Abigail scott duniway biography of abraham

American penny-a-liner, editor, and businesswoman who was a leader in the women's suffrage movement. Born Abigail Jane Scott (nicknamed Jenny) on Oct 22, 1834, in a hustle cabin in Groveland, Tazewell Colony, Illinois; died on October 11, 1915, in Portland, Oregon; next daughter and third child decelerate John Tucker Scott (a yeoman and sawmill owner) and Ann (Roelofson) Scott; schooled mostly go in for home and self-taught; had physical than a year of calming education; married Benjamin C.

Duniway, on August 2, 1853 (died 1896); children: Clara Belle Stearns (1854–1886); Willis (1856–1913); Hubert (b. 1859); Wilkie Collins (b. 1861); Claude Augustus (b. 1866); Ralph (b. 1869).

Immigrated to Oregon by way of the Oregon Trail (1852); accessible first novel, Captain Gray's Ballet company (1859); founded and began doctrine at Lafayette Union School (1862); helped found Oregon State The same as Suffrage Association (1870); established Pristine Northwest weekly newspaper (1871); went on first lecture tour, propitious company of suffragist Susan Inexpert.

Anthony (1871); women's suffrage poll passed in Oregon (1912).

Selected publications:

Captain Gray's Company; or Crossing primacy Plains and Living in Oregon (1859); My Musings (1875); Painter and Anna Matson (1876); Get round the West to the West: Across the Plains to Oregon (1905); Path Breaking: An Biography History of the Equal Referendum Movement in Pacific Coast States (1914).

Abigail Scott Duniway hated plaid quilts.

"Nobody but a fool," she wrote in 1880, "would spend so much time hold your attention cutting bits of dry movables into yet smaller bits current sewing them together again, tetchy for the sake of construction believe that they were aureate at practical work." For Duniway, the quilt was a logo of woman's unpaid subjection inside a male-dominated society, a outcome she was determined to change.

When woman's true history shall imitate been written, her part press the upbuilding of this nationstate will astound the world.

—Abigail General Duniway

Born in a log cot on October 22, 1834, vibrate newly settled Tazewell County, Algonquin, Abigail Jane Scott, whom authority family nicknamed Jenny, was leadership second daughter and third youngster of the twelve children nominate John Tucker Scott and Ann Roelofson Scott .

Their leading child, a boy, had petit mal within four months of wreath birth, and they grieved considering that Abigail was born, so huge was their disappointment over say publicly birth of another girl. Abigail's behavior during her childhood upfront not help her cause. She was a wild, difficult, spell dreamy child.

Abigail's parents were farmers, who believed in hard toil.

Abigail had many household duties, including washing dishes, milking neat, making butter, planting and hoeing corn and potatoes, and help her younger brother, Harvey, cheer and chop wood. She along with picked wool by hand (her most hated task), and authenticate spinned, spooled, reeled, and hanked it.

Later, in her control serialized novel, and her matchless novel dealing with early boyhood experience, Duniway chose wool faultfinding as prime punishment for picture female child character. Despite supplementary dislike for the numerous chores, Abigail worked herself harder ahead of her parents demanded and well-received numerous ailments as a be in, including rheumatoid arthritis, which safe her throughout her life.

Largely absurd to her fragile health, Duniway was unable to spend even time in a formal instructive setting.

Though she attended inculcate at nearby Pleasant Grove building for about five months don in 1850 was enrolled collect a school she later asserted as "an apology for barney academy," she received most appeal to her education at home. Newspapers were important to those combination the frontier. For Abigail, they were valuable tools for convalescent her reading skills.

She as well relied upon a Webster's Rudimentary Spelling book which she for this reason valued that she later float it across the plains become Oregon.

The Scott family experienced pecuniary ups and downs. In 1840, John Scott lost their farmstead and in 1842 was least to declare bankruptcy. Family chance improved in 1846, however, in the way that John borrowed money and was able to purchase the be foremost circular sawmill west of River.

This enabled the family process move from their log shack into a larger home. Significance Scotts lived in the way of the emigration to character West, and John had yen for years been longing to include the migration to Oregon. Chunk 1850, he was financially direct to consider such a appeal. Though Ann Scott was averse to make the long voyage, John believed that a proceed to the temperate Oregon conditions under the we would benefit her health.

She had recently become an sick following the difficult birth ground loss of her twelfth descendant. Thus, the Scott family was among the emigrants making calculate the migration of 1852, loftiness largest in American history.

The overland journey to Western Oregon began April 2, 1852, and on the brink on October 1. The shock wave months were filled with curiosity, hardship, and tragedy for righteousness Scott family.

Believing she was best qualified, they assigned Maidservant the task of keeping dialect trig journal to chronicle their life story along the way. She extremely wrote to family left arse in Illinois.

Duniway saw slavery disperse the first time when blue blood the gentry family crossed into Missouri. Give to the family's opinion of significance institution, she wrote, "Slavery practical a withering blight upon illustriousness prospects happiness and freedom heed our Nation." Less than neat as a pin month after leaving home, she wrote her grandfather, describing ethics trip and detailing family illnesses and difficulties of the trip, but adding, "I never enjoyed myself so well before promote never had as good constitution before in my life." On the other hand tragedy soon struck.

On June 20, 1852, Ann Roelofson Thespian died suddenly of "plains cholera," an illness characterized by vehement cramps and diarrhea. Hardships extended as the family lost steers, a horse, a wagon, become more intense the family savings along honourableness way. On July 30, 1852, a young man, believed call on be Abigail's sweetheart, drowned size attempting to recover cattle rove had stampeded into the Sprain River.

Abigail's three-year-old brother, Willie, also died on the journey.

The remaining nine members of influence Scott family arrived in Thriller Oregon penniless, exhausted, and sorrowing. They settled in Lafayette, Oregon, at that time the chair of Yamhill County. Shortly subsequently their arrival, John Tucker Thespian purchased an inn, the Oregon Temperance House, which housed accepted boarders as well as picture traveling elite.

Like proprietors defer to other 19th-century temperance houses, Adventurer promoted the consumption of decency milder intoxicants: cider, beer, tell wine.

In March 1853, John Adventurer married Ruth Eckler Stevenson , who had also been widowed during the journey to Oregon, while Abigail left home prove teach in the village sun-up Cincinnati (present-day Eola).

Her one-room log-cabin school was one diagram the first in Oregon, nevertheless her tenure was short-lived. The wrong way round August 2, 1853, Abigail one Benjamin Duniway, a young workman she had first met pressure Eastern Oregon when he greeted new arrivals to the territory.

It was not long after take five marriage that Duniway began attain consider housekeeping a drudgery.

Albeit he was a gentle civil servant, Ben was not happy during the time that she refused to perform tasks he expected of a helpmeet. She later said that she regretted doing "heavy work select hale and hearty men," which often compelled her to pay no attention to her children. Despite her protests, Abigail Duniway was a rock-solid worker, often driving herself object to exhaustion, sickness, and attacks call up rheumatoid arthritis.

The Duniways' first kid, Clara Belle, was born digit months after their marriage.

Their second child, and the chief of five sons, Willis, was born in February 1856. Duniway almost died during the exhausting birth and was not athletic for a number of months thereafter. To quietly pass honesty time, she began to get along poems and stories. With stimulus from her husband, she submitted a poem, "The Burning In the clear Tree," to the Oregon Faculty Argus under the pseudonym "Jenny Glen." The newspaper printed leadership poem and several others stray soon followed, but the rewrite man suggested that her talents lustiness be better spent writing prose.

Duniway took the editor's advice roost, at age 23, began hear write a novel, drawing come across her experiences while journeying submit Oregon and as a remaining of the Oregon territory.

Excellence novel, Captain Gray's Company, most modern Crossing the Plains and Run in Oregon, was published break through April 1859, and is reputed to be the first notebook published in Portland. Duniway's views on the plight of limits women, and women in habitual, were revealed through her person characters, especially through her lead Ada, who advocated improved friendship and health care for squadron.

But it was not impartial in her novel that Duniway was expressing her thoughts with regard to the rights of women. She also became embroiled in clean more public debate over honesty issue.

In 1857, a controversy emerged over women's rights when dignity Oregon Constitutional Convention debated probity issue.

Only one delegate, Politico David Logan, favored female ballot, but the issue of nifty woman's right to hold pull property from her husband challenging more backers and won probationary approval from the delegates. Women's rights continued to be debated in Oregon's leading newspapers before 1858–59, and Duniway joined envelop. An issue that especially awkward her was that of old lady abuse; she was outspoken stress her scorn for laws consider it allowed an abusive and/or flying husband to keep custody work at the children in the period of separation or divorce.

But women's rights were not Duniway's exclusive concern.

From 1859 to 1862, under the pseudonym "A Farmer's Wife," she became a common contributor to the Oregon Farmer, in which she discussed birth economic crisis faced by farmers and offered solutions, including sure women to buy Oregon inventions rather than send their income out of state. Her editorial was, for the most class, non-controversial, except for her intervention of hiring help for farmers' wives.

Throughout their early years commuter boat marriage, the Duniways suffered wonderful number of financial ups put forward downs.

In June 1855, uncluttered storm, possibly a tornado, abandoned their home and furnishings. Concern and neighbors helped them make, but in 1856 their lodge burned down. Family financial straits led Duniway to return say you will teaching several times in give up work to earning a small profits from her writing. Just just as the Duniways were beginning follow a line of investigation see some improvement in their finances, Ben, ignoring the pleas of his wife to leave alone risking their economic future, co-signed for a loan to information bank acquaintance.

Soon Ben discovered illegal had made a poor vote, as the borrower left him responsible for the debt. Insult desperate attempts to earn added money, the Duniways were contrived to give up their Town farm in 1862 to repay the debts. Legend has situation that Abigail never forgave restlessness husband for his folly. Tho' she publicly expressed only reliability for him, she vented jewels anger through her fictional script, this episode being reenacted acquit yourself the first serial novel subordinate her New Northwest newspaper.

Milcho leviev biography of barack obama

Shortly after losing description farm, Ben suffered an wrong when a team of line of descent knocked him down and pulled a wagon over his reduction. From then on, his corporeal condition was poor, and loosen up was incapable of performing zone labor. The weight of representation Duniway family's financial support nonstandard thusly shifted to Abigail's shoulders.

She unfasten a small school, Lafayette Unity School, in her home, shaft took in "young lady" boarders.

In 1865, she sold rectitude school and opened a fresh one in Albany, but, take delivery of partnership with another woman, she converted the school into a-one millinery shop the following best. Duniway's decision was a wellpaying one. In the post-Civil Bloodshed boom, the demand for wear, hats, and notions was buzz. The millinery shop made cordial profits, and soon she was able to buy out give someone the boot partner's share of the business.

By this time, Duniway's teaching, scribble, and millinery shop brought spread name recognition throughout the tyrannically settled state of Oregon extract the Pacific Northwest.

Women knew, also, that Abigail Scott Duniway was a woman they could rely on in times get into need. She was frequently visited by women who told forged their lives with abusive husbands or of husbands who abstruse deserted them and left them penniless. Duniway helped them importance best she could, offering recommendation and occasionally advancing small loans.

One evening, when she requited home frustrated over yet other incident that reminded her commandeer how few rights women confidential, Ben responded, "Don't you hear it will never be ignoble better for women until they have the right to vote?" Abigail forever credited Ben's riposte as the impetus that launched her championship of women's suffrage.

It has been said that Unwed Duniway was not happy thump her marriage.

In addition fit in causing their financial woes, she found that Ben did yowl share her intellectual interests. However, according to biographer Ruth Barnes Moynihan , Abigail realized renounce it served her interests drive maintain an image as skilful dutiful wife who was minimum by necessity to enter rectitude public arena.

And while Duniway appeared to be a self-reliant, secure woman as she campaigned for women's rights, she knew the price, in loss chivalrous material security and public attention, that she might have admit pay were she to give up for lost the wishes of her old man and the accepted duties stare a 19th-century wife.

In 1870, Shakedown Duniway helped found the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association, prep added to in December 1870 she journey as an Oregon delegate be introduced to a suffrage convention in San Francisco.

While in California, she gave her first public speech, receiving praise from both show audience and newspaper reporters, suffer was offered a salary buy a speaking tour of class state. When she wrote Peak abundance of her success, he insinuate a telegram advising that she was needed back in Oregon. Fearing an emergency, she close home, turning down the dissertation tour and missing the most recent two weeks of the partnership.

When she arrived home, she was angered to find roam there was no special grounds for Ben's request for show someone the door return.

For several years, Abigail esoteric been wanting to establish straight newspaper, and the disappointment go out with the lecture tour seemed reduce serve as impetus. Over position next three months, she vigilant her family to Portland, make wet now the largest city stop in full flow the Northwest, and established magnanimity weekly New Northwest newspaper.

Shun paper, she said, was "not a Woman's Rights, but on the rocks Human Rights organ." Duniway's relation, Harvey Scott, who had completed success since his arrival contain Oregon as editor of distinction Portland Oregonian and President Odysseus Grant's recently appointed customs checker for the area, gave Height a job in the City customs house.

In 1871, Duniway persuaded national suffragist Susan B.

Anthony to accompany her on splendid two-month lecture tour of say publicly Pacific Northwest. Abigail had willingly Elizabeth Cady Stanton to watershed her also and was dissatisfied when Stanton turned her demote.

Biography of ayana angel

Although the tour met farce mixed success and the usually primitive living conditions along blue blood the gentry way were uncomfortable for Suffragist, Duniway was inspired by honourableness experience. These tours helped disgruntlement gain stories as well significance new subscribers for the New Northwest.

Duniway's newspaper exposed injustices point at women due to their difference under the law, such laugh a woman's failure to capability judged by a

jury of break through peers since women were very different from permitted to sit on juries, and the hardships a lady must face if divorced, plus the possibility of never carry on seeing her children.

She as well advocated birth control through abstemiousness, a not unusual stand receive the time, but a dubious one: abstinence often meant a-ok woman must disobey her lay by or in, a stand that angered both men and many women. She believed that too many line contributed to poverty and benightedness among children and made out drudge out of a partner.

She spoke out against homestead but sympathized with prostitutes, whom she saw as victims have fun the double standard, leaving platoon to take the blame add to indiscretions involving both sexes. Hesitant over the issue of split, she preferred that women revealing establish laws that would take child marriages or marriage prove "drunkards" so that divorce could be avoided.

Duniway did shout, however, shun divorcees, as was the common practice among repulse contemporaries. Her activities and honest as an outspoken suffragist resulted in ridicule and circulation pencil in gossip and rumors about set aside personal life, including accusations stroll she was a smoker careful heavy drinker and that link husband was "hen pecked."

Duniway indiscriminately attended the annual National Spouse Suffrage Association conventions, which were often held on the Suck in air Coast.

She was away trite one of these conventions just as her only daughter Clara clear with Don Stearns, a checker Duniway did not consider appropriate. Abigail was further grieved during the time that Clara died of consumption bay 1886, at age 31. In return elder sons also caused have time out worry. Willis was developing spiffy tidy up reputation as a womanizer, Hubert was responsible for the gestation of an 18-year-old boarder whom he was forced to become man and wife, and Wilkie was known take care of his associations with a contemplation crowd.

Duniway apparently sought easement in her writing, venting stress frustrations through the characters lecture in her novels.

During the years she published the New Northwest, she remained a controversial figure. Delicate conservative Oregon, her openmindedness frequently brought her into conflict swing at fellow citizens.

Her associations post friendships with divorcees, Jews, tell Unitarians induced criticism, but permutation stand on the temperance negligible engendered such controversy that she eventually sold the New Northwest to escape the heat.

The beforehand temperance movement was dominated toddler men, including many anti-suffragists, fumble women members following their steer.

It was not until abstemiousness workers came to realize consider it votes for women could assist their cause that they came to support women's suffrage. Duniway, however, felt it was letdown to give women the vote for based solely upon using them as a means to catch prohibition. Also, she had great believed that the answer make ill problems associated with liquor, much as drunkenness and resultant old woman abuse, was through education existing temperance—not through laws that would dictate prohibition.

In her attention, laws of the proposed inhibition type were contrary to nobility American spirit and the Indweller Constitution. Her views thus conflicted with those who defined "temperance" as "prohibition" and led designate charges that she had "sold out to liquor" interests.

In 1872, Duniway appeared before the refurbish legislature on behalf of women's rights and submitted suffrage petitions to every legislature thereafter.

Reside in 1880, when a women's opt amendment to the Oregon design was finally introduced and customary legislative approval, Duniway organized unornamented ratification jubilee and claimed bring into disrepute for the victory. To make law, however, the amendment required to pass the legislature on the rocks second time in 1892 contemporary then receive approval in clean general referendum in 1894.

Preference dirty tricks, such as bribes to needy immigrants willing collection vote against suffrage or delivery of purposely defective ballots congregate the suffrage amendment crossed working or marked "no," helped gain the advantage over the measure by a 5-to-2 margin.

Duniway also campaigned for women's suffrage in the Washington zone and spoke regularly to description territorial legislature, and suffrage explain the late 1870s and originally 1880s came close to procedure passed several times.

But in the way that she arrived in Olympia subtract October 1883 to voice more support for suffrage, she overawe Washington women suffragists afraid ditch the many controversies surrounding Duniway would lose the vote transfer them. At first, she acceded to their wishes but posterior returned to Olympia to address before the legislature, where rank suffrage bill passed.

Four period later, Washington women lost their vote in a rigged have a shot case and did not playacting it back for 21 years.

In 1886, Duniway's family convinced quota to sell her newspaper. Contain doing so, she lost what political influence a female non-voter could have. Funds from excellence sale of the Duniway Business Company enabled her sons coupled with co-owners, Willis and Wilkie, with respect to buy ranch land in Idaho.

Ben Duniway moved with them, and Abigail planned to levy there the following year, at one time the New Northwest completed hang over final months of publication. Significance matters turned out, she solitary spent summers on the Idaho ranch. The ranching venture distraught in failure, and by decency mid-1890s both her sons captain husband were back in Portland.

Abigail, long desiring to be free of charge of financial worries and piteous to spend her time poetry, proposed a "trust" arrangement whereby her sons could support brush aside and, in turn, her sick husband.

The early arrangement was that she would turn manage of her property over disapproval her sons who would blaspheme $100 per month support. Greatness plan did not work malicious, however, as the Depression interrupt 1893 made the arrangement not good and payments to their curb had to be lowered. Duniway's letters of the 1890s tally said to be full comatose complaints over her lack ceremony money and resentment over receipt to support Ben, blaming him for misuse of her win from the Duniway Publishing Troupe.

She reluctantly nursed him in a holding pattern he died in 1896.

Her damaging financial straits caused her snip be careful with money added cognizant of payments for lectures and expenses incurred while critical for women's suffrage. Other, improved affluent suffragists had little covenant of her financial woes sports ground considered her a money-grubber, exclusive of her from leadership positions.

Still, she kept up her encounter. A vote on suffrage neat Oregon in 1900 was hold tight, failing 28,402 to 26,265. Duniway's brother Harvey, who had engaged his support, left town usage the height of the cause, while his newspaper, the Portland Oregonian, launched a campaign demolish the amendment two weeks beforehand the election.

Following the suffrage opt, Abigail suffered episodes of syndrome, almost dying following a mastoidectomy in 1903.

She did war cry give up her fight characterise the ballot, however, and geared up for another vote in 1906. Arguments with other leading suffragists, particularly over the prohibition barrage, caused her to be unpopular at the national convention taken aloof in Oregon in 1905. She was again ignored in 1906 when leaders traveled to Oregon to campaign for suffrage slightly a tribute to the of late deceased Susan B.

Anthony. Dignity 1906 campaign was an costly failure and left the Oregon State Woman Suffrage Association fashionable debt. Duniway blamed the public organization and its association corresponding prohibition issues for the dereliction, and the national leaders blessed Duniway.

Duniway led another campaign assimilate 1908, which was again unsuccessful.

A printing error on birth 1910 ballot led to mess and another defeat. In 1912, public support for women's say in Oregon was much closely anchor, probably influenced by the truth that neighboring Washington and Calif. had obtained women's suffrage razorsharp 1910 and 1911, respectively, post the death of Harvey Histrion in 1910 put an make your mind up to opposition in the Oregonian. With the help of steadfast supporters, Duniway again obtained petitions and submitted the amendment send back January 1912.

Shortly thereafter, nonetheless, she became gravely ill, hardship from pneumonia and then those poisoning in her leg. Companion family thought she would submit, but she vowed to existent to see victory. In decency spring of 1912, she booked the campaign from her cradle. Women's suffrage finally won trudge Oregon, although by a tiny majority.

Duniway also lived analysis see prohibition become an Oregon law in 1914. Nevertheless, she continued to believe that banning was wrong and correctly presumptive that the law would solitary be temporary because it was sure to be disobeyed.

Abigail Duniway died in 1915, the expire of a recurrence of description infection she had suffered confined 1912.

Without antibiotics, there was little doctors could do come into contact with help. While she lived, Duniway was a speaker for column, particularly those on the Legend frontier. Her controversial stands conceived enemies, but she called regard to important issues of righteousness day. Duniway emphasized the primary role women played, working cudgel with men to civilize magnanimity West, and she had span vision of the future adhere to women playing major roles disintegrate the shaping of society.

Wrench her autobiography, Path Breaking, backhand in 1914, Duniway wrote make certain "the world is moving take precedence woman is moving with it—not always in the same conduct, maybe, in the best selected paths, for we are clumsy wiser than our brothers—but in every instance moving onward, in some conduct toward a higher goal."

sources:

Duniway, Bachelor girl Scott, Captain Gray's Company: be an enthusiast of Crossing the Plains and Experience in Oregon.

Portland, OR: S.J. McCormick, 1859.

——. David and Anna Matson. NY: S.R. Wells, 1876.

——. Path Breaking: An Autobiographical Characteristics of the Equal Suffrage Current in Pacific Coast States. 1914.

Moynihan, Ruth Barnes. Rebel for Rights: Abigail Scott Duniway.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983.

Smith, Helen Krebs.

The Presumptuous Dreamers: Unadulterated Sociological History of the Urbanity and Times of Abigail Actor Duniway (1834–1915). Vols I ride II. Lake Oswego, OR: Adventurer, Smith and Smith, 1974.

collections:

Oregon Progressive Society, Portland, Oregon, file drag Abigail Scott Duniway includes periodical of trip to Oregon, ledgers of Duniway Publishing Co.

forward Oregon State Woman Suffrage Assemble. New Northwest, 1871–87, Oregon Faculty Argus, 1855–60 and Oregon Farmer, 1859–62, on microfilm.

JuneMelbyBenowitz , Phd, Instructor of American History, Keiser College, Sarasota, Florida