed research. First, the
discipline of women's history has gained momentum in the
last two decades and perhaps studies underway about women
in American press history have not yet been completed.
Second, efforts to microfilm and preserve frontier newspapers
have been successful in preserving the frontier press for

study, but some newspapers have been lost forever. And

finally, even though some frontier newspapers have been
microfilmed, many of those have not yet been studied by
researchers.

Bibliographies on Michigan history list studies of
literature of the frontier era, but none of how women were
depicted in the frontier press. However, two articles by
Midwest researchers have dealt with the tOpic.

A 1949 article, "Literary Content of a Pioneer Michigan
Newspaper," by Joseph George Duncan, an information services
writer for Michigan State University, analyzed the Nilgg
Republican from April 1842 to April 1860. Duncan's material,
printed in Michigan History, did not deal specifically with

the depiction of women in the Niles Republican, but his

 

research did touch upon the subject. After studying the
fiction used in the Niles neWSpaper, Duncan concluded that
women were presented in a "traditional way...ready to swoon
in a moment of crisis."9
Dru Riley Evarts, an associate professor of journalism
at Ohio University, has also done research on the midwestern
frontier press. At the Association for Education in
Journalism convention in 1980 her paper, "Women's Rights as
Covered by the Ohio Frontier Press, 1850-1855," was presented.
Evarts analyzed press reaction to six women's rights meetings
that took place in Ohio during the 18503. A review of the
newspapers in the host cities and towns concluded that

support was highest in Salem, site of the first meeting.

From that point, however, press coverage of the meetings was

not supportive, and by the last meeting in 1855, the press
either ignored the movement or derided it3° The Michigan
frontier newspapers also gave coverage to the Salem meeting
of 1850. Specifics on Michigan press reaction to the Ohio
suffrage meetings will be presented in Chapter VII.

There are also several books discussing the image of
women in nineteenth century fiction. These include Fred

1 Carol Pearson and

Lewis Pattee's The Feminine Fifties}
Katherine Pope's The Female Hero in American and British
Literature ,12 and Women, Women Writers and the West, by L.L.

Lee and Merrill Lewis}3

A particularly valuable source is
Barbara Welter's 1966 American Quarterly article, ”The Cult
of True Womanhood, 1820-1860." In this piece, Welter
analyzes the image of women as hard-working wives and

mothers)“

Sister Patricia Kennedy's 1968 dissertation, "The
Pioneer Women in Middle Western Fiction," is another sourceils
Two sources that discuss the women's suffrage movement
in the midwest during the 18503 include Florence E.
MacLelland's 1943 master's thesis, "The Women's Suffrage

Movement and Public Opinion with Emphasis on Michigan, 1848-

1898,"1‘ and Judith Papachristou's Women Tpgether, a 1976

 

book that includes some important information about the Ohio
suffrage conventions of 1850-1855.17

Two unpublished master's theses offer material on Jenny
Lind and Jane Grey Swisshelm, two of the famous women
discussed at length in the Michigan frontier press. G.E.

Morris Allen's "P.T. Barnum's 1850 Press Campaign in New

10

York City to Herald Jenny Lind's American Concert Tour"
analyzes the publicity effort by showman Barnum that helped
to make Lind's tour a spectacular success.” A 1969 thesis
by Dorothy Langdon Yates includes newspaper articles written
by Swisshelmi In "Belles of Freedom, Three Antislavery
Editors: Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, Lydia Maria Child
and Jane Grey SwissheLm," Yates assesses the lives and work
of these three pioneer women newspaper editors. Swisshelm's
editorials from the Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter were
reprinted in Michigan newspapers}9
To search the available literature about this era is to
find a void of materials on how women were depicted in the
Midwest frontier press before the Civil War. This study is
an effort to help contribute more knowledge about the era's

frontier newspapers.

ENDNOTES

1"Women Seek Place in History Textbooks," Lansing State
Journal, 9 March 1982, sec. 2, p. B7.

 

2Joanna L. Stratton, Pioneer Women (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1981): p. 1.

3Carol Pearson and Katherine Pope, The Female Hero in
American and British Literature (New York: R.R. Bowker
Company, 1981), p. 6.

“Berenice A. Carroll, ed., Liberating Women's History
(Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1976), p. 359.

5Mary R. Beard. America_Thressh_Nome21§_Exe§p (New York:
MacMillan Company, 1933), p. 88.

6Carroll, pp. 353-354.

7Willis F. Dunbar, Michigan: A History of the Wolverine
State (Grand Rapids, Mich.:, William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Co., 1973), p. 433.

“Willis F. Dunbar, "Frontiersmanship in Michigan,"
Michigan History 50 (June 1966): 97.

9Joseph George Duncan, "Literary Content of a Pioneer
Michigan Newspaper," Michigan History 33 (September 1949):
195-209.

1°Dru Riley Evarts, "Women's Rights as Covered by the
Ohio Frontier Press," paper presented at the Association for
Education in Journalism Annual Convention, Boston, Mass.,
August 1980. Riley served as an associate professor at Ohio
university's School of Journalism.

11Fred Lewis Pattee, The Feminine Fifties (Port
Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, Inc., 1966).

12Pearson and Pope.

13L.L. Lee and Merrill Lewis, Women, Women Writers and
the West (Troy, N.Y.: The Whitston Publishing Co., 1979).

1"Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-
1860," American Quarterly 18 (Summer 1966): 151-174.

15Sister Patricia Kennedy, "The Pioneer Women in Middle
Western Fiction" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois,
1968).

11

12

16Florence E. MacLelland, "The Woman Suffrage Movement
and Public Opinion with Emphasis on Michigan, 1848-1898,"
(M.A. thesis, University of Detroit, 1943).

17Judith Papachristou, Women Together (New York: Alfred
Knopf, Inc., 1976).

18G.E. Morris Allen, "P.T. Barnum's 1850 Press Campaign
in New York City to Herald Jenny Lind's American Concert
Tour," (M.A. thesis, The American University, 1966).

19Dorothy Langdon Yates, "Belles of Freedom, Three Anti-
slavery Editors: Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, Lydia Maria
Child, and Jane Grey Swisshelm," (M.A. thesis, Michigan
State University, 1969).

CHAPTER II

THE FRONTIER AND ITS PRESS

Historian Frederick Jackson Turner once defined the
term frontier as "the boundary between savagery and
civilization."1 Despite numerous attempts by historians,

properly defining the word "frontier" and "the West" has
been difficult for the reader of American history.

Suggest the term "frontier" historian Ray Billington
said, and peOple will conjure up visions of "painted Indians,
gaudily-dressed hurdy-gurdy girls, straight-shooting cowboys
and villainous bad men, all besporting themselves beneath

sun-bathed western skies."2

The common perception of the
frontier in the popular media and some history books is that
of a land from the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains and
beyond. '

But that is an incomplete view of history. For decades,
the frontier also included the Middle West and the North
Central States. Into that region, occupied only by Indians,
poured a stream of settlers from Europe and the East,
bringing with them the complex political, economic and
social customs of another land. These institutions did not

always fit well into the new environment and many underwent

change. Highly develOped political forms gave way to simple

l3

l4

associations of settlers or rudimentary representative

bodies. Complex social activities were abandoned in favor

of simpler pursuits such as husking bees, cabin raisings and
log rollings which seemed more appropriate to the environment.

Actually the frontier was a series of contiguous
westward-migrating zones, each representing a different
stage in the development of a society from elemental to
complex forms.3 Into this context, historians must try to
place the frontier journalist. The pioneer editor certainly
was not the first to come into the western country.

John Mason Peck, in his Guide for Emigrants, described
the three classes of settlers. After the eXplorer and the
trapper, Peck said pioneers consisted of farmers who
depended on the gifts of nature and cultivated crops. The
second class purchased lands and established better lines of
communication. Then came the third group, the men of
capital and enterprise, who concentrated in villages and
towns and gave frontier life a more commercial atmosphere.
The pioneer editor probably belonged to this group.“

A community had to have considerable develOpment before
a newspaper could flourish within it. To publish
successfully, an editor needed a sufficient number of
subscribers, both in town and country; a reasonable amount
of advertising support from merchants, doctors and lawyers;
adequate transportation facilities to move paper, type, ink
and printing presses; and a regular and friendly postal

service to provide low postage rates to subscribers.‘

15

Pioneer editors used other newspapers and letters to
supply the news needed for their papers. Due to slow and
irregular transportation and to the editor's heavy
involvement in the print shop, news was often weeks old by
the time readers saw it.6

Because of the heavy workload and the time limitations,
the pioneer editor often neglected to chronicle some
significant events in the local community. That the
newspapers failed to include these events is due in part to
the editors' conception of what their function was. Lyon
said editors were less interested in society than in the
individual; their concern was not always for customs and
mores, but for the actions of people.7

But the record pioneer editors left of these actions is
still a valuable source for historians. Speaking of the
American press in general, de Tocqueville characterized the
newspaper as a primary sociological and political record,
with the magazine, the sole dependable record of young
America.8

Journalism historian Frank Luther Mott maintained a
similar view. In his A History of American Magazinepj 1741-
1850, he said that the newspapers and.magazines of each
period provide material for historians to make useful

9 This study is

studies of America's several regions.
examining Michigan's frontier newspapers to see what

materials it offers on the depiction of women.

16

Having provided an overview of the frontier and the
role of the newspaper editor within it, an examination is
needed of the Michigan frontier population in 1849-1850 and

the newspapers of that era.

Population of the Michigan Frontier

Michigan's colonization, delayed by the War of 1812 and
by unfavorable reports by land surveyors, picked up
considerably after more accurate information appeared in the
mid-18203. The Opening of the Erie Canal, the development
of steam navigation on the Great Lakes, the land speculation
activity of the 18303 and the coming of the railroads in the
18303 and 18403, helped Michigan attract a flood of settlers
from New York, New England and Canada 3° One Vermont writer,
alarmed by the "rage for western emigration" said:

Sons of the Green Mountains! Maintain your
independence. We can spare a portion of our young

men, every year, to settle in the wilds of the

east, and aid in establishing those fertile regions,

the institutions and habits of New England; but we

cannot, without deadly injury to ourselves spare

our enterprising and industrious fanmers to...go

off to Michigan or Illinois...Beware of this

Western fever.11

Many peOple seemed to catch "the fever." In 1820,
Michigan's population was only 8,000. This figure climbed
to nearly 32,000 in 1830 and 212,267 in 1840. By the 1850
census, the total population was 395,071 with 174,131 persons
Coming to Michigan from the six New England states, New York

and Pennsylvania .1 2

17

This movement of New Englanders and New Yorkers into
the state was not comprised of adventurers, hunters or
shiftless cattle grazers. Instead the new settlers were
small, middle-class farmers and merchants, who had a
tradition of thriftiness and domestic order. They had a
fondness for village life and the institutions which thrived
in a more pOpulous community:13 Generally this was the first
time the traditionally and geographically limited New
England society had an opportunity to expand in a region
where resources were so abundant and where there were less
natural restrictions .1 "

Yet settling on the frontier was not always easy.

After the settlers came to Michigan by wagon, ferry, steam-
boat or train, they faced the often-difficult task of
starting over with few resouces in a.strange new‘land. Two
women who lived in Michigan during this era, Anna Howard
Shaw and Caroline Kirkland, wrote about their Michigan
frontier experiences and elaborated on the problems facing
pioneers.

Shaw (1847-1919) was a famous minister and women's
rights advocate. In 1859, her father took up a claim of 360
acres in the wilderness of Michigan and sent Anna, then 12,
his invalid wife, and four other children to live there
alone until he joined them 18 months later. In her memoirs,
The Story of a Pioneer, Shaw recalled the family's arrival

in Michigan:

18

We all had an idea that we were going to a
farm, and we expected some resemblance at least
to the prosperous farms we had seen in New England.
My mother's mental picture was, naturally, of an
English farm. Possibly she had visions of red
barns and deep meadows, sunny skies and daisies.
What we found waiting for us there were the four
walls and the roof of a good-sized loghouse,
standing in a small cleared strip of the wilder-
ness, its door and windows represented by square
holes, its floor also a thing of the future, its
whole effect achingly forlorn and desolate.

It was late in the afternoon when we drove
up to the opening that was its front entrance,
and I shall never forget the look my mother
turned upon the place. Without a word she
crossed.its threshold, and standing very still,
locked slowly around her. Then something within
her seemed to give way, and she sank upon the
ground...in that way she sat for hours without
moving or speaking...her face never lost the deep
lines those first hours of her pioneer life had
cut upon it}5

Sometimes it took families years to become prosperous,
if they ever did. Caroline Kirkland (1801-1864), who came
to Michigan from New York in the mid-18303, was one of the
first writers to examine the pioneer woman's daily life
unromantically and in detail. Under the pen name Mary
Clavers, she gave her readers a highly realistic and
straight-forward account of what life was like in Michigan}6

Settling in Pinckney, 60 miles northwest of Detroit,
Kirkland described the women she knew as "grumblers." She
said that "many of them...made sacrifices for which they
were not at all prepared and which detracted largely from
their everyday stores of comfort."

Kirkland said the women and their husbands plodded on
day in and day out, dulled by the arduous work, indifferent

to the change, and toiling all their lives "for a little

19

more than a living." She said that some were so wearied by
the daily routine they were unable to visualize that it
might be better.17

Through studying histories of the frontier two pictures
emerge. Historian Mary Beard said that the pioneers went
with spirit to the wilderness and there handicrafts were
nurtured, artistic work was done, learning was cherished and
refinements were purchased at immense personal costs.18 Yet
Kirkland said the West was a "scarce reclaimed wilderness"
in which little advancement had been made in "preparing the
way for civilization, for intelligence, for refinement, for
religion."19

Although the New Englanders who settled the state were
a non-demonstrative and taciturn peOple, the attachments of
blood relationships were strong and there was affection in
the home. Kniffen describes it as "restrained warmth."
Frontier families did have some fun after the long days of
chores. Games like checkers and cat's cradle were played
and folk music was performed. In their isolation, frontier
families had limited knowledge of the outside world.
Travelers and newspapers provided news to the frontier. The
frontier newspapers did carry world news, but they also
included local news because peeple were interested in

community events .2 °

The Michigan Frontier Press

The growth of newspapers in Michigan during the frontier
era paralleled the swift increase in population. In 1828,
Michigan had only two newspapers. The number grew to 32 by
18403”' In 1850, there were 58 publications in Michigan. The
newspapers consisted of 47 weeklies and a handful of
publications printed daily, tri-weekly, semi-monthly and
monthly}2 All the newspapers examined in this study were
weeklies. In trying to define what newspapers were frontier
newspapers, there are the same difficulties mentioned earlier
in trying to determine the meaning of the word "frontier."
During this era, the Michigan frontier was already an
anachronism. Those settling there were not just gaining a
foothold, it was already an era of expansion. By this time,
immigrants were pouring into the port of Detroit every day
and many other pioneers were coming to Michigan from overland
trails.23 . 1

Because of the huge influx of immigrants, Detroit had
become a metropolitan center of importance in the Middle
West. Trade and manufacturing flourished and the population
more than doubled in the 18503. Being an urban center,
Detroit developed cultural advantages and refinements not
enjoyed by those who lived in rural areas. For example, by
1850, gas lights illuminated the principal streets of the

2»

city. Because it was a city of some consequence, McMurtie

20

21

said that beyond 1837, Detroit had become too large for its
press to be considered on the frontier}5

The newspapers studied were published in smaller cities
and towns, such as Grand Rapids, Jackson, Kalamazoo,
Marshall and Adrian. Although life in these towns had some
similarities to that in Detroit, Dunbar said these smaller
towns were affected to a greater degree by the rural
environment in which they existed?"6

Frontier journalism was a young man's game. Editors on
the frontier needed physical stamina and a minimum of family
obligations. Because there no schools of journalism, most
frontier newsmen had little formal training in their
profession. Grammar and spelling errors were not uncommon.
Karolevitz said that politics played a big role in early-day
newspapering. Editors "reveled in it, lambasting the
opposition and glorifying the party heroes." Many editors

7 In

became candidates and office-holders themselves}
Michigan, most communities had at least two newspapers,

started by both the Whig and Democratic parties. Even in
communities where a second newspaper was not feasible, the

opposition party would have a temporary organdz°

By present
standards it did not take much money or equipment to get
into the newspaper business in the small frontier
communities. An army press, a bundle of "readyprint" and a
supply of type were the principal requirements necessary for

a frontier editor to conduct business. The local newspaper

office was usually the job-printing headquarters for the

22

community. In addition to putting out their newspaper,
editors were also busy printing business cards, letterheads,
and bill posters}9
Through the efforts of historians and librarians, about
one-fourth of the weekly newspapers published in 1850 have
been preserved on microfilm. The following is a brief
description of the founding of each newspaper being studied

and of its editors.

The American Citizen, published weekly in Jackson,

 

began as the Jacksonburgh Sentinel in 1837 and was the first

paper started in Jackson County. In 1848, the old Sentinel

 

office was taken over by Albert A. Dorrance.“ On August 15,
1849, the 21-year-old Dorrance began a new Whig paper, the
American Citizen, published weekly in an office on the
second floor of the Porter Block, on the east side of the
courthouse.“1 On November 28, 1849, Dorrance announced that
Charles V. DeLand, who had helped him establish the Citizen,

32 A.year later, DeLand became

was to become a full partner.
the paper's sole proprietor.33

The Goldwater Sentinel was started in 1841 by Albert
Chandleru’“ In.the June 9, 1848, issue of the Sentinel,
Elihu B. Pond announced he was taking over as publisher and
proprietor. The Democratic sheet was published in the third
story of Clark's brick building on the corner of Monroe and
Chicago streets.35

The Grand Rapids Enquirer began publication on or about

May 18, 1841. James H. Morse and Company was the first

23

publisher of the paper. Although it began non-partisan it
soon became Democratic. Jacob Barns became the publisher on
June 5, 1846.35 Barns had come from Vermont in 1836 and
learned the printer's trade in Michigan. He was connected

for many years with both the Engpirer and the Detroit Free

 

Press before his death in 1883.“
Thomas B. Church, a prominent Grand Rapids lawyer and

journalist, was the editor of the Engpirer from December 29,

 

1847, to January, 1851.38 Both Barns and Church were active
in the Democratic party. In early 1850 the Enquirer said
that Church had been chosen as a delegate to the state
constitutional convention. Barns was the secretary of the
Democratic district committee that chose Church as a

9 Church went on to become a member of the State

delegate.’
House from 1851-1856 ." ° -

The Grand River Eagle was established on December 25,
1844, as a Whig organ by Aaron B. Turner. Turner had begun
as an apprentice in the office of the Grand River Times when
it started in 1837. A.H. Proctor was Turner's partner in
1849; because of a lack of funds, they suspended publication
several times from inability to buy paperf“l When they did
have sufficient capital, the pair published the Eagle from
their office on Canal Street, north of the post office, in
Grand Rapids."2

The Hillsdale Whig Standard was first published on
June 30, 1846, when it pledged to print "good Whig doctrine."

The paper was published every Thursday morning at Underwood's

24

Block Third Story office.” Stephen D. Clark and Harvey B.

Rowlson, former employees of the Hillsdale Gazette, served

 

as its editors. In the spring of 1850, Rowlson became the
sole editor and prOprietor.““

The Kalamazoo Gazette began as the Michigan Statesman

 

 

in White Pigeon in 1833. The paper was moved to Kalamazoo
in 1835 by the owners, Henry Gilbert and Albert Chandler.
Chandler retired from the firm the same year and on

January 23, 1837, Gilbert changed the name of the paper to
the Kalamazoo Gazette. Eventually, Volney Hascall, an
apprentice in Gilbert's employ, became owner of the Gazette
in 1844 and continued as publisher until 1862. Gilbert,
although ceasing to be owner, remained with the Gazette for

at least 25 more years."5

The Democratic paper was published
every Friday morning.“‘

The Marshall Statesman first appeared as the Western
Statesman on September 12, 1839. The paper was established
by Seth Lewis, who came from Strykersville, New York. Lewis
conducted the paper from its establishment until his death
August 8, 1879, with the remarkable record of never missing
an issue on a publication date while the Statesman was a
weekly.'” James Pratt served as editor of the paper until he

/’**“*\1
left to search for gold in California in 1849.” Pratt's
successor was George Pratt, who became editor as of the
February 13, 1850 edition. James Pratt continued to write

for the Statesman during his journey, vividly describing his

exploits in California. The philosophy of the Statesman was

25

explained when the paper pledged to be a "good family
newspaper with a healthy moral influence." It further
promised to be an "able and consistent helper in the cause
of reform, advocating the sound, republican doctrines of the
Whig Party .5 °

In 1843, S.P. and T.D. Jermain established the Michigan
Expositor as a rival to the Adrian Watchtower, whose editors
advocated "Jacksonian Democracy." During its early years,

the EXpositor was the recognized organ of the Whig Party in

 

Adrian. After 1854, it became a leading Republican paper.51
The paper was published weekly by Jermain's Power Press}2

The Niles Republican was established on October 25,
1839, by Henry B. Miller and a partner named van Vleet. On
April 17, 1842, Miller and Darius B. Cook became joint
publishers, with Cook as editor. Cook became sole editor
and publisher on October 21, 1843.53 The Democratic organ
was published every Saturday morningu‘“

The Oakland Gazette was established on February 7, 1844,

5 Three weeks later it was announced

by J. Dowd Coleman.5
that the paper had been purchased by W.M. Thompson, a "true
Whig."5‘ Thompson served as a joint editor and as sole
editor during the following four years. On April 28, 1849,
J.B. Seymour became proprietor, but Thompson continued as
editor.57 The Whig paper was published weekly in Pontiac.5°
The Pontiac Jacksonian was established March 24, 1838,
by the partnership of Eldridge and Denton. The newspaper

changed hands several times, and by 1846, W.L. Bancroft and

26

William B. Sherman were its publishers, with Bancroft
serving as editor.59 By 1849, the Democratic organ was being
edited and published by Thornton F. Brodhead.“o

The Western Chronicle was established on September 29,
1849. It was published every Saturday at Centreville,
St. Joseph County, by B.W. Guernsey and G.H. Crosette, in
their office at Case's Brick Building on Main Street. The
newspaper was established for "the maintenance of Democratic
measures and the support of Democratic men."61 The July 6,
1850, edition of the paper announced that Guernsey had left
the firm and was replaced by Andrew J. Brown.“2

Like most frontier newspapers, much of the news in the
Michigan frontier press was reprinted from other

publications. As the Emerys said in The Press and America,

 

any subscriber who could read or write usually contributed
an article at one time or another to the press.63 The papers
studied are full of contributions from local readers, often
identified by a pen name or simply as "anonymous local
scribe."

Each of the papers studied was four pages in length.
Most advertisements appeared on pages three and four, but
occasionally advertisements would appear on page one.
Usually, speeches by political leaders or short stories ran
on the front page. Letters, editorials, and news briefs

were on page two, with additional news placed on pages three

and four with the advertisements.

ENDNOTES

1Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American
History (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), p. 3.

2Ray Allen Billington, Westward Expansion (New York:
The MacMillan Company, 1957), pp. 1-3.

’Ibid.

I'William H. Lyon, The Pioneer Editor in Missouriy
1808-1860 (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press,
1965), p. 7.

5Ibid., p. 8.

‘Ibid., p. 162

71bid., p. 47.

'Ibid., p. 46.

9Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines,
1741-1850 4th ed. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press,
1966) I po 40

10Turner, Frontier in American History, p. 271.
11Paul S. Taylor and Anne Loftis, "The Legacy of the

Nineteenth Century New England Farmer," New England
Quarterly54 (June 1981): 252.

 

12Thomas D. Clark, Frontier America (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1969), p. 306.

1'Ibid.

'“Ihid.

15Anna Howard Shaw, The Stogyof a Pioneer (New York:
Harper 5 Brothers Publishers 1915; reprint ed., New York:
Kraus Reprint Co., 1970), p. 24.

16Caroline M. Kirkland, A New Home or Life in the
Clearings (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1953), p. 4.

17William S. Osborne, Caroline M. Kirkland (New York:
Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1972), p. 67.

 

1'Mary R. Beard, America Througp Women's Eyes (New York:
The MacMillan Company, 1933), p. 90.

27

28

19Osborne, p. 51.

20Fred B. Kniffen, "Milestones and Stumbling Blocks,"
Pioneer America 7 (January 1975), p. 4.

21William Chauncy Langdon, Evepyday Things in American
Life‘ 1776-1876 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941),
p. 155.

 

22The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850
(Washington: Robert Armstrong [1853]), p. 898.

23Kirkland, p. s.

2"Willis F. Dunbar, Michigan: A Histogy of the
Wolverine State (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 1973), pp. 434-436.

25Douglas C. McMurtie, Early Printing in Michigan 1796-
1850 (Chicago: John Calhoun Club, 1931), p. 80.

2“Dunbar, Wolverine State, pp. 434-436.

27Robert F. Karolevitz, Newspapering in the Old West, A
Pictorial History of Journalism and Printipg on theyFrontier
(Seattle: Superior Publishing Co., 1965), pp. 12-15.

2"John Cumming, "History of the Michigan Newspapers, "
Family Trails 3 (Fall-Winter 1971), p. 1.

29Karolevitz, pp. 13-20.

a°History of Jackson County, Michigan (Chicago: Inter-
state Publishing Co., 1881), p. 421.

'lxenneth John Wyatt, That Vile Invective: A History
of Partisan Journalism in Jackson CountyL,1837- -1866
(unpublished M. A. thesis, Michigan State University, 1976),
pp. 63-64.

32American Citizen, 28 November 1849, p. 2.

33History of Jackson Counpy, p. 421.

 

3"McMurtie, p. 257.
’5Coldwater Sentinel, 9 June 1848, pp. 1-2.

36Dwight Goss, History of Grand Rapids and Its
Industries (Chicago: C.F. C00per and Co., 1906), p. 900.

3711616.

3°McMurtie, p. 278.

29

39Grand Rapids Enquirer, 24 April 1850, p. 2.
I"‘Goss, p. 838.

*1McMurtie, p. 279.

“ZGrand River Eagle, 6 July 1849, p. 1.
HHillsdale Whig Standard, 30 June 1846, pp. 1-2.
I“'McMurtie, p. 280.

~51bid., pp. 287-288.

“‘Kalmmazoo Gazette, 6 July 1849, p. l.

nMcMurtie, p. 293.

uJohn Cumming, The Gold Rush (Mt. Pleasant, Mich: By
the Author, 465 Hiawatha Drive, 1974), p. iii.

“9Marshall Statesman, 13 February 1850, p. 2. It
cannot be determined if the Pratts were related.

s°Marshall Statesman, 13 February 1850, p. 2.

51Richard Illenden Bonner, ed., Memoirs of Lenawee
Countyy Michigan (Madison, Wisconsin: Western Historical

Association, 1909), p. 551. -
52Michigan Expositor, 3 July 1849, p. 1.
53McMurtie, p. 303.
5“Niles Republican, 7 July 1849, p. 1.
55McMurtie, p. 310.
56Oakland Gazette, 28 February 1844, p. 2.
57McMurtie, p. 310.
5“Oakland Gazette, 7 July 1849, p. 1.
s”McMurtie, p. 309.
6°Pontiac Jacksonian, 4 July 1849, pp. 1-2.
61Western Chronicle, 29 September 1849, pp. 1-2.
62Western Chronicle, 6 July 1850, p. 2.

63Edwin Emery and Michael Emery, The Press and America
4th ed., (Englewood Cliffs, N.J}: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1978),

p. 98.

CHAPTER III

FOR BETTER OR WORSE:
DEPICTION OF COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

I'm told there's care in married life,
That all the joy's in courting

When young men have secured a wife,
They say their vows are sporting.1

The above verse, taken from the Jackson American Citizen,

 

is one example of the poems and articles written in the
Michigan frontier press about courtship and marriage. The
newspapers offered a variety of discussion on the tOpic of
matrimony. Advice of all kinds was given to both men and
women on how to best pick the ideal mate with predictions of
misery for those who made the wrong choice.

When viewing the treatment of courtship and marriage by
the frontier press, it is important not to judge the
standards of the past by today's practices. Although some
statements might be considered unacceptable today, they may

have been normal in 1850. The Marshall Statesman said that

 

"young ladies are bound to fall in love as soon as possible,
and bound to be bound to a partner for life after the
necessary preliminaries." The six steps toward marriage were

getting a lover, fascinating him thoroughly, being courted,

30

31

having the question popped, arraying wedding garments and
inviting friends to witness the wedding.‘2

Women were shown as eager to snag a husband. The
Statesman said that "young ladies pick up husbands at Coney
Island by venturing into the surf and coming near getting
«a

drowned. Their deliverers become their wooers.

The Grand Rapids Enquirer reprinted an article from the

 

Boston Post titled "Manifest Destiny," where a Dr. Liebeg~
said that women were born to be married. The good doctor
said that "men are born to die, too-~but when you...talk of
the preparation for the event, they are as little fitted for i
it as the girls for the future state of matrimony."5 The
Hillsdale Whig Standard claimed that the "woman does not
marry the man, the man marries her." With quotes from the
Bible, the article states that the wife "agrees to love,
honor and obey, which are only promises contingent on the
good conduct of the husband."‘

Articles appeared instructing men on how to "get a wife)‘
The Statesman said that some men conquered women by gold,
some by intellect, some by beauty and accomplishments, and
still others captivated the fair sex by stratagem and skill.
The piece concluded that "getting a wife is very serious
business."7

Men were advised on how to choose a spouse. They were
told to find a woman that could play and sing, dance the

polka and entertain company .° The Standard suggested that

 

if a man was courting a young lady he should try her temper

32

by tearing her dress as if by accident. If the girl kept
her equanimity, the man should "loose not a moment in
papping the question."9

The man was told he would suffer if he did not exercise
caution in choosing a mate. The Enquirer instructed men to
look for a woman with the seven requisites for being a good
wife, those being piety, sense, temper, education, manners,

10

beauty and riches. The Niles Republican told men never to

 

marry a girl who is "fond of being always on the street, who
is fond of running to night gatherings, who has a jewelled
hand and an empty head." The paper said this would be the
kind of girl who would let her mother work while she sat in
bed all day reading novels or feigning sickness. "Should
you get such a one," warned the Republican, "you will have a '
dirty miserable home...you will be kept poor all-of your
life."11

Endless woe was the consistent prediction for men
careless in picking a wife. "Nobody can feel more truly
wretched than on the happiest day of his life," said the
Standard. "A wedding is even more melancholy than a
funeral."12 The same paper warned that "to dream of a
millstone about your neck is a sign of what you might expect
n13

if you marry an extravagant wife..

The Standard advised men that good looks were not

 

enough. In the fictional "A Coquette's Account of Herself,”
the title character was a bewitching girl with a sweet

figure, charming teeth and fine eyes who calculated to break

33

a husband's heartffi‘ In an advice column, "Happy Home," the
Standard said that good looks were something that would fade
away:

A young man meets a pretty face in the ball-
room, falls in love with it, "marries," goes to
housekeeping with it, and boasts of having a home
to go to, and a wife. The chances are 9 in 10 he
has neither...Her pretty face gets to be an old
story...15 ‘

It is clear from this advice that men were not supposed to
choose a wife simply because she was beautiful. Good looks
were depicted as something used to trick men or that would
fade in time.

Women also were warned about making the prOper choice

for marriage. The Kalamazoo Gazette said that "a woman's

 

head is always influenced by her heart; but a man's heart is
generally influenced by his head."16 "Marriage," said the
Statesman, "is the great event in a woman's life, from which
all other events take their coloring. If she err here, her
whole life is one of unavailing penance." The newspaper
also said that couples should not get married without the
permission of the bride's parents. "In most clandestine

marriages, the girl is a child, ignorant of the world...,'

said the Statesman. "Her mind is probably filled with false

 

notions and fanciful day-dreams derived from novelists and
romances." This was because a "reflecting woman“ would see
that the young man who seeks her love without the approval
of her parents gives evidence that something is wrong with

himfil7

34

The Adrian Michigan Expositor said that a young lady
who talked eloquently about love was probably incapable of
feeling much of it. "Many a young woman sincerely believes
that she is capable of never-ending attachment when she likes
only the excitement of having a lover and hearing her virtue
extolled by others."1°

The frontier press also provided rules for the woman to
follow in selecting a husband. If a man talked loudly,
squeezed a woman's hand or ate heartily in her presence, the
Statesman advised a wanan not to marry him.19 The Republican
provided guidelines in an article titled, "Rules for Ladies."
The five rules for not marrying men were:

(1) Marry not a profane man--the depravity of
his heart will corrupt your children, and embitter
your existence;

(2) Marry not a gambler, a tipler, or a
haunter of taverns; because he who has no regard
for himself will never have any for his wife;

(3) Marry not a man who makes promises which

he never performs, because you can never trust him.

(4) Marry not a man whose actions do not
correspond with his sentiments;

(5) Marry not a man who neglects his business;

if he does so when single, he will be worse when

married.2°

In addition to the fiction and advice columns written
about how to choose a mate, poetry in the frontier press
also offers hints on the subject. One such poem in the
Centreville Western Chronicle advised women to marry the man
they truly loved, regardless of his financial status:

Oh, marry the man you love girls,

If you can get him at all;

If he is as rich as Croesus,
Or as poor as Job in his fall.

35

Pray do not marry for pelf, girls,

'T will bring your souls into the thrall,
But marry the man you love, girls,

If his purse is ever so small.

Oh! never marry a fop, girls,

Whether he's little or tall;
He'll make a fool of himself and you,
He knows nothing well but to drawl.

But marry a sober man, girls,
There are few left on this ball;
And you'll never rue the day, 21girls,
That you ever married at all.

There was disagreement in the frontier press about who
should pursue whom. The Republican said that women should
remember "that the province of a woman is to be wooed, not
to woo; to be caressed, not to caress.“2 Yet, a poem in
the American Citizen pondered why women didn't ask men to
marry them. The anonymous author said:

"The men are shy," the ladies cry,
"Their minds they'll not disclose." -
If this be so, I'd like to know
Why don't the girls propose?...
Ye maidens fair, now laughing there
So coyly with your beaux,
Take my advice, don't be o'er nice,
They'll wed if you prOpose...
Poor Martha Meers for twenty years
To wedlock was Opposed,
But now she sighs and whimpering cries,
"I wish I had prOposed."
Then pity take for Hymen's sake,
On these unhappy beaux,
Who are, poor elves, too shy themselves,
A marriage to prOpose.2

One man, Hiram Mott, was not too shy to propose

marriage. In an advertisement in the Oakland Gazette, Mott

described the woman he was looking for:

36

A lady of moderate size, from 15 to 20 years
of age, light complexion and blue eyes; who has
tenderhearted parents, brothers and sisters; or
if an orphan, is in comfortable circumstances.

If she is feeble, he will help her do housework,
and bring her wood and water. She must have a
mind of her own, and not be biased by others...

For himself, he acknowledges he is poor, but
promises to be honest, industrious, and faithful..3

s
Other frontier authors agreed with Mott. Women were
expected to exhibit beauty, kindness, thrift and the ability
to work hard. If they exhibited these traits, wives were
highly praised and considered to be influential in the.
family. The American Citizen said that "woman is the last

and most perfect work of God."25

The Expositor also
described the "good woman:"
A good woman never grows old. Years may pass

over her head, but if benevolence and virtue dwell

in her heart, she is as cheerful as when the

spring first Opened to her...In her neighborhood

she is the friend and benefactor. In the church,

the devout worshipper and exemplary Christian .25

The theme of a "good wife" having influence over her
family was also discussed in the Republican. The newspaper
said that it was the woman's job to make the home a "seat of
happiness." The article said that each day men's feelings
are lacerated and he must have a "place of repose" after
days full of irritations and disappointments?7

In the 12 frontier newspapers examined for this study,
a consistent theme was that the woman's place was in the
home. Men seeking a wife were told to make certain their
choice could provide them with a quiet home to escape from
.the world's problems. It is never pointed out where women

were expected to go to escape from the drudgery and

37

difficulty of housework and raising children. The best
advice offered in the frontier press to women is that their
choice for a husband better be a good one, for a mistake

in selection would be regrettable.

The poems, fiction and advice columns of the frontier
press offered hints to both men and women about what to look
for in choosing a mate. Acceptable women were pious,
beautiful and polite. Any woman who was not a hard worker
was depicted as unacceptable in the frontier press. A
_woman's beauty was seen as an attribute, but one that would
fade away in time. And a woman who had all the acceptable
traits was seen as creating a pleasant environment for her
family, no matter how much work it took.

From.the frontier press, it appears that the "ideal
woman" had specific duties she was expected to fulfill after
she was married, as did her husband. The next chapter shall
analyze the duties of the frontier woman as wife and mother,

according to the Michigan frontier press.

END NOTE S

1American Citizen, 26 December 1849, p. 4.
2Marshall Statesman, 26 September 1849, p. 1.

3Marshall Statesman, 3 October 1849, p. 1.

 

I'Ronald Gottesman, et al. The Norton Anthologyfiof
American Literature (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1979),
p. 1538. Dr. Liebeg was probably, Justus, Baron von Liebeg
(1808-1873), a German chemist.

 

5Grand Rapids Enquirer, 17 October 1849, p. 1.

 

6Hillsdale Whig Standard, 28 May 1850, p. l.

 

7Marshall Statesman, 14 November 1849, p. 1.
8Marshall Statesman, 5 June 1850, p. 1.
9Hillsdale Whig Standard, 4 September 1849, p. 2.
1°Grand Rapids Enquirer, 26 December 1849, p. 1.

11Niles Republican, 10 November 1849, p. l.

 

12Hillsdale Whig Standard, 11 December 1849, p. 1.
13Hi11sda1e Whig Standard, 9 October 1849, p. 1.
1"Hillsdale WhigyStandard, 10 July 1849, p. 1.

lsHillsdale Whig Standard, 19 March 1850, p. 1.

 

16Kalamazoo Gazette, 22 February 1850, p. 2.
17Marshall Statesman, 27 February 1850, p. 1.
1°Michigan Expositor, 8 January 1850, p. 1.
19Marshall Statesman, 26 September 1849, p. 1.
2°Niles Republican, 29 September 1849, p. 1.
21Western Chronicle, 12 January 1850, p. 1.
22Niles Republican, 13 October 1849, p. 1.

23American Citizen, 27 February 1850, p. 4.

38

39

2"Oakland Gazette, 8 December 1849, p. 2.
25American Citizen, 5 September 1849, p. 2.
2‘Michigan Expositor, 5 February 1850, p. 1.

27Niles Republican, 12 January 1850, p. 3.

CHAPTER IV

THE DOMESTIC SPHERE:
DUTIES AS WIFE AND MOTHER

Her youth is to be passed partly in learning
to keep house and the use Of the needle, partly
in the social circle, where her manners may be
formed, ornamental accomplishments perfected and
diSplayed, and the husband found who shall give
her the domestic sphere for which she is
exclusively prepared.

--Margaret Fuller1

Once they had courted and married, a husband and wife
each had duties they were eXpected to perform. The frontier
press of Michigan depicted both men and women as’hard-working
peOple willing to sacrifice almost anything for their
families. Each sex was viewed as unique, and each had a
special role in society. To shield women, especially
mothers, from the economic and physical problems of the 19th
century world was even regarded as enlightened by the
liberals of the day}-

The domestic~sphere was the wpman's domaip, The home
and the children were considered her responsibility. It was
this responsibility that gave women their greatest power and

their most difficult hardships. The Niles Republican

 

described the woman's role:

40

41

...Home is the empire of woman. There she
plans, directs, performs, the acknowledged source
of dignity and felicity...The early years of
childhood...are confined to woman's superintendence;
she therefore may be presumed to lay the foundation
of all the virtues, of all the wisdom, Of all the
evil, and crime that enrich or impoverish the
world.3

In 1851, one writer divided the duties of women in the
home into three specific areas: (1) providing food,
clothing and medical care to their husbands, parents,
children and other family members and to guests; (2) forming
and improving the general manners and conduct of the other
sex, by society and example; and (3) modelling the_human
mind of the children they supervisedf‘

Welter said that women's magazines of the 19th century
developed the "cult of true womanhood" where the woman was
the hostage in the home. Welter said:

The attributes of true womanhood, by which a
woman judged herself and was judged by her husband,
her neighbors and'society could be divided into
four cardinal virtues - piety, purity, submissive-
ness and domesticity. Put them together and they
spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife - woman.
Without them...all was ashes. With them she was
promised happiness and power}

On a similar subject, a popular writer of the 18503, Grace
Greenwood, said that true feminine genius was "ever timid,
doubtful and clingingly dependent; a perpetual childhood."5

A variety of opinions on who held the power in the

household were given in the Michigan press. The Republican

 

said that the husband must govern the wife with wisdom and
tenderness. Although the wife was depicted as inferior,

she was considered a fellow ruler with him over children and

42

servants. "She is subject as his vice gerent, always
preserving love and reverence in affection, and expressing
meekness and obedience in actions," said the Republican;7

The Hillsdale WhigiStandard reminded readers that there

 

should be equality in a marriage. If a married man
considered it justifiable to spend an evening away from home,
the Standard said, it was equally fair for the woman to go
out and visit her friends}

The Jackson American Citizen said that society demanded
"from the female sex the highest tone of purity and strictest
Observance Of duties pertaining to the woman's sphere." The
American Citizen also remarked on the difference cast upon
the sexes for similar faults: "Woman must suffer in the
dust...for trivial faults, while man walks proudly upright...
though covered with his’vices."9 Because the woman was
considered a role model for her children, it appears she was
severely criticized for making mistakes, whereas a man was
not. At least this anonymous writer in the American Citizen
noted the inconsistency of judging the sexes.

Not only was a woman supposed to be morally superior,
she was also expected to endure tremendous amounts of labor.
The endless hours of back-breaking toil left little time for
rest or leisure. Day in and day out, they worked in the
house and in the fields to produce the basic necessities Of
life.” In reviewing the memoirs of frontier women, author
JOanna Stratton found that at first the heavy workload seemed

almost unbearable; it was physically exhausting and

43

emotionally draining. But over the years most women learned
to abide the drudgery and monotony which filled their lives.
Stratton said they develOped a certain fortitude and
resilience which enabled them to withstand the privations
and overcome the hardships.11

The difficulties must have seemed overwhelming.
Ordinary tasks like making cheese and preserving butter
forced women to battle bugs and maggots.12 Women doing
laundry were forced to soak hardwood ashes because they had

3 One article in the frontier

no soap to clean their clothes}
press expected women to keep a cheerful attitude toward such
drudgery. The American Citizen said the happy girl was
known by her fresh looks, buoyant spirits and willingness to
work. Day in and day out the good wife "has something to do
and she takes hold of work as if she did not fear to soil
her hands or dirty her apron," the Citizen said}“

It was a serious Offense for a frontier woman to be
lazy. Kniffen said the work ethic was exceedingly strong.
There was even competition to outdo one another in feats Of
labora‘? This competition for recognition was reflected in

the press. In an article from the Detroit Advertiser, both

Grand Rapids papers, the Enquirer and the Grand River Eagle,

 

said a Mrs. Charles A. Taylor of Chicago had sewed a quilt
composed Of 9,800 pieces of silk, each an inch square, for
her mother, Mrs. A. Wilcox Of Detroit.“5 The Standard told
of a 35-year-Old woman who had to raise five children by

herself when her husband left for California. This

44

particular wife wove 700 yards of satin, made 800 pounds of
maple sugar and cut all the wood for her family. She also
raised six cows, 11 sheep and drove her own team Of oxen to
the mill and trading center 15 miles fromhomefl7

The day of one hard-working housewife was described by

the Enquirer:

There is a woman in town that washed a whole
week's washing and hung the clothes out to dry,
cooked three meals, made a pair of pants for her
youngest boy, darned her husband's socks, had the
cholera and cured herself and then dyed - four
dresses in one day.1°
Highly praised was the frontier woman who could manage

with next to nothing. The Standard reprinted an article
from the Cincinnati Atlas about a poor woman with seven
children who was "out of money, out of bread and out of
everything to eat." The resourceful woman had nothing but
some hens that produced a total of eight eggs a day. The
woman exchanged them for supplies to barely support her
family. She was congratulated by the newspaper for her

intelligence and thriftiness}9

No doubt examples like this
were published in the press to help inspire women readers
to better manage their households.

Women's cooking and handicrafts were given praise in

the frontier press. The Republican reported the success of

 

the Presbyterian Society's cake auction where women served

20

as auctioneers. The Goldwater Sentinel reprinted an

article from the Detroit Free Press listing many women's

 

prize-winning efforts at the State Fair."1

45

The frontier wife had to know how to do everything because
help was scarce and unaffordable. She had to dry fruit,
make candles and even build caskets for dead babies.22 If'a
woman wanted a dress, she was expected to make her own. On
March 20, 1850, the Marshall Statesman said that every woman
should be able to make herself simple yet elegant dresses."3

Sochen said that many travelers to the middle-western
frontier in the first half of the 19th century commented on
the hard-working women and the lazy men.“ One article

touching this subject appeared in the Statesman. In this

 

piece, a man told what he liked about a woman. He said, "I
like to see a young woman out in the morning scraping up
chips to build a fire and her husband in bed, it shows that
she thinks more of him than she does of herself."25 Once
again, the woman is depicted as putting her husband's
comfort before her own. A quip from the Grand River Eagle
was in a similar vein: "Industry must prosper, as the man
said when holding the baby while his wife chopped wood."26
Despite the evidence of how hard a frontier wife's life
was, there were those in 1849 that thought women had several
advantages over men. An anonymous contributor to the
Enquirer wrote a piece representative of this view saying
that a woman could "take a snooze after dinner, while her
husband has got to work, run into debt until the husband
warns the public by advertisement not to trust her on his
account, and dress herself in neat and tidy calicoes for a

dollar which her husband has to earn and fork over}7

46

Many women paid dearly for their dedication to hard
work. Women aged noticeably on the frontier after constant
childbearing, maintaining the home, caring for children and
working in the fields.28 Women's diaries and journals
contain acCounts of the difficult tasks frontier women
faced and the toll it took on their health.29 In addition to
their physical hardships, many frontier wives were lonely.
The life on the frontier was radically altered from the
existence they had previously known. Instead of giving
birth and raising children near mothers or other female
relatives, the frontier mother did not always have someone

3° Some were able to ease

close to share womanly experiences.
the loneliness by participating in camp meetings, quilting
parties and other activities. But these social events meant
more work because the frontier wife was required'to
entertain, provide the refreshments and clean up'afterwards.31
Loneliness due to separation or death spurred some

women to contribute poems about absent loved ones to the

frontier press. In the Centreville Western Chronicle, a

 

regular contributor known as Martha M. submitted this verse,
expressing a longing for female companionship:
My mother and my sister, ye are gone
I call you but you never may return
And I an orphan, sisterless and lone,
Stifling the thoughts in my sad heart that burn,
Oh where shall I for love and pity turn?32
Mrs. M; C. Conant submitted this poem to the Standard

dealing with the death of a child:

47

Months have fled, my darling baby
Since thy lovely form I gave

With calm look, but bursting bosom

To the cold and lovely grave.

Months have fled, and those around me
Deem the stricken heart is healed,
They little know the depths of anguish
Hid within the fountain sealed.33

Countless other women like Martha M. and Mrs. Conant
contributed material to the frontier press expressing grief
for dead loved ones.

The material submitted by grieving women is only one
example of a consistent theme in the frontier press about

the responsibility of motherhood. The Statesman described

 

the mother as an "angel, guardian and guide."3” The Standard

 

said that a good mother never Spoke to her children with a

loud voice or in harsh unkind tonesJ’s‘She also never showed

316‘

fear before her children. Drinking mothers Who neglected

their children while becoming intoxicated were condemned.’7
The ideal mother was shown as willing to sacrifice her
own life to save her children. In "A Mother's Love," a

fictional story in the Standard, a family was overcome by a

 

snowstorm while sleighing in Vermont. The heroine of the
story wrapped her own clothes around her shivering baby and
although the mother perished, her sacrifice allowed the
child to survive.” Real frontier mothers were shown by
fiction like this that their own sacrifices were small by
comparison.

The good mother was depicted as a Christian woman,
willing to forgive anything her children did. A Western

Chronicle writer said that "a man's mother is the

48

representative of his Maker." The article, titled "My
Mother," said that as long as a man's mother lived, he would
have at least one friend on earth who would not listen when
he was slandered, who would not desert him when he suffered,
and who would soothe him when sorrowful?9

Women seeking solace from their difficulties were
supposed to find it in religion, according to the frontier
press. The Republican, discussing the anxieties of being a
mother, wondered how any woman could be sustained without
religion. The newspaper said that the "many days of anguish"
when their offspring were ill, absent or in danger, should
be a "powerful inducement for mothers to become true

”“° This view is similar to the one discussed

Christians.
in the chapter on courtship and marriage saying men were
supposed to seek women who were pious. -

Above all, mothers were supposed to be patient. The
Pontiac Jacksonian said that the patience of many mothers
exceeded that of Job's, and remarked on the plight of some
frontier mothers:

Some poor women are...obliged to raise a

family of 10 or 12 children, without help,

spending months, years - all the prime of life -

in washing, scouring, scrubbing, mending,

cooking, nursing children...~

The picture that emerges of the "ideal" frontier wife
and mother in the press of 1850 is a patient, religious,
hard-working and cheerful woman devoted to her family.

Despite the heartbreaking loneliness, the weary toll of

daily existence, or the painful sacrifices, the frontier

49

wife depicted in the frontier.press of Michigan withstood
the hardships of life with only her religion to provide
comfort.

It is debatable whether the woman portrayed in the 665
editions studied were representative of how real women felt
and acted. While many may have lived the hard-working 1iv
de3cribed in the press they may not have been patient and
pious along the way. Rather than turning to Christianity,
it is possible that many of them became embittered about
their sacrifices in a difficult existence. But in the
frontier press, the hard-working, God-fearing woman who
ruled the domestic sphere with cheerfulness and thrift is
the image presented most often.

In the next chapter, the short stories and literature
reprinted from popular woman's magazines and submitted by
local authors will be analyzed to see how fictional female

characters were depicted.

ENDNOTES

1Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Woman in the Nineteenth
Centugy (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), p. 218.

2A.E. Dick Howard, "The Sexes and the Law," The Wilson
Quarterly 5 (Winter l982):81.

 

3Niles Republican, 12 January 1850, p. 3.

 

~Thomas Woody, A History of Women's Education in the
united States (New York: The Science Press, 1929; reprinted,
New York: Octagon Books, 1974), p. 101.

5Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-
1860,” American Quarteriy 18 (Summer 1966):150-152.

‘Ibid., p. 160.

7Niles Republican, 11 August 1849, p. 1.
°Hillsdale Whig Standard, 11 September 1849, p. 1.
9American Citizen, 7 November 1849, p. 1.

10June Sochen, Herstory (New York: Alfred.Publishing
Co., 1974), p. 114.

11Joanna L. Stratton, Pioneer Women (New York: Simon

and Schuster, 1981), p. 75.

12Gro Svendsen, Frontier Mother (Northfield, Minnesota:
Norwegian Historical Association, 1950), p. 39.

13Barbara Mayer Wertheimer, We Were There: The Story
of Working Women in America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977),
p. 252.

1"American Citizen, 20 March 1850, p. 1.

15Fred B. Kniffen, "Milestones and Stumbling Blocks,"
Pioneer America 7 (January 1975), p. 4.

16Grand River Eagle, 12 October 1849, p. 1; Grand Rapids
Enquirer, 24 October 1849, p. l.

 

17Hillsdale Whig Standard, 21 May 1850, p. 1.

 

1"Grand Rapids Enquirer, 26 September 1849, p. l.
19Hillsdale Whig Standard, 4 June 1850, p. 1.

50

51

2°Niles Republican, 22 December 1849, p. 1.

21Coldwater Sentinel, 5 October 1849, p. 1.

 

22Mary R. Beard, America Through Women's Eyes (New York:
The MacMillan Company, 1933), p. 100.

23Marshall Statesman, 20 March 1850, p. 4.

 

2"Sochen, p. 112.

25Marshall Statesman, 13 July 1349, p. 2.
26Grand River Eagle, 13 July 1849, p. 1.
27Grand Rapids Enquirer, 7 November 1849, p. 1.
2'Sochen, p. 114.

29Elizabeth Fries Ellet, Pioneer Women of the West (New
York: C. Scribner, 1852), p. 420.

3°L.L. Lee and Merrill Lewis, Women, Women Writers and
the West (Troy, N.Y.: The Whitston Publishing Co., 1979),
p. 33.

31Sochen, pp. 112-113.

32Western Chronicle, 16 March, 1850, p. 1. °

3’Hillsdale Whig Standard, 9 April 1850, p. 1.

3“Marshall Statesman, 10 April 1350, p. 2.

asHillsdale Whig Standard, 12 February 1350, p. 1.

asHillsdale Whig Standard, 6 November 1849, p. 2.

37Marshall Statesman, 20 February 1850, p. 1.

3°nillsdale Whig Standard, 13 December 1349, p. 1.

39Western Chronicle, 6 April 1850, p. 1.

~°Wiles Republican, 22 December 1349, p. 1.

' nPontiac Jacksonian, 24 July 1850, p. 1.

CHAPTER V

HEROINES, YOUNG BRIDES AND OLD MAIDS:
FEMALE CHARACTERS IN LITERATURE

I can, indeed promise no solid reading, no
useful information, no learning nor poetry, no
lofty purpose...for myself, I but seek to wile
away a heavy hour this dull autumn day...

--Grace Greenwood1

By 1850, feminine fiction began to appear in a flood
and most of it was being produced by New England women.
Women had been contributing freely to magazines since the
18303, but their offerings had been mostly poetry.
Americans of the 18403 bought feminine poetry, and by the
18508 women were writing more and more successful short
stories and novels.2 The short stories and poems found in

popular magazines like Godey's Lady's Book and Graham's were

 

reprinted material from other newspapers and accepted
contributions from anonymous local authors.

Writers like Grace Greenwood, Fanny Fern and Catharine
M. Sedgwick provided much of the popular fiction. As the
above quotation by Greenwood indicates, this fiction was not
always of high literary quality and it did not endure, but
it did confirm the moral values of the culture. Christian

virtues were upheld, sin was punished and obedience to God

52

53

was rewarded. Thus women were depicted as being in charge
of their own moral destiny.3 Sochen said that in a typical
plot the beautiful young heroine, yearning, long-suffering,
and consumed by strong emotions and inner conflicts, was
punished for any.sexual indiscretion she committedf' For
many years the fiction in women's magazines was mostly
sugary and noble and followed the sentimental conventions
of the period. Excessive detail was used to help create an
illusion of reality.5 '

A theme consistently explored in the pages of the
frontier press was how a woman chose a husband. Most
fictional women characters were instructed to marry a man
they truly loved, regardless of his station in life.
Representative of this theme was Kate Sutherland's "The
Maiden's Choice," published in the Grand Rapids Grand River
Egglg. The main character is Kate Darlington, the daughter
of a well-to-do merchant. Her father takes in young Edwin
Lee, the son of a dead employee. After several years, Edwin
becomes one of Mr. Darlington's best law clerks and sees
Kate very often. Wanting to marry her, but deciding he's
too poor, Edwin decides to go away. Kate finds out why
Edwin is planning to leave and persuades him to stay, and
eventually they marry. "Fashionable peOple were greatly
surprised when the beautiful Kate Darlington married her
father's clerk, and mustached dandies curled their lips,
but it mattered not to Kate,“ said the author. Kate had

married Edwin because she was confident of his worth,

54

affection and manliness. She was a happy wife if not a
fashionable one .6
Occasionally, waiting for the right man was a tragic
choice for the woman. In "Minnie Clifton, A Heart History,"
published in the Hillsdale Whig Standard, the main character
suffers such a fate. Poor Minnie led a dull and dreary life
waiting for Hubert Woodley, the man she truly loved, to
marry her. Hubert left town to marry another while Minnie
cared for his aged father.7 But in "Pauline," also printed
in the Standard, a French girl had to choose between a rich
suitor, Alexis Laparout, and the poor man she truly loved,
Jean Provost. Although Pauline chose Jean, they lived a
happy and prosperous life .’ Equally happy was Clara Walton,
who married Charles Forester, although he had almost nothing
financially to offer her. "Clara Walton" was a reprint from

Godey's Lady's Book that appeared in the Marshall Statesman.9

 

Fictional material reprinted from Godey's appeared
regularly in the Michigan frontier press. In turn, most of
the material in Godey'g had been clipped from English
publications without acknowledgement, as there was no
c0pyright agreement between Great Britain and the United
States. Godey's practice was no different from other
American magazine and newspaper publishers who used material
by Dickens, Thackeray and others without permission or
payment.1°

Newspapers also reprinted stories from other newspapers.

A short story, "Jane and John of Farmersville," originally

55

published in the Genessee Farmer, was reprinted in both the

 

Statesman and the Oakland Gazette. The story, by James

 

 

Mapleton, explored the role of a working pioneer wife, Jane
Elmily and her husband, John. Mapleton said John had the
prettiest wife and Jane had the best husband. Together they
had the best farm, the neatest garden, the prettiest cottage
and the prettiest children in all Farmersville. Much of the
credit went to Jane for the fine meals she prepared and the
long hours she toiled in the family garden:
Jane no sooner got at home than she commenced

her work.> She was always in the garden - making

flower beds and planting seeds. She didn't stand

with her gloves on and direct a gardener, but went

at it herself, with the spade and hoe.
Although some had said that John would make a slave of Jane,
it just did not happen. Mrs. Elmily was happy to be living
in Farmersville and working for her family. "Jane's
sparkling eyes...spoke of anything but slavery - her rosy
cheek and joyous laugh told not of unwilling toil."11

Another Jane and John did not fare as well. In "The
' Last Pawn," the couple's home falls into disrepair and their
children stay hungry because John is a drunkard. Eventually
the inebriate asks to see the family bible. Jane, relieved
that he is seeking God's word, fetches it for him. It soon
becomes apparent that John is planning to use the bible to
pay off his drinking debts. Jane asks, "John, you will not
pawn the word of God for rum, will you?" But in the end,
John takes the bible and pays off his bill at Squire

12
Barber's tavern.

56

The two Jane and John stories demonstrate how marriage in
fiction could be depicted as either extremely happy or
tragic. Because Jane Elmily and her husband both worked
hard and lived a good life they prospered. But the second
Jane did not choose a good husband. She suffered endlessly
because her husband chose to put his love of alcohol above
all else.

The theme of alcoholism was also used in "A Girl That
Would Be Married." The title character, Mary Watts, is the
only child of a prosperous drunkard. Aware of the
consequences of alcohol, she tries to persuade her father to
change but his resolutions are meaningless. On the way to
an errand, Mary meets John Dunn, a well-educated man. Mary,
tired of her plight as a drunkard's daughter, asks John if
he wants a wife. After mulling it over for a few seconds,
John decides he does. The anonymous author reveals that
Mary pr0posed because she needed a man to help run the
household in place of her drunken father. And by tale's end,
John and Mary's fields "smiled and flourished like an Eden."L3
As in "Jane and John of Farmersville," hard work and a
righteous life brought happiness and prosperity.

Not all female characters were as fortunate as Jane
Elmily or Mary Watts. In "The Mechanic's Wife," by Mary
Leman Gillies, the main character, Susan Morris, leads a
tragic life because she marries a selfish man who pursues
his own selfish interests. Because Philip Morris neglects

his wife, she dies, worn out from the hard life she must

57

endure.1“ This tale, printed in the Enquirer and in the

 

Adrian Michigan Expositor, provides a fictional account of

 

the heartbreak that many real-life women must have suffered.
Another sad tale, "The Seamstress," was printed in the
Coldwater Sentinel. Author Charles J. Peterson said that
the young woman, an orphan, must toil late into the night
to scratch out a living. Residing in a miserable apartment,
she barely has enough wood for a fire. Exhausted by her
labors, she cries to God for mercy and falls asleep,
dreaming she is reunited with her parents. By story's end
her prayers-are answered. Her dream passes into reality and
in death the weary seamstress finds relief from her earthly

cares .1 5

This story demonstrates that even those fictional
females who suffered would be vindicated in the end if they
led a righteous life. °

In "The‘Widow's Will," the themes of alcoholism and
death are-both used. The tale, printed in the Niles
Republican, begins with Mrs. watkins on her deathbed. She
summons a Mr. Rowland to her home. Years ago, the Widow
Watkins owned the farm, originally a gift from her father on
her wedding day. But Rowland introduced Mr. Watkins to
liquor and he eventually tricked the drunkard out of the
mortgage to the home, forcing the widow to pay rent if she
chose to Stay there. As she dies, Mrs. Watkins makes
Rowland the ”heir to the tears she cries," and then the
widow's soul is summoned to God, who has said "vengeance is

mine and I will repay." 1‘

58

At least one female character was shown as having a
career and some influence in society. In Mrs. E.M. Seymour's

"The School Mistress," published in the Oakland Gazette and

 

the Jackson American Citizen, the title character is Julia
Wescott, the new teacher in town. Tom Jones, the 12-year-old
"bad boy" of the class, tries to intimidate the new teacher,
but Miss Wescott understands human nature and decides to
help mold young Tom into a better man. By gaining his trust
and making him feel important, Julia Wescott changes Tom.
He eventually becomes successful as a lawyer and gives the
school mistress credit for his achievement.17

Three stories from the frontier press, "The Young
Bride," "The Old House and the Young Wife," and "A Modern
Wife," all deal with the high expectations of newlywed wives.
In Mrs. E. Wellmont's "A Modern Wife," Belinda, about to
marry Mr. Hodge, continually tells her aunt about the
luxurious existence she plans to lead. Shortly after their
marriage, it is revealed that Mr. Hodge has stolen money.
When asked why he committed such a crime, Hodge replies, "To
please my wife's fancy...she wanted to live like other

1' So even though Mr.

peOple, and I wished to gratify her."
Hodge committed the crime, the moral is it was Belinda's
fault. ‘

The women in "The Young Bride" and "The Old House and
the Young Wife" both learned to quit complaining about their

station in life. In the first story, Emma West badgers her

husband Charles to spend $75 for a new sofa. Charles takes

59

her for a walk to Mrs. Wright's house, where she sees the
plight of the widow and her hungry children. Upon returning
home, Charles gives Emma the $75 and tells her she can spend
the money as she wishes. Seeing the error of her ways,

Emma takes the money and helps the children of the sickly
Mrs. Wright.”

In "The Old House," Dr. Lawrence Bell, a middle-aged
physician in a small New England town, takes a young bride,
Charlotte. The bride, who grew up in posh Boston
surroundings, finds Bell's old house unsuitable and
continually pleads for a new dwelling. While walking in
the woods the couple gets caught in a rainstorm and.must
seek shelter in a nearby hut. There Charlotte sees how a
poor widow and her children exist in humble surroundings yet’
are still appreciative of God's blessings. Charlotte learns
just how lucky she is 'and no longer yearns for more.“ Like
Emma West, she learns to be satisfied with what she has.

Although Charlotte Bell and Emma West eventually
resolved their problems, other fictional females did.not.

In "Conjugal Endearments," Mr. and Mrs. Snapdragon have a
bitter argument during breakfast that seems to indicate they
really dislike each other and should have nevermarried!1
An untitled story in the Grand Rapids Grand River Eagle
follows the marriage of William and Harriet Snooks. After
six months of marriage, Harriet predicts they will stay
happily married. "Oh, William...it will last and we shall

see many years even happier than this, for our love will

60

grow stronger," says Harriet. To say the least, Harriet's
pr0phecy is incorrect. After six years, the Snooks are
arguing at the breakfast table, just like Mr. and Mrs.
Snapdragon. William complains that Harriet neglected to
pass the sugar. As the children begin to cry, Harriet slaps
her daughter. William reprimands his wife; yet when his son
tears up the newspaper, he strikes him and is rebuked by
Harriet. "Let me tell you.ma'am," says William. "I'll hear
it no longer. You are as snappish and surly as a she-dog -
and if there's a divorce to be had in the land I'll have it...
Oh that I could Once more be a bachelor..."22 Both the
Snapdragons and the Snooks were examples of how bad a
marriage could be if the wrong two peOple got together.

In "Connubial Chit Chat," Julia and James Jones are
celebrating their second wedding anniversary. During the
festivities they recall that a "certain old raven" wrongly
predicted that their marriage would be riddled with
arguments. Julia recalls that a "Mr. Sawyer" said these
words, while James says it was a "Mr. Brown." By the tale's
conclusion, James has left his wife, "slamming the door with
violence." Author Laura Cleveland, who "witnesses" the
scene, said she was thankful for her own old-maidenhood,
where she could possess a garret, "with no more quarrelsome
companions than a teapot and a parrot."23

The life of old-maidenhood was examined in "Delicate
.Attentions," where the main characters were the five Blinks

sisters: Juliana, Sarah, Belinda, Wilhelmina and Saphronia.

61

Although they were "the toasts of the bloods, the belles of
the balls, and the beauties of the commencement," they
rejected too many suitors and became old maids. When it
came to marriage, the anonymous writer said, "they wouldn't
when they could, and they couldn't when they would." So,
because they were too choosy, the Blinks sisters gave up the
love-chase and like sensible girls, became chatty, pleasant
and agreeable old maids!“

A similar fate awaited Lydia Little, one of the "most
.vain, shrewd and heartless coquettes that ever made a
bonfire of true hearts in order to laugh at the flame." In
"Lydia Little's Lovers," the manipulative Lydia is outfoxed
when she turns her two suitors, Brown and-White, against one
another. The two men discover her scheme, become good
friends and tell Lydia to forget it}5 ‘

In "The Trifler" by Ellen Ashton, and "Nose at a
Masquerade Ball," by an anonymous author, women outsmarted
men. In "The Trifler,f a male version of Lydia Little is
tripped up by his own greed. The story tells how Harry
Colbert woos the affections of Eveline Vallier and Sophy
Green. Eveline was amiable, pretty and rich, but had no wit,
while SOphy was pretty with a fine wit. Torn between the
desire for SOphy's hand and Eveline's money, he eventually
loses them both, because he is so "base, fickle and selfish."26

The female character also outsmarts the man in "Nose at
a Masquerade Ball," a short story in the Grand River Eagle.

At an elegant masquerade ball, a man becomes infatuated with

62

a woman he meets and is convinced she is divinely beautiful.
For most of the story he pleads for her to remove her mask.
She finally agrees and to his horror, beneath it lies a huge
nose. His reaction is less than kind:
What a nose!...a beet root, a scymitar-a knife
case-an Egyptian pyramid - Great heavens and they

say our country is reformed! Why then, do they

submit to such gigantic abuses...why isn't there

a law against such exaggeration of the human nose.
Although he tries to avoid the lady for the rest of the
evening, she sits beside him during dinner. During the meal
she removes a second mask and reveals that the gigantic nose
was also a disguise. Thus the man lost his beauty fair
because of his own rudenessfi27 Stories like "The Trifler"
and "Nose at a Masquerade Ball" show that fiction writers
depicted women as having the ability to outsmart men.

In both poetry and short stories, women were depicted
as brave individuals who were willing to give their lives
to help build a nation. In "The Patriot Martyr," Mellicent
Granville aids the patriot's cause during the Revolutionary
War and dies a hero just moments after the Declaration of

28

Independence is read to a cheering crowd. The Enquirer and

 

the Oakland Gazette each reprinted a poem titled "The

Pilgrim Mothers," first published in the New York Evening

 

ngE, that depicted women as helping to lay the foundation
for a free country}9

Two short stories, "The Matron's Defence" and "Polly
Dust's Long Fight with the Commanches," depicted women in

actual battle situations. "The Matron's Defence," reprinted

63

in the Standard from the New York Times, told of how three

 

 

Kentucky women defended themselves against a group of Wyandot
Indians after their men folk had been killed. In a fierce
battle, the three heroines exacted their revenge against the
"swarthy warriors." By the end of the day, Miriam, Hope and
Alice had shot, axed and knived 11 of the Indians.30 Equally
brave was Polly Dust, a widow struggling for survival in
Texas. Arriving home to find that Indians have slain her
infant daughter and kidnapped another child, Polly prepares
to fight the Indians when they return to burn her cabin. An
expert shot with the rifle, Polly successfully defends
herself against the savages. Thanks to Polly's courage and
cool manner during a crisis, her daughter is rescued and her

1 In both tales, the women

land is saved from the Indians.3
characters react to difficult frontier situations with
courage and Skill. 7

Fiction in the frontier press was not highly regarded
by critics, but it does provide a glimpse of how writers of
that era depicted women. Women who married the man they
loved, like Kate Darlington, usually led happy and prosperous
lives, while other women like Minnie Clifton and the Blinks
sisters did not get their man and became old maids. Some
women, like Julia Wescott, chose careers like teaching and
were able to influence others, while some, like the Widow
Watkins, just never seemed successful. The theme that hard

work paid off was illustrated in the happiness and prosperity

of Jane Elmily. Other young wives like Emma West and

64

Charlotte Bell learned to be content with their fortunes,
while women like Harriet Snooks became bitter and unhappy
wives. Not all bad marriages were the woman's fault--many
were ruined by the husband's alcoholism. And the theme of
courage among frontier women was depicted in the tales of
Polly Dust and Miriam, Hope and Alice, who were as strong-
and brave as any man. So according to the fiction in the
frontier newspapers studied, women who married well, worked
hard, and remained courageous would thrive. Other women who
suffered were shown as receiving vindication from God. ////
In the next chapter, the study will shift its emphasis
from fictional characters to real women like Jenny Lind,

Queen Victoria and Jane Grey Swisshelm.

ENDNOTE S

1Grand River Eagle, 3 August 1849, p. 1.

2Fred Lewis Pattee, The Feminine Fifties (Port
Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, Inc., 1966), pp. 50-52.

 

3June Sochen, Herstory (New York: Alfred Publishing Co.,
1974), p. 114.

'Ibid., p. 142.

sHelen Woodward, The Lady Persuaders (New York: Ivan
Obolensky, Inc., 1960), p. 7.

6Grand River Eagle, 27 July 1849, p. l.
7Hillsdale Whig Standard, 9 October 1849, p. 1.
“Hillsdale Whig Standard, 16 October 1849, p. 1.
9Marshall Statesman, 3 October 1349, p. 1.
1°Woodward, p. 22.

“W: 2 March 1850. p. 4 Marshall Statesman,
20 February 1850, p. l.

 

12Coldwater Sentinel, 27 July 1849, p. 1.
13Niles Republican, 8 September 1849, p. 1.

1"Grand Rapids Enquirer, 17 July 1850, p. 1; Michigan
Expositor, 19 March 1850, p. l.

 

 

15Coldwater Sentinel, 6 July 1349, p. 4.

16Niles Republican, 20 April 1350, p. 1.

 

17Oakland Gazette, 10 November 1849, p. 1; American
Citizen, 24 April 1850, p. 1.

 

1°Oakland Gazette, 29 December 1849, p. 1.

19American Citizen, 28 November 1849, p. 1.

 

2°Coldwater Sentinel, 21 September 1849, p. 1.

21Grand River Eagle, 21 January 1350, p. 1.

 

23Grand River Eagle, 28 January 1850, p. 1.

65

66

23Grand River Eagle, 13 July 1349, p. 1.

2"Oakland Gazette, 1 June 1850, p. l.

25Grand River Eagle, 14 January 1850, pp. 1-2.

26Coldwater Sentinel, 3 August 1849, p. 1.

27Grand River Eagle, 13 July 1349, p. 1.
-2‘Kalamazoo Gazette, 9 November 1849, pp. 1-2.

29Grand Rapids Enquirer, 31 October 1849, p. 1;
Oakland Gazette, 8 September 1849, p. 1.

3°Hillsdale Whig Standard, 13 November 1849, p. 1.

31Grand Rapids Enquirer, 8 May 1850. p. l.

CHAPTER VI
IN THE LIMELIGHT:

FAMOUS WOMEN WHO RECEIVED COVERAGE
IN THE FRONTIER PRESS

She has occupied through life, with eminent
and equal property and dignity, an humble and
exalted position.

--Eulogy for Dolley Madison
published July 23, 13491

Although the Michigan frontier press was usually
concerned with the merits of political candidates and new
legislative measures, it did take space to report on the
lives of famous women. Among the numerous Speeches by
President Zachary Taylor, Henry Clay, Lewis Cass and John
Calhoun, the frontier press provided some brief sketches and
filler material about notable women such as Jenny Lind, Dolley
Madison and Queen Victoria. It also quoted journalist Jane
Grey Swisshelm.and Swedish author Fredrika Bremer. Coverage
in the frontier press of both famous and ordinary women is
the subject of this research. This chapter will analyze what
was said about these famous women of July 1849 to July 1850.

POpular singer Jenny Lind (1820-1887) was one of
the most frequently mentioned women in the Michigan

frontier press during this 13—month period. The "Swedish

67

68

Nightingale" made her long-awaited American debut in 1850
under the direction of Phineas T. Barnum.‘Z When she signed
for the tour it was a coup for Barnum because she was at the
height of her career.3 Barnum gave her tour a tremendous
promotional buildupf’ By the time she arrived in New York
on September 1, 1850, newspapers were issuing extra editions
and 20,000 people had gathered at the wharf where she landed.5
The Michigan press covered attempts by Barnum to Sign
Lind for the concert tour and reprinted letters Barnum had
written to other newspapers. One letter that illustrates
this appeared in the Niles Republican on November 24, 1849.
Reprinting a letter Barnum sent to the Baltimore Sun, the
Republican said that the showman was offering Lind up to

6

$200,000, plus expenses to sing in America. Other Michigan

papers like the Grand Rapids Enquirer7 and the Hillsdale

 

Whig Standard° printed lists of when and where her concerts
were scheduled.

Along with the particulars about her scheduled tour,
the press also discussed Lind's personality. The press
coverage depicted Lind as a beautiful, talented and generous
woman who had enchanting powers and incredible charisma. It
is difficult to tell whether the stories about Lind are the
truth or merely publicity. One such tale, which the
Kalamazoo Gazette reprinted from the London Athenaeum,
portrays the singer's generosity to devoted fans. The story
tells how Lind stopped at the house of an old woman while

walking one day. While there the woman spoke to Miss Lind,

69

not knowing she was the "Swedish Nightingale." The old
woman said, "I have lived a long time in the world, and
desire nothing before I die but to hear Jenny Lind." Upon
hearing this, Miss Lind broke into song, and with an
impromptu concert, gave the woman the gift of a lifetime.9

The news about Lind depicted her personality as above
reproach. Her singing talent was also receiving rave
reviews. The Niles Republican ran a typically favorable
critique:

An English critic described the voice of

"Swedish Nightingale" as unlike that of any other

singer..in the expression of hope, joy or grief,

no tones of human voice or instrument can compare

to those of Jenny Lind. They penetrate the inmost

recesses of the heart, and touch insensibly the

most mysterious chord in our nature, the vibration

of which causes the gushing tear to flow

involuntarily41°
By reading the frontier press coverage of Lind's'personality
it becomes apparent that newspapers were willing to give her
credit for a unique talent. She was depicted as having a
generous and kind personality despite stardom. Thus,
readers of the frontier press were presented with the role
model of a talented career woman who could handle both her
professional and private lives with success.

Favorable coverage was also heaped upon another Swedish
import, Fredrika Bremer (1801-1865). A writer, reformer and
champion of women's rights, Bremer visited the United States

where she was welcomed in New England for her stand against

slavery .1 1

70

The Kalamazoo Gazette announced in October 1849 that
the "charming Swedish authoress" was about to arrive in New
York on the next steamer from Europe31' By November the
Jackson American Citizen had coverage of her arrival, and it
reprinted a Godey's Ladyfs Book account of her early life}3
During the fall of 1849 Bremer became the toast of the
literary circle. The Adrian Michigan Expositor reprinted a
piece from the Providence Journal describing Bremer.

She is a chatty, pleasant body, and looks

kind and considerate enough to be a pattern maiden

aunt to all little children who love gingerbread

and good stories. She is pronounced...to be a

most truthful, unassuming, and lovely character.

She is one of those persons whose extreme plain-

ness, are long, grows quite agreeable, and you

think more of her fine and beautiful hand than of

her ungraceful figure and prominent nose}“

Thus, like Lind, she was depicted as being a famous woman
who did not let papularity change her basic good'nature.

The great deal of attention paid to Bremer's journeys
irritated one writer from the Chicago Journal. The
anonymous writer said that newspapers were exemplifying a
system of "toadyism" (or servile flattery) to Miss Bremer,
chronicling her every movement with the gravity of a court
journal. The writer then provided a parody of the Bremer -
coverage, which was reprinted in the Kalamazoo Gazette.

Miss Bremer is remarkable - she has two ears

and four fingers on her right hand; the thumb

exclusive. Her exact weight has not been ascer-

tained, but her age we are happy to say is known

to be about 40. It is a noteworthy fact that Miss

Bremer's mother was a woman - which satisfactorily

accounts for her being the maternal relative of
the distinguished authoress}s

71

One American woman writer rivaled Bremer for compliments
and coverage in the frontier press. She was Jane Grey
Swisshelm, (1815-1884), who published the Pittsburgh Saturday
Visiter from 1847 to 1857. The Visiter won respectful

recognition from Horace Greeley in his New York Tribune,

 

Godey's Lady's Book and other prominent publications.
Because of its intense political style, the Visiter was
widely quoted by newspapers throughout the country, and even
when damned, its views were circulatedil‘

The American Citizen said that ”Mrs. Swisshelm...boasts
that she holds a baby on one arm, while she scribbles away
with the other."17 And scribble she did--on topics such as
women's fashions, marriage and women's rights. Beginning in
1849, Swisshelm published a weekly series of "Letters to

Country Girls" explaining her viewsJ18

In reading material
written by Swisshelm it can be seen how a famous woman
depicted the women of her time.

Swisshelm chastised foolish women who were prisoners to
the fripperies of the day's styles. But she did not go as

19

far as to advocate the bloomer. The Republican printed

 

her opinion on pantaloons:

...it would be too humiliating to be met and
mistaken for a man...we shall use all our influence
to preserve a man's right to his pantaloons in-
violate.i They ought to be his, and his only, for
they are too ugly for anybody else to wear.°
SWisshelm said marriage was a union that should be

renewed continually by the-free will of both parties. "It

is a base prostitution of the name and object of marriage to

72

bind two to live together, contrary to the will of each,"
she said.21 In January 1850, Swisshelm.wrote a sharply
critical piece combining her views on marriage and:
fashionable girls:

There are hundreds of girls in every large
city who parade the streets in feathers, flowers,
silk and laces, whose hands are as soft and white
as uselessness can make them, whose mothers keep
boarders for a living for their idle daughters.
These mothers will..do the most menial drudgery...
while their hopeful daughters spend their mornings
lounging around in bed, reading some silly book,
taking lessons in French, fixing finery, and the
like.

Swisshelm went on to say that these "piano playing
simpletons" married equally brainless husbands and the two
ninnies spent their money foolishly and commenced on empty
lives with no other prospect than living at someone else's
expense .2 2 -

The Michigan papers reprinting Swisshelm's material

praised her writing and her opinions. The Kalamazoo Gazette

 

said she was a lady who talked right out on all subjects?"3
The Grand Rapids Grand River Eagle called her "one of the
pleasantest and most original writers of the age."2“
Swisshelmfs ability to show off the follies of both sexes
earned her the praise of the Expositor which said she was "a
woman of correct principles" and one of the very few who
could do something to reform society.25

Other women merited some comment in the Michigan
frontier press. Dorothea Dix (1802-1887), the social
reformer who dedicated her life to helping the mentally ill,

was praised by the Statesman as "the Crazy Angel" who wakes

73

up the minds of the public in behalf of the insane." In an

article reprinted from the Detroit Tribune, the Statesman

 

also described Dix's visit to Michigan nine years earlier.26
Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910), the first female to receive
the M.D. degree in the United States also made news. Having
received her degree on January 3, 1849, she went to Europe
for further study.27 Her trip to Paris was covered in the
Standard and the Kalamazoo Gazette. The papers said she had
bewildered the faculty with her diploma authorizing her to
”dose and bleed and wmputate with the best of them." They
also said she was young and rather good looking, her manner
indicated great energy of character; and she entered her
career from motives of duty.“ This coverage depicts
Blackwell as entering a profession and having pr0per motives
in doing so. '

The press took note of the death and funeral of Dolley
Madison, the former first lady, in July 1849. The Statesman
said that "Mrs. Madison...was an American jewel," and a

counselor and friend to the late President Madison.“ The

Coldwater Sentinel said that despite little education she

 

was considered graceful and pleasing, with an inexhaustable
good-nature and captivating manners.30 The Expositor
described the funeral scene for Mrs. Madison at St. John's
Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C.31'

Queen Victoria was evaluated as a mother in an issue of

the Standard. Victoria, then the mother of seven children,

 

was said to be trying to produce a dozen aspirants for the

74

throne. "England never produced a sovereign who promises to
do more for the country than little Victoria," said the

Standard.32 The EXpositor also said that the queen had

 

donated to the fund promoting female emigration to Australia .33
The Standard also used filler pieces about other famous

women giving away money to worthy causes. Miss Catherine

Beecher (1800-1878), an American educator, was credited by

the Standard for giving $1,000 to help build a Milwaukee

high school for young ladies.3“ The Standard also said that

 

Charlotte Cushman (1816-1876), a famous actress, gave $1,000
toward establishing a house and school of industry in New
York City.35

For women in the limelight of 1850, press coverage was
almost always favorable. When Jenny Lind and Fredrika Bremer
came to America, they were showered with accolades from the
press, including Michigan's. While the newspapers may or
may not have been aware of Barnum's motives for publicity,
their sensationalistic coverage of Lind and Bremer's tours
are not unlike modern-day preoccupation with popular
entertainers.

Generally, the press seems to have given favorable
reviews to women writers and other professionals. A
journalist like Swisshelm.was quoted and complimented
regularly, and reformers like Dorothea Dix were praised for
their efforts. Yet the queen of the most powerful country
on earth was described as "little Victoria." The

significance of this coverage is that readers on the

75

frontier could read about women having careers. Women like
Swisshelm could present their views for both men and women
to read. And frontier women could have the chance to read
about women pioneering professions like medicine. Perhaps
girls on the frontier that read about Elizabeth Blackwell or
Jenny Lind grew up hoping to be doctors or singers.

-In the next chapter, an examination will be made of how
the Michigan press handled the issues of women's rights and

education for females.

ENDNOTE S

1Marshall Statesman, 23 July 1349, p. 2.
2Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979 ed., s.v. "Jenny Lind."
3Fred Lewis Pattee, The Feminist Fifties (Port

Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, Inc., 1966), pp. 148-
156.

l'G.E. Morris Allen, "P.T. Barnum's 1850 Press Campaign
in New York City to Herald Jenny Lind's American Concert
Tour" (Master's thesis, The American University, 1966).
This thesis studies the publicity effort by showman Barnum
that helped make Lind's 1850 American tour a spectacular
success.

sPattee, pp. 148-156.

6Niles Republican, 24 November 1849, p. 1.
7Grand Rapids Enquirer, 10 April 1850, p. 1.
aHillsdale Whig Standard, 18 June 1850, p. 1.
9Kalamazoo Gazette, 15 February 1850, p. 1.

1°Niles Republican, 4 May 1850, p. l.

11Eggyclopedia Britannica, 1981 ed., s.v. "Fredrika
Bremer."

12Kalamazoo Gazette, 5 October 1849, p. 1.
13American Citizen, 7 November 1849, p. 1.
1"Michigan Expositor, 26 March 1850, p. 1.
15Kalamazoo Gazette, 18 January 1850, p. 1.

16Dorothy Langdon Yates, "Belles of Freedom, Three
Anti-slavery Editors: Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, Lydia
Maria Child, and Jane Grey Swisshelm" (Master's thesis,
Michigan State University, 1969), p. 151.

17Ame£ican Citizen, 2 January 1850, p. 3.

1°Yates, p. 181.

191bid., p. 153.

2°Niles Republican, 6 October 1849, p. 2.

76

77

21Kalamazoo Gazette, 28 June 1850, p. 1.

22Kalamazoo Gazette, 18 January 1850, p. 1.

 

23Kalamazoo Gazette, 18 January 1850, p. 1.

 

2"Grand River Eagle, 30 November 1849, p. 1.

 

25Michigan Expositor, 29 January 1850, p. l.

 

26Marshall Statesman, 27 March 1850, p. l.

 

27June Sochen, Herstory (New York: Alfred Publishing
C00, 1974)! p. 1140

 

2°Hillsdale Whig Standard, 7 August 1849, p. 1;
Kalamazoo Gazette, 27 July 1849, p. 2.

2”Marshall Statesman, 23 July 1349, p. 2.

 

3°Co1dwater Sentinel, 27 July 1349, p. 4.
31Michigan Expositor, 31 July 1849, p. 2.
32Hillsdale WhigpStandard, 25 June 1350, p. 1.
33Michigan Expositor, 19 March 1850, p. 1.
a"Hillsdale Whig Standard, 2 October 1849, p: l.

'snillsdale Whig,Standard, 21 May 1350, p. 2.

CHAPTER VII

WINGS OF REBELLION:
SEEKING MORE RIGHTS AND A BETTER EDUCATION

For my own obscure self I can say that every
fiber of my being rebelled, although silently, all
the hours that I sat and sewed gloves for a
miserable pittance which, as it was earned, could
never be mine. I wanted to work, but I wanted to
collect my wages. That was my fomm of rebellion
against the life into which I was born.

--Charlotte Woodward1

As one writer put it, the 1850s women's rights movement
was "a rebellion that made the decade a battlefield of

words."2

This chapter examines what was said on‘the
"battlefield" that extended to selected newspapers on the
Michigan frontier. It is important to see just what
frontier readers had an opportunity to read about the
women's rights movement. Issues like temperance, women's
political rights, employment rights and educational righpgmm
were covered. Some newspapers allowed leaders of the

women's rights movement space in their pages, while others

merely mentioned them or dismissed them as loud-mouthed /

/,
J

wwwflfl.
radicals. Before examining the depiction of such issues in

the Michigan frontier press, a background of what is

happening in the women's rights movement Will be provided.

78

 

79

After the background section, this chapter is divided into
three sections: the first on political rights, the second
on employment rights and temperance reform and the third on

educational rights. A concluding section follows.

Background on Women's Rights Movement

Legally dead. As late as the Civil War, that was the
status of a married woman almost everywhere in the United
States. Under the law, the husband was the master of a
woman and her pocketbook; she had no control over her
children; if she earned money her husband took it over. In
terms of her legal rights, she was classed with minors,
lunatics and idiots}

In 1850, women could not sit on juries. Professional
schools usually would not accept women (women who studied
law could not take bar examinations in any state). The
women's rights movement before the Civil War exposed the
plight of women in America, but was not too successful in
initiating any immediate changes.“

A milestone for women's rights came on July 13, 1848,
when Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), called together
several hundred women in Seneca Falls, New York. This is
usually credited as the first women's rights convention in
the United States. Stanton and others composed the
Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions which said women

were equal to men.5 Here is an excerpt from that

declaration:

 

80

The history of mankind is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward
woman...

He has never permitted her to exercise her
inalienable right to elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the
formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given
to the most ignorant and degraded men--both natives
and foreigners...

He has denied her the facilities'for obtaining
a thorough education, and colleges being closed to
her... 6

Many male commentators ignored Seneca Falls or mocked it.
One journalist described the women in attendance as
"divorced wives, childless women, and some old maids."7
Although there was no mention of the Seneca Falls meeting

in the Michigan frontier press from July 1849 through July
1850, the newspapers did discuss a Salem, Ohio women's
rights convention and women's rights issues. But what
transpired at Seneca Falls laid the foundation for the Salem.

convention.

Coverage of Political Rights

During the half-decade 1850-1855, six women's rights
conventions were held in various cities of Ohio. The first
of these meetings took. place in Salem, a small town in the
northeastern corner of the state. At least 500 women
attended the meeting. The purpose of the Salem convention
of April 1850 was to influence lawmakers to incorporate
women's rights into a new state constitution.’

Six of the newspapers in this study provided accounts

of the Ohio convention or at least referred to it. The

81

Marshall Statesman said that 500 delegates had come to Salem
to "obtain an equal participation in the social, civil
pecuniary, and religious re3ponsibilities." The article
said letters from Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
were read in Salem. The Statesman supported the women
saying Ohio had a "disgraceful and disorderlylegislature."
The paper said:
The right of suffrage, once extended to

females, would place political power in the hands

of those who would consign to oblivion the un-

principled politicians...of Ohio...

The Statesman also said it hOped the suffrage movement wOuld

come to Michigan.9 The Jackson American Citizen said that

 

the women of Michigan, as those of Ohio, were already
talking about the right to vote for public officials. The
Citizen said a mass meeting was being discussed to appeal
to the State Convention for the right to vote?” -

.Of the newspapers studied, the Niles Republican gave
the most coverage. It was the only newspaper to print the
text of 22 resolutions submitted to the convention.“1 A week
earlier it ran a lengthy letter from Mrs. Lydia Jane Pierson
of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, one of the organizers for the
Ohio convention. Although Pierson was unable to attend the
affair, she did mail a letter expressing her views to the
delegates. In this message, printed in the Republican and
the Adrian Michigan Expositor, Pierson said women had mental
capabilities equal to men and advocated a better educational

system for women. She also could not understand how women

could be excluded from the right to vote as long as their

82

property was taxed. She also stood firmly against early
marriages:
The greatest bane of women, and the strongest
obstacle to her elevation, is the deplorable

manner of early marriages. Very few girls attain

their growth, fewer still maturity of constitution

and intellect, before they are made wives and

mothers.12
Thus, readers of the Republican and the Expositor at least
received some exposure to the views of women's rights leaders
like Pierson.

But not all Michigan editors allowed their readers
access to accounts of the convention. The Centreville
WeStern Chronicle informed readers that it had been
furnished with the entire proceedings of the Ohio convention
but said it would not print them because they were too long.
The Chronicle would only say that the convention passed

resolutions claiming the right to suffrage and eligibility

 

to office. Despite the Chronicle's failure to print the
proceedings the paper said:
We...hope that we shall never fail to

influence...any pr0position designed to protect

the rights, extend the sphere, promote the

happiness, and.ameliorate the condition of

Heaven's last, best gift to manJ13
The sincerity of the Chronicle's claim of support for women's
rights is questionable, considering the paper could not find
room to print more about the Ohio convention. When male
political leaders gave lengthy speeches that sometimes

filled two issues of the newspaper, it must be asked why the

women's rights convention was not given similar space.

83

Another editorial supporting women's rights that seems
insincere appeared in the Grand River Eagle. In an article
originally printed in the Albany Evening Journal, the paper
said:

We have never failed...to give cordial
support...to protect the rights, ameliorate the
condition, enlarge the sphere and promote the
happiness of the gentler and better sex...But
instead of being half satisfied with their lot,
the women of this country are demanding radical
reforms.

The Eagle used an excerpt of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's letter
to the Ohio convention and said it would not mind granting
women the right to vote, if they would not "cease to be
women." What they meant by this is unclear. The attitude
given here seems contradictory; support for women's rights,
yet condemnation to women leaders for demanding radical
reforms .1 ” °

Other positive statements for the movement were given

space in the Republican and the Hillsdale Whig Standard.

The Republican, which gave favorable coverage to the Ohio

 

convention, also printed a piece titled, "Woman's Rights,"
by Grace Greenwood. The pOpular author said she was
thankful that women were finally gaining a perception of

what was impeding their development and hindering their full

5

potentialfi' An anonymous woman, known only as "C."

contributed a pro-rights piece to the Standard. "C" said:

I wish my sex would arise in her strength and
cast off that hallucination of asserted inferiority
with which men art constantly coupling to the name
of woman}6

84

The comments by "C" show that at least one woman was
interested in expressing her views for women's rights, yet
did not want her name in the paper. No reason was given for
her reason to remain anonymous.

Another woman writer, Mrs. E.M. Sheldon, contributed an

article to the Expositor decrying women's rights. In

 

"Respect for the Ladies," Mrs. Sheldon said that it was
"absurd to take a woman away from her apprOpriate sphere and
place her...amid the turmoil of political life." The author
made it clear that she did not believe women were inferior,
only that their minds were constituted differently.17
Sheldon's piece indicates that there was opposition by women
themselves to the women's rights movement. It also
demonstrates that Michigan newspapers provided pro and con
statements by women on the suffrage issue. While the

Republican ran the positive statements of Pierson, the

 

Expositor published the negative feelings of Sheldon.

The Kalamazoo Gazette and the American Citizen did not
veil their disdain for the women's rights movement and its
leaders. The Gazette, referring to a group of women's rights
supporters from Syracuse, New York, said that the women may
have been smart, but they were more famous for "smutty faced
babies, heelless stockings and hen-pecked husbands than for
profound wisdom or unostentatious benevolence.”1° The
Citizen, printing material from Godey's, poked fun at the

term, ”women's rights":

85

We hear much of the rights of women. I insist
upon it, that they have the right, like their blessed
New England mothers, to be released from strolling
over the country as public lecturers, from wasting
time in street gossip and novel reading, and to make
their homes tidy and happy.19
It is clear from the comments of both papers that they
resented those who supported the women's rights movement,
and depicted those who spoke out on its behalf as neglecting
their families or wasting their time.
The Kalamazoo Gazette, the American Citizen and the

Michigan Expositor each used material against the movement

and its leaders. The Expositor also used.material favorable

 

to the movement, as did the Republican and the Standard.

 

These three papers allowed readers, even anonymous ones, to
submit material, and in effect, allowed other readers to
judge the material for themselves. The Eagle and the
Chronicle both gave endorsements to women's rights but

seemed to contradict themselves.

The Temperance Cause and Employment Rights

While women of this era sought voting rights and an
improved legal status, the frontier press also shows they
supported the temperance cause and they bargained for higher
wages. The Coldwater Sentinel reported that the Grand Union
of the Daughters of Temperance had met in Coldwater, and the
paper presented a list of the group's officers.“ The

Oakland Gazette provided the text of an address given befOre

 

the Mary Washington Union No. 20 of the Daughters of

86

Temperance in Pontiac, Michigan. In the address, an unnamed
"sister" called on her fellow Temperance Society members to
work on influencing their children and husbands to stay away
from that "monster" alcohol.21 A similar address, by a Miss
Rees to a division of the Sons of Temperance in Georgia, was

printed in the Republican. Rees complained that the Sons of

 

Temperance excluded women from the secrets of their order.22
All three newspapers allowed the Daughters of Temperance and
its members to speak for themselves, and the press provided
no favorable or unfavorable comments with the speech texts.

Women seeking higher wages on the job received the
coverage and support of four newspapers in the study. The
Grand Rapids Enquirer told about a group of women in
Fairhaven, Connecticut, who struck for higher wages for
opening oysters.23 The EXpositor, the Standard, and the
Pontiac Jacksonian praised a group of seamstresses in Adrian,
Michigan, that banded together to not work for prices lower
than they had agreed to. Condemning the "niggardly"
compensation the seamstresses received for their industry,
the papers said, "Girls, remember the motto of Davy Crockett--
be sure you are right, then go ahead." They added that "of
all the human specimens of infamy we deSpise him the most who
would rob a woman of the full value of her labor."2~ Thus,
at least these four papers depicted women as being justified
in seeking adequate wages for their efforts.

Woman's advocacy for suffrage, temperance and employment

rights received coverage in the frontier press. So did their

87

effort to improve education. The next section of this
chapter will examine what the frontier press said about

education for women.

Education for Women

Writers and reformers like Sarah Josepha Hale, Jane
Grey Swisshelm and Lydia Jane Pierson considered education
for females a fundamental right. Hale, editor of Godey's
Lady's Book said:

We have said little of the rights of women.

But her first right is to education in its widest

sense, to such education as will give her the

full development of all her personal, mental and

moral qualities. Having that, there will be no

longer any questions about her rights.

Beginning in 1849, Swisshelm published a weekly series
of ”Letters to Country Girls” in the Pittsburgh Saturday

Visiter.26

One of the causes she supported was the education
of girls with boys. One of Swisshelm's comments on education
was printed in the American Citizen. She said in this piece
that women were generally given a "false, superficial
education" where they could do little more than quote Byron
or Shakespeare. "Genuine education...gets along modestly

2 7 O
Sw1sshelm was

and attracts little attention," she said.
clearly agitated by what she considered a futile education
with no relevance to women's everyday life. At best, she

considered women who attended schools with such curriculum

as little more than showoffs.

88

In a letter printed in the Republican and the Expositor,

 

Pierson also expressed the uselessness of some schools for
girls:
...the fashionable schools for girls have

been infinitely worse than none, for it has been

their effort to smother...the little common sense

that survived the restraints of the nursery.

After being taught etiquette, the hypocritical

conventionalities of fashion, a little music and

a few French phrases...they are turned out...to

win a husband and secure a settlement. They are

married at 17, soon to become mothers, are

consigned to oblivion...
Pierson attributed most of the evils of society to poor
education. She said educators neglected to teach boys the
proper domestic skills and girls the necessary scholastic
material. If girls could attend colleges as boys do, said
Pierson, women would need no conventions for revolution or
reform. "Education of itself will make us free,” she said}8

The concepts discussed by Pierson and Swisshelm shed
light on this era's debate over what training schools and
colleges were supposed to provide women. While some saw
their function as teaching etiquette and domestic training,
others said schools should train women for the professions.
The entire educational system was undergoing change in the
frontier states. Between 1825 and 1850, all the frontier
states became part of a crusade for state free-school
systems. Even the teaching profession was changing as women
began to invade a vocation that had been reserved for men?9

Numerous special schools for girls began to appear in

Michigan as early as the 18203. In 1837, the Michigan

89

Legislature provided for each branch of the University of
Michigan to have an institution for the education of females
in the "higher branches of knowledge."3° Yet, confusion
still reigned over the role of these schools. At the Young
Ladies Seminary in Monroe City, Michigan, the catalogue
admitted that few of its graduates would "fill the learned
professions." Instead, the average women was to be the
"presiding genius of love" in the home.31

Material in the frontier press reflected the various
opinions about education for women. Female seminaries were
also discussed in one of the newspapers studied. The
Statesman announced on March 13, 1850, that a seminary for
young ladies "under the care of an accomplished and
experienced teacher" was soon to open in the village .32 Two
weeks later, the Statesman praised the female seminary,
saying its rooms were attractive and pleasant, and that the
teacher, Miss Burgess, was competent.33

Articles in the Enquirer and the American Citizen

 

stressed the importance of education for housewives. In
"Chemistry for Girls," by Dr. E. Thomson, the doctor said
that every woman should be taught chemistry to be "better
qualified to superintend domestic affairs, guard against
household accidents and save lives."3” The Citizen said that
female education was important for domestic training. A
well-trained Wife was seen as creating a better home?5
Another Citizen article said that every woman should be a

”sound_minded, well-informed female," rather than a "silly,

90

"36

giddy, heartless belle. An anonymous contributor to the

(ExPositor said that women should be educated to act and think

 

with more independence. "The great portion of our country
women are scarcely educated at all - from infancy to womanhood,
they drudge on in the kitchen and the dairy...," said the
anonymous'writer.37
The Citizen reprinted a piece from the Boston Mail which
portrays a different function of female education. The
article reported that measures were in progress for the
American Medical Education Society to provide more educated
females as practitioners. The prOposal called for a school

of instruction in Boston with an accompanying hospital. The

Citizen called it a "noble undertaking."3' The Sentinel

 

also discussed women who were applying for admission to a
Syracuse, New York, medical school. The article'cited
Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor to obtain a
medical degree, for providing these women with an example to

follow.39

Conclusions

The Michigan frontier press presented a diversity of

Opinion about the women's rights movement of 1850. Space

..‘l-NU‘B

was given to famous women, local readers and anonymous

contributors to air their views about women's rights. Somé
newspapers let their contributor's comments stand for j!
themselves, while others did not even present the speeches

of female leaders, but instead chose to deride the women's

91

rights movement. Still other papers presented contradictory
Opinions about the right to suffrage.

Women who bargained for higher wages were supported by
four of the newspapers in the study. Women supporting the
temperance cause were given coverage and the newspapers

provided no favorable or unfavorable comments with

temperance leaders' speech texts. In discussing a woman's
right to an education, newspapers provided the views Of some
famous women. The papers did not always agree on what
function education had for women in society. While some
thought schooling was to teach domestic training, others
saw it as a place to train women for the professions.

The newspapers were probably one of the few places a
frontier woman could discover what others of her sex were
thinking or doing about women's rights. PerhapS‘like the
girls who wishe to be like Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, some
women got their first taste of the women's rights movement
from the reportage and commentary in the frontier press.

While newspapers discussed serious topics such as
temperance, education and women's rights, they also printed
humorous items about women. The next chapter will examine

how humor in the frontier press depicted women.

ENDNOTES

1Barbara Mayer Wertheimer, We Were There: The Stogy of
Working Women in America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977Y)
p. 103-104. Woodward was the only participant of the Seneca
Falls Convention who lived to see women's suffrage ratified.

2Fred Lewis Pattee, The Feminine Fifties (Port
Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, Inc., 1966), p. 92.

3Helen Woodward, The Ladngersuaders (New York: Ivan
Obolensky, Inc., 1960), p. 1.

‘June Sochen, Herstory (New York: Alfred Publishing
Co., 1974), p. 134.

sSochen, p. 125.
61bid., pp. 199-203.
7Ibid., p. 127.
°Dru Riley Evarts, "Women's Rights As Covered by the
Ohio Frontier Press, 1850-1855," paper presented at the
Association for Education in Journalism Convention, Boston,
Mass., 1980.
9Marshall Statesman, 15 May 1350, p. 2.
1°American Citizen, 22 May 1850, p. 2.
11Niles Republican, 15 June 1350, p. 1.

12Niles Republican, 8 June 1850, p. 1; Michigan
Expositor, 21 May 1850, p. l.

13WeStern Chronicle, 25 May 1850, p. 2.

1"Grand River Eagle, 20 May 1350, p. 2.

15Niles Republican, 15 June 1350, p. 2.
16Hillsdale Whig Standard, 25 December 1349, p. 1.
1"Michigan Expositor, 29 January 1850, p. 1.
18Kalamazoo Gazette, 31 May 1850, p. 2.

19American Citizen, 22 May 1850, p. 2.

92

93

2°Coldwater Sentinel, 19 October 1849, p. 2.

 

21Oakland Gazette, 20 April 1850, p. 1.
22Niles Republican, 18 May 1850, p. 1.

23Grand Rapids Enquirer, 21 November 1849, p. 2.

 

2"Hillsdale Whingtandard, 23 July 1850, p. 2; Michigan
Expositor, 16 July 1850, p. 2; Pontiac Jacksonian, 31 July
1850, p. 2.

 

25Woodward, pp. 32-33.

26Dorothy Langdon Yates, "Belles of Freedom, Three Anti-
slavery Editors: Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, Lydia Maria
Child, and Jane Grey Swisshelm" (Master's thesis, Michigan
State University, 1969), p. 181.

27American Citizen, 14 November 1849, p. 1.

 

g'Niles Republican, 8 June 1850, p. 1; Michigan
Expositor, 21 May 1850, p. 1.

29Thomas Du Clark, Frontier America (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1969), p. 393.

 

3°Thomas Woody, A History Of Women's Education in the
United States (New York: The Science Press, 1929; reprinted,
New York: Octagon Books, 1974), p. 370.

31Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-
1860,” Americangguarterly 18 (Summer 1966):168.

32Marshall Statesman, 13 March 1850, p. 2.

 

33Marshall Statesman, 27 March 1850, p. 2.
3"Grand Rapids Enquirer, 3 October 1849, p. 4.
’sAmerican Citizen, 31 October 1849, p. 1.
36American Citizen, 7 November 1849, p. 1.

37Michigan Expositor, 29 July 1849, p. 2.

 

3‘American Citizen, 5 December 1849, p. 2.

39Coldwater Sentinel, 16 November 1849, p. l.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LADY EVE:
HOW HUMORISTS DEPICTED WOMEN

Mrs. Partington pr0pounds some very important.
questions. Her laSt inquiry is "If bills before
Congress are not counterfeit, why should there be
such difficulty in passing them?"

. Marshall Statesman
May 1, 18501

 

Scattered throughout the pages of the frontier press are
humorous comments and quips about women. These one-liners,
witticisms and funny stories depicted women as excessive
talkers, crabby wives and husband seekers. AlthOugh they /
occasionally outsmart the men, women are usually the butt of
male jokes. In reviewing the humor of this period, Pattee
said there were few humorous elements to female characters.
Most of the humor provided by fictional females came from
their copious use of malaprOpities3

The outrageous Mrs. Partington, a character created by-
Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber in 1847, provided many of the
malaprops in the Michigan newspapers studied? Each
newspaper studied had a Mrs. Partington story, and some used
Shillaber's unsigned tales on a weekly basis. Shillaber has
been called the "pioneer of American newspaper wits." When

he started the Mrs. Partington papers he had the field to

94

95

himself. During the 18405, Shillaber, a staff writer on the
Boston Post, wrote quips characterizing a woman patterned
after Sydney Smith's anecdote about a Mrs. Partington who
had triedto sweep back the Atlantic Oceanf’ Much of Mrs.
Partington's humor was inherent in her language, which was
meant to represent a lower class New England dialect and to
typify the speech of the American "democrat" of the mid-
nineteenth century. Her speech was often distinguished by
regional expressions, jumbled syntax and unconventional
grammar.s

Mrs. Partington's problems with the English language
are apparent in her discussion about education which
appeared in the Statesman:

For my part, I can't deceive what on airth

eddication is coming to. When I was young, if a

gal only understood the rules of distraction,

provision, multiplying, replenishing, and the

common denominators, and knew all about the rivers

and their Obituaries, and covenants, and dormitories,

the providences and umpires, they had eddication

enough.

But now they have to study bottomy, Algier-

bay, and have tO demonstrate suppositions about

the syncophants of circusses, tangents and

diagonies of paralelograms to say nothing about

the oxhides, cowsticks and abstract triangles.6

Shillaber also created some interesting incidents about
religion for Mrs. Partington's comment. One Thanksgiving,
Mrs. Partington said her minister preached about the "parody
Of the probable son."7 She also wondered why her preacher
said "Ar-mens" at the close Of every prayer. She thought he

could sometimes say "A-women." It would make just as good

grammar, she said, and would pay attention to the ladies in

96

church as well.‘ And on one trip to the museum, Mrs.
Partington asked the superintendent if she could see the
famous cutlery, "the axe of the Apostles."9

Shillaber also used humor about topical events in the
Mrs. Partington series. The Michigan press used items about
the CalifOrnia gold rush and the temperance movement. In

the Jackson American Citizen and the Grand Rapids Enquirer,

 

Mrs. Partington expressed great apprehension that the peOple
in California were going to bleed to death, because every
paper she picked up announced that another vein had been
opened;10 She also was shocked at hearing that Powers, the
‘sculptor, was on another bust. "Are there no temperance‘
societies in Rome?" she asked.”1 Although Mrs. Partington
was fictitious, she is an important character to study in
the depiction of women in the frontier press because of how
Often her tales were reprinted. Mrs. Partington was a
confused person, but she did read the newspapers and formed
Opinions about what she read, even if her views were
unorthodox.

A recurring theme in frontier humor was the depiction
of women as constant talkers. "I have never seen a woman
die with the lock-jaw," said one man in the Oakland Gazette}2
The Enquirer said that "woman...needs no eulogy, she speaks

for herself."13 The American Citizen asked why women could

 

not whistle. The answer was because she could not stop
talking long enough to fix-her mouth.‘“ The Statesman told

this story:

97

It is said that a girl in Pitsfield,
Massachusetts, was struck dumb by the firing of a
cannon. Since then it is said that a number of
married men have invited the artillery companies
to come and discharge their pieces on the
premises.

The Enguirer told of a minister speaking on the same theme:
Be not proud that our blessed Lord paid your
sex the distinguished honor of appearing first to

a female after the resurrection, for it was only

done that the glad tidings might spread the sooner}6

The talkative nature of a woman was the theme of "How
David Price Cured his Wife's Bad Temper," a short tale

reprinted in the Oakland Gazette from the Durham Chronicle.

 

 

David, a meek man and kindly spirit, had "long suffered from

the clatter-patter, never ending tongue of his worse half."

One day an herb doctor asked David how he and his wife were.

David said he was fine, but that his wife was not. When the

doctor inquired what was wrong, David said his wife had a

"bad breaking out about the mouth." The herb doctor said he

had31cure, and later took it over to Mrs. Price. The cranky

Mrs. Price chased the unwitting doctor away with a broom,

but from that day forth she was cured of her scolding habits.17
Occasionally, women were depicted as outsmarting the

men in exchanges of witty conversation. The Hillsdale Whig

 

Standard said that George II, at a masquerade party,
Observed a lady whose dress displayed a rather large portion
of her shoulders and chest. "Madame," said the monarch,
"allow me to place my hand upon that soft bosom." "Sire,"l
replied the lady, "give me your hand and I will put it upon

a much softer place." She took the hand and laid it on his

98

forehead.18

The Enquirer told Of another man outdone by a
woman: "My dear," said a gentleman to a lady who he thought
to be married, "do you wish to make a fool of me?" "No,"
replied the lady, "nature has saved me the trouble."19

Jokes based upon names were a common feature in the

frontier papers studied. The Enquirer said a Miss Julia

 

Long had recently gone before the squire to get married.
A rather absent-minded fellow, the squire asked during the
ceremony, "Julia Long, is not your name Julia Long?" "Well,
squire," said Julia in reply, "it ain't nothing shorter."2°
In "A Hint to Bachelors," printed in the Standard, a lady
named Mary Ann Aldridge had sent a note to a gentleman. She
put two r's in her first name in the signature, thus it read
"Marry Ann Aldridge." The man was a bachelor and he
accepted the proposal at once .21 The Republican told
about Widow Wiggins, age 40, who was becoming weary of
living alone at her country road residence. She made
proposals to a young man named Cushing, who was not
celebrated for his wit. But they married and she took him
home "to be her comfort in Old age." Upon hearing of this
match, a hard—hearted hag was heard to remark that "the
widow had got a very soft Cushing on her country seat."22
Another common theme was the young lady searching for a
husband and at least hoping to steal a kiss. The Kalamazoo
Gazette said that a young lady, rebuked by her mother for
kissing her beau, justified herSelf by quoting a biblical

passage: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you:

99

«23 Another young lady: han-ng

do ye even so to them.
purchased an assortment of music at a warehouse, had
returned to her carriage when she recalled a piece she had
forgotten to buy. "Sirl‘she said on entering the shop,
"there is one thing I have omitted." "What is that, madam?"
The lady said, "One Kind Kiss Before We Part," on which the
youth vaulted over the table and "saluted the fair

"2” A third young lady was told by a married

stranger.
woman that she would be better off throwing herself Off the
Niagara Falls than marrying. The young lady replied, "I
would if I thought I could find a husband at the bottom.“

From reading the humor of the frontier press, it
appears a chatty woman was the subject of many frontier
press jokes. Although they occasionally outsmarted the men,
women were usually chastised for their talkative‘natures and
mean dispositions. Unmarried women characters were depicted
as taking advantage of situations to secure a husband or
steal a kiss. The most famous female character, Mrs.
Partington was a woman who had many unorthodox opinions on
various topics of the day.

These pieces of humor are important reminders on what
peOple on the frontier probably thought about and talked
about. After reading humor items like these in the frontier
press, it is likely that people told these same jokes to
their friends. And whether or not it was a true depiction,

women were probably regarded by these joketellers as

talkative females.

100

This chapter concludes the section on the findings of
”how women were depicted in the frontier press. The next

section contains the study's conclusions.

ENDNOTES

1Marshall Statesman, 1 May 1850, p. 3.

2Fred Lewis Pattee, The Feminine Fifties (Port
Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, Inc., 1966), pp. 50-52.

3John Q. Reed, Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber (New York:
Twayne Publishers, Inc., 19727, p. 33.

l’Pattee, p. 225.

5Reed, p. 38.

6Marshall Statesman, 30 April 1850, p. 2.
7Western Chronicle, 29 September 1349, p. 1.
'Western Chronicle, 15 June 1850, p. 4.
9American Citizen, 12 June 1850, p. 1.

10Grand Rapids Enquirer, 2 January 1850, p. 2;
American Citizen, 26 December 1849, p. 4.

11Miles Republican, 23 July 1349, p. 1; Oakland
Gazette, 15 September 1849, p. 2.

12Oakland Gazette, 13 October 1849, p. 1.

13Grand Rapids Enquirer, 29 August 1849, p. 1.
1"American Citizen, 2 January 1850, p. 1.
15Marshall Statesman, 13 February 1850, p. 1.
16Grand Rapids Enquirer, 2 January 1850, p. 1.
17Oakland Gazette, 24 November 1849, p. 1.
1'Hillsdale WhigiStandard, 31 July 1349, p. 1.
19Grand Rapids Enquirer, 12 December 1849, p. 1.
2°Grand Rapids Enquirer, 12 September 1849, p. 1.
21Hillsdale Whig Standard, 30 October 1349, p. 1.
22Miles Republican, 30 March 1350, p. 3.

23Kalamazoo Gazette, 6 July 1849, p. 1.
101

102

2|’Hi'llsdale Whig Standard, 19 February 1850, p. 1.

25Oakland Gazette, 1 September 1849, p. l.

 

CHAPTER IX

CONCLUSION

This study has examined how 12 Michigan frontier
newspapers depicted women from July 1, 1849 through July
31, 1850. All 665 issues of that l3-month period were
analyzed and the depiction was divided into six categories.
By determining the themes and patterns in each of these
categories this qualitative study has attempted to develop a
portrait of how women were depicted.

The frontier press coverage of courtship and marriage
depicted women as being eager to catch a husband: The press
consistently advised women to make a careful decision in
selecting a husband because a careless mistake could have
long-lasting effects. Acceptable courting behavior for both.
men and women was discussed. Men were told to seek women
with good looks, cheerful attitudes and patient diSpositions.
Women were advised to look for non-drinking, hard-working
men who could provide them with the material wants of life.
As the Marshall Statesman said, marriage was the "great event
in a woman's life."1 Once married the woman was supposed to
provide her husband with a "place Of repose" after days full

of life's disappointments.2

103

104

At home, the wife was depicted as ruler. Caring for
her children, husband and home was her responsibility. The
”ideal" was portrayed as a patient, religious, hard-working
and cheerful woman devoted to serving others. No matter how
difficult the task or how painful the heartbreak she was
expected to use her own resourcefulness or religious faith
to get through any crisis. The good wife always had
something to do and took "hold of work as if she did not

”3 The wife's

fear to soil her hands or dirty her apron.
own comfort was her last concern. As the "angel, guardian
and guide of the family" her duty was to provide for the
physicalfland spiritual needs Of the family}

’\

C/FigtionXin the frontier press had several consistent
themes:\rwomén who married the men they loved were depicte
as leading happy and prosperous lives, while women who did
not "get their man" became Old maids. Wives like Jane ///
Elmily, who worked hard and obeyed their husbands, were
shown as leading difficult but productive livesfi‘ Writers
depicted alcohol as an evil capable of destroying families
and of leaving long-suffering wives to pick up the pieces.
Young wives like Emma West were shown as being too concerned
with social rank during the early years of marriage, but
most story lines had them seeing the error of their ways?
Before long, these young brides were helping others less
fortunate than they. And frontier women like Polly Dust

were depicted as brave heroines able to fight Indians and

survive the ordeals of pioneer life]' This frontier fiction

105

depicts women as having some voice in their own destiny.
Although they had to Obey their husbands, they could still
think and fight for themselves. By working hard and being
loyal and brave, they could have happy and productive lives.
Women could share this happiness by creating a serene and
secure home life for their families.

Famous women like Jenny Lind, Elizabeth Blackwell afld\\i
Jane Grey Swisshelm received coverage in the frontier press.)
This meant readers had access to material about women /
leading professional lives as performers, physicians and
writers. 'And the newspapers studied usually gave these
famous women favorable coverage. Some newspapers printed
the texts of speeches and letters written by well-known
women. Because the newspapers provided coverage like this,
women could use these famous female personalities as role
models.

The women's rights movement provoked much comment in
the newspapers studied. Famous women, local readers and
anonymous contributors submitted their opinions on the
subject. Some newspapers printed the views of women'
rights leaders, while others would not give Space to the
movement. Still other papers criticized the women's rights
movement and its leaders, while others presented contradictory
views on the subject. The depiction of women leaders ranged
from well-informed females seeking reform to radicals who
neglected their household duties and had "smutty-faced

babies, heelless stockings and hen-pecked husbands."°

106

Women seeking higher wages were supported by four Michigan
newspapers, and women supporting the temperance cause were
given Space in the press. In discussing a woman's right to
an education, newspapers provided a debate on the function
of education in Society. While some writers pictured
education as a method to better instruct housewives, others
saw it as a training ground for the professions.

The newspapers provided a forum for debate on the
women's rights movement. They were one Of the few sources
women had to obtain information about what others of her sex
were thinking about women's rights. It is possible that
some women got their first exposure to the women's rights
movement from.material in the frontier press.

Humor in the frontier press generally depicted women as
loud-mouthed, cantankerous wives who made life miserable for
their husbands. Occasionally women outsmarted.men in witty
exchanges, but usually the woman was the butt of a man's
joke. A particularly favorite character among frontier
editors was Mrs. Partington, whose humor came from the use
of malaprops and misconstrued meanings during discussions Of
tOpical issues.

These, the portraits of fictional and real women in the
12 Michigan frontier newspapers studied, could enhance
understanding of how both men and women perceived the role
of women in society. It was a role undergoing change, and
the coverage of women entering the work force is one

indication of this change. Historian Gerda Lerner says

107

there are two schools Of thought about the "cult of true
womanhood" described in the literature of the frontier era.
She said that some believe the portrait of the hard-working,
pious mother and wife was representative of how women really
felt and acted in society. The other school Of thought says ./
that the newspapers' and magazines' concern with woman's L4‘flc
domesticity was a response to an opposite trend in society.'
These historians-note the great changes in women's roles at
this time: lower-class women were entering factories and
middle-class women were becoming discontented with their
accustomed roles.9 These changes received coverage in the
Michigan newspapers studied. Women in the work force, most
notably the Adrian seamstresses seeking adequate wages, were
discussed.10 The discontent of some women was reflected in
the coverage of the Salem, Ohio women's suffrage°convention.
These frontier neWSpapers not only reported what was\\\
being said about women, but also may have helped women form)
an Opinion about themselves as individuals and as a sex. //
Provided she could read and Obtain a newspaper, the frontier
wife could read the fiction depicting her as the hard-working,
patient mother, but she could also read the opinions of women
journalists, women's rights leaders and local women
contributors. She also had the Option of submitting material
herself. Thus the frontier newspaper reflected the views
that both.men and women writers had Of women's roles and it
provided new ideas to women seeking to define their role in

society.

108

The question of how the average frontier wife and
mother felt about herself and her society is a difficult one
to answer, and beyond the scope of this study. In every
region of the country there are accumulations of women's
literature in every form - diaries, letters, journals,
memoirs, novels and poems. This neglected material is of
major importance and historians have just begun the effort
of recovery and analysis. When the process is complete, the
view we have of American history and literature may be
changed .1 1

This study has attempted to contribute to the body of
knowledge on the frontier press. Similar Studies are needed
to fill the great void of material on how the frontier press
depicted women. Perhaps Similar studies could be undertaken
about how women were depicted in newspapers of other years
and in other frontier states.

One of the best reasons for studying the frontier press
was explained in the Hillsdale WhigpStandard when a British
newspaper correspondent wrote:

When I review my past life...How interesting
would it be now...to look at the papers read when

I was 12 years old. How many events, feelings,

and associations would come to mind.12
The correspondent summarized it well when he said that
newspapers "preserve and assist the memory." By studying
the frontier press historians can explore the image of women

that emerges through its pages.

ENDNOTES

1Marshall Statesman, 27 February 1850, p. 1.
2Niles Republican, 12 January 1850, p. 3.
3American Citizen, 20 March 1850, p. 1.
“Marshall Statesman, 10 April 1850, p. 2.

5Oakland Gazette, 2 March 1850, p. 4; Marshall
Statesman, 20 February 1850, p. 1.

6American Citizen, 28 November 1849, p. 1.
7Grand Rapids Enquirer, 8 May 1850, p. 1.
0Kalamazoo Gazette, 31 May 1850, p. 2.

9Berenice A. Carroll, ed., Liberating'Women' s Histggy
(Urbana, Ill.: University of Illin01s Press, 1976): p. 359.

1°Hillsdale WhigiStandard, 23 July 1850, p. 2; Michigan

Egpositor, 16 July 1850, p. 2; Pontiac Jacksonian, 31 July
1850, p. 2.

 

11Carroll, p. 81. '

12Hillsdale Whig Standard, 23 October 1849, p. l.

109

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Newspapers

American Citizen. Jackson, 1849-1850.

 

Coldwater Sentinel. Coldwater,.1849-1850.
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Grand River Eagle. Grand Rapids, 1849-1850.
Hillsdale Whig Standard. Hillsdale, 1349-1350.
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Kalamazoo Gazette. Kalamazoo, 1849-1850.
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Michigan Eupositor. Adrian, 1849-1850.

Niles Republican. Niles, 1849—1850.

Oakland Gazette. Pontiac, 1849-1850.

Western Chronicle. Centreville, 1849-1850.

"Women Seek Place in History Textbooks." Lansing State
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