Woman | ETERNALLY PLANTED

HEROISM OF SCHOHARIE WOMEN.

October 2, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

Invaders! vain your battles’ steel and fire.
Halleck

During the struggle for Independence, there were three noted forts in the Schoharie settlement, called the Upper, Middle and Lower; and when, in the autumn of 1780, Sir John Johnson sallied forth from Niagara, with his five hundred or more British, tory and German troops, and made an attack on these forts, an opportunity was given for the display of patriotism and courage, as well by the women of the settlement as by the men.

When the Middle fort was invested, an heroic and noted ranger named Murphy, used his rifle balls so fast as to need an additional supply; and, anticipating his wants, Mrs. Angelica Vrooman caught his bullet mould, some lead and an iron spoon, ran to her father’s tent, and there moulded a quantity of bullets amid

“the shout
Of battle, the barbarian yell, the bray
Of dissonant instruments, the clang of arms,
The shriek of agony, the groan of death.”

While the firing was kept up at the Middle fort, great anxiety prevailed at the Upper; and during this time Captain Hager, who commanded the latter, gave orders that the women and children should retire to a long cellar, which he specified, should the enemy attack him. A young lady named Mary Haggidorn, on hearing these orders, went to Captain Hager and addressed him as follows: –“Captain, I shall not go into that cellar. Should the enemy come, I will take a spear, which I can use as well as any man, and help defend the fort.” The Captain, seeing her determination, made the following reply: –“Then take a spear, Mary, and be ready at the pickets to repel an attack.” She cheerfully obeyed, and held the spear at the picket, till “huzzas for the American flag” burst on her ear, and told that all was safe.*

•Vide History of Schoharie county, p. 410-Il.

______

Excerpted from Noble Deeds of American Women
(Patriotic Series for Boys and Girls)
Edited by J. Clement
——
With an Introduction by Mrs. L. H. Sigourney
Illustrated
BOSTON: Lee and Shepard, Publishers
Entered by Act of Congress, in the year of 1851,
by E. H. Derby and Co., in the Clerk’s Office of the Northern District of New York
______

A MODERN DORCAS.

September 18, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

‘Tis truth divine, exhibited on earth,
Gives charity her being.
Cowper

Isabella, the wife of Dr. John Graham, was born in Scotland, on the twenty-ninth of July, 1742. At the age of seventeen she became a member of the church in Paisley of which the Rev. Dr. Witherspoon, afterwards President of Princeton college, was the pastor. Dr. Graham was a physician of the same town. Her marriage took place in 1765. The next year Dr. Graham was ordered to join his regiment then stationed in Canada. After spending a few months at Montreal, he removed to Fort Niagara, where he remained in the garrison four years.

Just before the Revolutionary war the sixteenth regiment of Royal Americans was ordered to the island of Antigua. Thither Dr. Graham removed with his family, and there he died in 1774. Mrs. Graham then returned to her native land.

In 1789 she came to this country, and permanently settled in the city of New York. She there opened a school for young ladies, and gained a high reputation in her profession. She united with the Presbyterian church of which John Mason, D. D., was pastor, and was noted, through all the latter years of her life, for the depth of her piety and her Christian benevolence. She made it a rule to give a tenth part of her earnings to religious and charitable purposes. In 1795 she received, at one time, an advance of a thousand pounds on the sale of a lease which she held on some building lots: and not being used to such large profits, she said, on receiving the money, “Quick, quick, let me appropriate the tenth before my heart grows hard.”

Two years afterwards, a society was organized and chartered, for the relief of poor widows; and Mrs. Graham was appointed first directress. Each of the managers had a separate district, and she had the superintendence of the whole. A house was purchased by the society, where work was received for the employment of the widows; and a school was opened for the instruction of their children. “Besides establishing this school, Mrs. Graham selected some of the widows, best qualified for the task, and engaged them, for a small compensation, to open day schools for the instruction of the children of widows, in distant parts of the city: she also established two Sabbath schools, one of which she superintended herself, and the other she placed under the care of her daughter. Wherever she met with Christians sick and in poverty, she visited and comforted them; and in some instances opened small subscription lists to provide for their support. She attended occasionally for some years at the Alms House for the instruction of the children there, in religious knowledge: in this work she was much assisted by a humble and pious female friend, who was seldom absent from it on the Lord’s day.

“It was often her custom to leave home after breakfast, to take with her a few rolls of bread, and return in the evening about eight o’clock. Her only dinner on such days was her bread, and perhaps some soup at the Soup House, established by the Humane Society for the poor, over which one of her widows had been, at her recommendation, appointed.” *

In the winter of 1804-5, before a Tract or Bible Society had been formed in New York, she visited between two and three hundred of the poorer families, and supplied them with a Bible where they were destitute. She also distributed tracts which were written, at her request, by a friend, “and lest it might be said it was cheap to give advice, she usually gave a small sum of money along with the tracts.”

On the fifteenth of March, 1806, a society was organized in New York for providing an Asylum for Orphan Children; and Mrs. Graham occupied the chair on the occasion. Her sympathies were strongly enlisted in this organization, and she was one of the trustees at the time of her death.

“In the winter of 1807-8, when the suspension of commerce by the embargo, rendered the situation of the poor more destitute than ever, Mis Graham adopted a plan best calculated in her view to detect the idle applicant for charity, and at the same time to furnish employment for the more worthy amongst the female poor. She purchased flax, and lent wheels where applicants had none. Such as were industrious took the work with thankful-ness, and were paid for it; those who were beggars by profession, never kept their word to return for the flax or the wheel. The flax thus spun was afterwards woven, bleached, and made into table-cloths and towels for family use.”*

When the Magdalen Society was established by some gentlemen, in 1811, a board of ladies was elected for the purpose of superintending the internal management of the house; and Mrs. Graham was chosen President. This office she continued to hold till her death. The next year the trustees of the Lancasterian School solicited the services of several women to instruct the pupils in the catechism. Mrs. Graham cheerfully assisted in this task, instruction being given one afternoon in each week.

“In the spring of 1814 she was requested to unite with some ladies, in forming a Society for the Promotion of Industry amongst the poor. The Corporation of the city having returned a favorable answer to their petition for assistance, and provided a house, a meeting of the Society was held, and Mrs. Graham once more was called to the chair. It was the last time she was to preside at the formation of a new society. Her articulation, once strong and clear, was now observed to have become more feeble. The ladies present listened to her with affectionate attention; her voice broke upon the ear as a pleasant sound that was passing away. She consented to have her name inserted in the list of managers, to give what assistance her age would permit in forwarding so beneficent a work. Although it pleased God to make her cease from her labors, before the House of Industry was opened, yet the work was carried on by others, and prospered. Between four and five hundred women were employed and paid during the following winter. The Corporation declared in strong terms their approbation of the result, and enlarged their donation, with a view to promote the same undertaking for the succeeding winter.”

Mrs. Graham died on the twenty-seventh of July, 1814. Of no woman of the age may it be said with more propriety, as it was of Dorcas: “This woman was full of good works and alms-deeds, which she did.” Yet few women are more humble than was Mrs. Graham, or think less of their benevolent deeds. Her daughter, Mrs. Bethune, writing of her decease, says that she departed in peace, not trusting in her wisdom or virtue, like the philosophers of Greece and Rome; not even, like Addison, calling on the profligate to see a good man die; but, like Howard, afraid that her good works might have a wrong place in the estimate of her hope, her chief glory was that of a “sinner saved by grace.”

• Mrs Bethune’s Life of Mrs. Graham, abridged,

• Mrs. Bethune

CORNELIA BEEKMAN.

August 21, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

The smallest worm will turn when trodden on,
And doves will peck, in safeguard of their brood.
Shakspeare.

The vaunts
And menace of the vengeful enemy
Pass like the gust, that roared and died away
In the distant tree.
Coleridge

Mrs. Cornelia Beekman was a daughter of Pierre Van Cortlandt, Lieutenant Governor of New York from 1777 to 1795; and she seems to have inherited her father’s zeal for the rights of his country. She was born at the Cortlandt manor house, “an old fashioned stone mansion situated on the banks of the Croton river,” in 1752; was married when about seventeen or eighteen, to Gerard G. Beekman; and died on the fourteenth of March, 1847. A few anecdotes will illustrate the noble characteristics of her nature.*

When the British were near her residence, which was a short distance from Peekskill, a soldier entered the house one day and went directly to the closet, saying, in reply to a question she put to him, that he wanted some brandy. She reproved him for his boldness and want of courtesy, when he threatened to stab her with a bayonet. Unalarmed by his oath-charged threats – although an old, infirm negro was the only aid at hand -she in turn threatened him, declaring that she would call her husband and have his conduct reported to his commander. Her sterness and intrepidity, coupled with her threats, subdued the insolent coward, and, obeying her orders, he marched out of the house.

A party of tories, under command of Colonels Bayard and Fleming, once entered her house, and, with a great deal of impudence and in the most insulting tone, asked if she was not “the daughter of that old rebel, Pierre Van Cortlandt?” “I am the daughter of Pierre Van Cortlandt, but it becomes not such as you to call my father a rebel,” was her dauntless reply. The person who put the question now raised his musket, at which menacing act, she coolly reprimanded him and ordered him out of doors. His heart melted beneath the fire of her eye, and, abashed, he sneaked away.

In one instance, a man named John Webb, better known at that time as “Lieutenant Jack,” left in her charge a valise which contained a new suit of uniform and some gold. He stated he would send for it when he wanted it, and gave her particular directions not to deliver it to any one without a written order from himself or his brother Samuel. About two weeks afterwards, a man named Smith rode up to the door in haste, and asked her husband, who was without, for Lieutenant Jack’s valise. She knew Smith, and had little confidence in his professed whig principles; so she stepped to the door and reminded her husband that it would be necessary for the messenger to show his order before the valise could be given up.

“You know me very well, Mrs. Beekman; and when I assure you that Lieutenant Jack sent me for the valise, you will not refuse to deliver it to me, as he is greatly in want of his uniform.”

“I do know you very well –too well to give you the valise without a written order from the owner or the Colonel.”

Soon after this brief colloquy, Smith went away without the valise, and it was afterwards ascertained that he was a rank tory, and at that very hour in league with the British. Indeed Major Andre was concealed in his house that day, and had Smith got possession of Webb’s uniform, as the latter and Andre were about the same size, it is likely the celebrated spy would have escaped and changed the reading of a brief chapter of American history. Who can tell how much this republic is indebted to the prudence, integrity, courage and patriotism of Cornelia Beekman?

* For a fuller account of her life, see the second volume of Mrs. Ellet’s Women of the Revolution, to which work we are indebted for the substance of these anecdotes.

RACHEL CALDWELL.

August 7, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

– The spell is thine that reaches
The heart.
Halleck.

Prudence protects and guides us.
Young.

Rachel Caldwell was the daughter of the Rev. Alexander Craighead and the wife of David Caldwell, D. D., whose history is somewhat identified with that of North Carolina. For several years he was at the head of a classical school at Guilford in that state, and in the vocation of teacher he had, at times, the efficient aid of his faithful and talented companion. She was a woman of exalted piety; and such a degree of success attended her “labor of love” in the school, that it became a common saying that “Dr. Caldwell makes the scholars, and Mrs. Caldwell makes the preachers.”

More than once during the Revolution, the house of Dr. Caldwell, who was a stanch friend of his country, was assailed by tories:* and on one occasion, while his wife was alone and the marauders were collecting plunder, they broke open a chest or drawer and took therefrom a table-cloth which was the gift of her mother. She seized it the moment the soldier had it fairly in his hand, and made an effort to wrest it from him. Finding she would be the loser in a trial of physical strength, she instinctively resorted to the power of rhetoric. With her grasp still firm on the precious article, she turned to the rest of the plunderers, who stood awaiting the issue of the contest, and in a beseeching tone and with words warm with eloquence, asked if some of their number had not wives for the love of whom they would assist her, and spare the one dear memorial of a mother’s affection! Her plea, though short, was powerful, and actually moved one man to tears. With rills of sympathy running down his cheeks, he assured her he had a wife-a wife that he loved – and that for her sake the table-cloth should be given up. This was accordingly done, and no further rudeness was offered.

In the fall of 1780, a “way-worn and weary” stranger, bearing dispatches from Washington to Greene, stopped at her house and asked for supper and lodgings. Before he had eaten, the house began to be surrounded by tories, who were in pursuit of him. Mrs. Caldwell led him out at a back-door unseen in the darkness, and ordered him to climb a large locust tree, and there remain till the house was plundered and the pursuers had departed. He did so. Mrs. Caldwell lost her property, but her calmness and prudence saved the express, and that was what most concerned the patriotic woman.

* The tories not only destroyed his property, but drove him into the woods, where he was often obliged to pass nights; and some of his escapes from captivity or death are said to have been almost miraculous.- He resumed his labors as teacher and pastor after the war; and continued to preach till his ninety-sixth year. He died in 1824, at the age of ninety-nine. His wife died the following year in the eighty-seventh of her age.

ANECDOTE OF MRS. SPAULDING OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.*

July 10, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

Through the deep wilderness, where scarce the sun
Can cast his darts, along the winding path
The pioneer is treading.
Street

An energy
A spirit that will not be shaken.
Willis

One of the first two settlers of Northumberland, New Hampshire, was Daniel Spaulding, who removed thither in the summer of 1767. On the way to his new home, with his wife and child, the last burnt himself so badly at Plymouth that the mother was obliged to remain and take care of him, while Mr. Spaulding proceeded to the end of the journey. She soon became uneasy, and, anxious to join her husband, started off with her child, twenty-one months old, to travel twenty-six miles through the wilderness. A friend who had agreed to accompany her the whole distance with a horse, returned after traveling about one third of the way. Undaunted and persevering, she pushed on, alone and on foot; waded through Baker’s river with her child in her arms; was overtaken by a heavy “thunder gust” in the afternoon, and thoroughly drenched; seated herself beside a tree when darkness appeared, and held her child in her lap through a long and sleepless night; resumed her journey early the next morning; waded through a small pond, with the water waist-high; pushed on to another river, which, though swollen by the rain of the preceding day and looking rapid and terrifying, she forded in safety; and at eleven o’clock that day, the second of her journey, she met her husband, who was on his way back with a horse for her accommodation.*

*The substance of this anecdote we find in the second number of the first volume of a periodical called “Historical Collections,” published nearly thirty years ago at Concord, New Hampshire, and edited by J. Farmer and J. B. Moore. The anecdote was communicated by Adino N. Brackett, Esq. of Lancaster, and appeared in the June number for 1822.

*This pioneer matron of northern New Hampshire, was living at Lancaster, in 1822, then in her eighty second year. She was a descendant, “in the third degree,” of Mrs. Dustin, the heroine of Penacook.

ELIZABETH MARTIN.

June 12, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

The mothers of our Forest-land !
Their bosoms pillowed men.
W. D. Gallagher

-A fine family is a fine thing.
Byron

The mother-in-law of the two patriotic women spoken of in the preceding article, was a native of Caroline county, Virginia. Her maiden name was Marshall. On marrying Mr. Abram Martin, she removed to South Carolina.

When the Revolutionary war broke out, she had seven sons old enough to enlist in their country’s service; and as soon as the call to arms was heard, she said to them, “Go, boys, and fight for your country! fight till death, if you must, but never let your country be dishonored. Were I a man I would go with you.”

Several British officers once called at her house, and while receiving some refreshments, one of them asked her how many sons she had. She told him, eight; and when asked where they were, she boldly replied, “Seven of them are engaged in the service of their country.” The officer sneeringly observed that she had enough of them. “No, sir, I wish I had fifty!” was her prompt and proud reply.

Only one of those seven sons was killed during the war. He was a captain of artillery, served in the sieges of Savannah and Charleston, and was slain at the siege of Augusta. Soon after his death a British officer called on the mother, and in speaking of this son, inhumanly told her that he saw his brains blown out on the battle field. The reply she made to the monster’s observation was: “He could not have died in a nobler cause.”

When Charleston was besieged, she had three sons in the place. She heard the report of cannon on the occasion, though nearly a hundred miles west of the besieged city. The wives of the sons were with her, and manifested great uneasiness while listening to the reports; nor could the mother control her feelings any better. While they were indulging in silent and, as we may suppose, painful reflections, the mother suddenly broke the silence by exclaming, as she raised her hands: “Thank God! they are the children of the republic!”*

•Vide Women of the Revolution, vol. 1 p. 278.

THE WOMEN OF WYOMING.

April 3, 2024April 5, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

The guardians of the land.
Holmes

Justice and gratitude, writes Miner,* “demand a tribute to the praiseworthy spirit of the wives and daughters of Wyoming. While their husbands and fathers were on public duty, they cheerfully assumed a large portion of the labor which females could do. They assisted to plant, made hay, husked and garnered the corn. As the settlement was mainly dependent on its own resources for powder, Mr. Hollenback caused to be brought up the river a pounder; and the women took up their floors, dug out the earth, put it in casks, and run water through it, -as ashes are bleached: – then took ashes, in another cask, and made ley -mixed the water from the earth with weak ley, boiled it, set it to cool, and the saltpetre rose to the top. Charcoal and sulphur were then used, and powder was produced for the public defence.”

• History of Wyoming, page 218.

A PIONEER IN SUNDAY SCHOOLS.*

March 27, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

– Doubtless unto thee is given
A life that bears immortal fruit
In such great offices as suit
The full-grown energies of heaven.
Tennyson’s In Memoriam.

The Ohio Company, which was organized in Boston in the year 1787, built a stockade fort during the next two years, at Marietta, and named it Campus Martius. The year it was completed, the Rev. Daniel Storey, a preacher at Worcester, Massachusetts, was sent out as a chaplain. He acted as an evangelist till 1797, when he became the pastor of a Congregational church which he had been instrumental in collecting in Marietta and the adjoining towns, and which was organized the preceding year. He held that relation till the spring of 1804. Probably he was the first Protestant minister whose voice was heard in the vast wilderness lying to the northwest of the Ohio river.

In the garrison at Marietta was witnessed the formation and successful operation of one of the first Sunday schools in the United States. Its originator, superintendent and sole teacher, was Mrs. Andrew Lake, an estimable lady from New York. Every Sabbath, after ” Parson Storey” had finished his public services, she collected as many of the children at her house as would attend, and heard them recite verses from the Scriptures, and taught them the Westminster catechism. Simple in her manner of teaching and affable and kind in her disposition, she was able to interest her pupils-usually about twenty in number -and to win their affections to herself, to the school, and, subsequently, in some instances, to the Saviour. A few, at least, of the little children that used to sit on rude benches, low stools and the tops of meal bags, and listen to her sacred instructions and earnest admonitions, have doubtless ere this became pupils, with her, in the “school of Christ” above.

* The facts contained in this article we find in a series of papers, by S. P. Hildreth, Esq., published in “The American Pioneer,” in 1842.

“THE LITTLE BLACK-EYED REBEL”

March 13, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

Some there are
By their good deeds exalted
Wordsworth

Mary Redmond, the daughter of a patriot of Philadelphia of some local distinction, had many relatives who were loyalists. These were accustomed to call her “the little black-eyed rebel,” so ready was she to assist women whose husbands were fighting for free-dom, in procuring intelligence. “The dispatches were usually sent from their friends by a boy who carried them stitched in the back of his coat. He came into the city bringing provisions to market. One morning when there was some reason to fear he was suspected, and his movements were watched by the enemy, Mary undertook to get the papers from him in safety. She went, as usual, to the market, and in a pretended game of romps, threw her shawl over the boy’s head and secured the prize. She hastened with the papers to her anxious friends, who read them by stealth, after the windows had been carefully closed.”

When the whig women in her neighborhood heard of Burgoyne’s surrender, and were exulting in secret, the cunning little “rebel,” prudently refraining from any open demonstration of joy, “put her head up the chimney and gave a shout for Gates!”

ANOTHER SACRIFICE FOR FREEDOM.

February 28, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

A patriot’s birth-right thou may’st claim.
Shelley

The subject of the following anecdote was a sister of General Woodhull, and was born at Brookhaven, Long Island, in December, 1740. Her husband was a member of the Provincial Convention which met in May, 1775, and of the Convention which was called two years after, to frame the first state constitution.

While Judge William Smith was in the Provincial Congress, his lady was met, at a place called Middle Island, by Major Benjamin Tallmadge, who was then on his march across Long Island. He told her he was on his way to her house to capture the force then possessing Fort St. George, and that he might be obliged to burn or otherwise destroy her dwelling-house and other buildings in accomplishing this object. Ready to make any sacrifice for the good of her bleeding country, she promptly assured the Major that the buildings were at his disposal, to destroy or not, as efforts to dislodge the enemy might require.