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| D16:
Protest Meetings and Faneuil Hall Quincy Market  Faneuil
Hall and the adjoining Quincy Market are the historic locations of Boston's
great women's fairs and protest meetings. The Anti-Slavery Bazaars, sponsored
by the Female Anti-Slavery Societies, were held there in the 1830s and 1840s.
In September 1840, women held a seven-day fair to raise money to complete the
building of the Bunker Hill monument. Inspired by Sarah Josepha Hale (1820-1879),
the women raised $30,000 (see N4). Among the women's suffrage meetings held
in Faneuil Hall was a New England Woman's Tea Party, sponsored on the centennial
of the Boston Tea Party by the New England Woman Suffrage Association. They
invited the public to join them in the celebration, noting that women were still
subject to "taxation without representation." Suzette "Bright Eyes" LaFleshe
(1854-1903), an Omaha Indian, inspired the Indian Rights Movement when she spoke
in Faneuil Hall in December 1879. LaFlesche, wearing native dress and a bear-claw
necklace, protested the reservation system: "Did our Creator ... intend that
men created in his own image should be ruled over by another set of his creatures?"
After hearing Bright Eyes speak in Boston, many Boston women became her supporters.
Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) was inspired by her speech to write A Century
of Dishonor, a book that cited injustices to the Indian peoples, and works
of fiction about Native Americans including Ramona.Working women saw Faneuil Hall as a place for a forum for their demands. In 1903, the Women's Trade Union League was founded in Faneuil Hall (see C12). Massachusetts nurses also chose the hall to rally for professional status in 1903 when they founded the Massachusetts Nurses Association. Among the organizers was Lucy Lincoln Drown (1847-1934), superintendent of nurses at Boston City Hospital from 1885 to 1910. In 1919, the call for the women telephone operators' strike brought two thousand angry women to the hall (see C3). |
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D17: Elizabeth Murray, Corn Hill and Queen Street (now, roughly, Court and Washington Streets) Born in Scotland, Elizabeth Murray (1726-1785) came to Boston in 1749. At age 23 she established a business selling imported cloth and dry goods from Great Britain. She proved to be such a resourceful business woman that she soon earned enough money to be entirely self-sufficient - a rare achievement for a colonial woman. Although she married three times, Murray remained childless. Still, she oversaw the education and upbringing of her nieces, kindling in them a spirit of self-reliance and self-esteem. She helped them and other needy women set up shops of their own. Murray once wrote to a friend, "I'd rather [be] a useful member of society than all of the fine delicate creatures of the age."
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D18: Old Corner Bookstore corner of School and Washington Streets (now the Boston Globe Store)  Anne
Hutchinson lived in a house on this site in the mid 1630s across from
Governor John Winthrop. It was here that she conducted women's prayer
meetings (see D1). In the mid-19th century, the present building, known
as the Old Corner Bookstore, housed the publishing firm of Ticknor and
Fields. Annie Adams Fields (1834-1915), wife of publisher James T. Fields,
conducted a literary salon for authors in the Fields' home on Charles
Street. Annie Fields (see also D5) supported the work of many women writers,
including Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909), poet Louise Imogen Guiney (see
BB9), and Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896). Fields was also active in
charitable works. She spent many hours at the Charity House on Chardon
Street and cofounded the Cooperative Society of Visitors, a case review
agency that made recommendations to the central administration of Boston's
relief organizations for aid disbursement. The Society was absorbed into
the Associated Charities of Boston. Fields's book How to Help the Poor
served as an unofficial guide to the programs and policies of Associated
Charities. |
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