Hannah Tracy Cutler
Encyclopedia
Hannah Maria Conant Tracy Cutler (1815–1896) was an abolitionist
as well as a leader of the temperance
and women's suffrage
movements in the United States. Cutler served as president of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Cutler helped to shape the merger of two feminist factions into the combined National American Woman Suffrage Association
(NAWSA).
Cutler wrote for newspapers and journals; she drafted laws and authored several books. She lectured on physiology and attained a medical degree at the age of 53. Cutler presented petitions to state and federal legislatures, and helped to form temperance, abolition, suffrage and women's aid societies in Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Vermont.
, on Christmas, 1815; the second daughter of John Conant and Orpha Johnson Conant. Hannah Maria Conant began at age 14 to study rhetoric and philosophy on her own, and she studied Latin with the family doctor. In 1831, the Conant family moved to Rochester, Ohio
.
In 1833, nearby Oberlin College
began accepting women students, and Conant asked her father for tuition. He refused; he considered coeducation improper. In response, she married John Martin Tracy (1809–1844), an Oberlin theology student, in 1834. The new Mrs. Hannah Conant Tracy studied her husband's textbooks and the newlyweds discussed what he had learned in class. John Tracy turned to study law, and his wife continued to study his legal homework with him, discovering in the process the common law limitations placed on women, especially married women. Later, John Tracy became an anti-slavery lecturer and activist. The couple had two daughters, Melanie in 1836 and Mary in 1841, and a son was on the way when in August 1844, John Tracy died of pneumonia taken as a result of exposure and abuse suffered when he was pursued by a mob while helping escaped slaves. The young widow Hannah Conant Tracy moved with her children to Rochester, Ohio where her father still lived, and bore her third child: John Martin Tracy, named after his martyred father. To earn money, Tracy wrote for Ohio newspapers including for Cassius Marcellus Clay's True American (writing under a pseudonym) and for Josiah A. Harris
at the Cleveland Herald. Tracy also taught school, and helped to form a temperance society and a Women's Anti-Slavery Society, which attracted only three members at first.
In 1847, Tracy enrolled at Oberlin to study more directly. There, she joined Lucy Stone
's clandestine debating society for women, and formed a warm friendship with Stone. Tracy continued to support herself and her children by running a boardinghouse and by writing for newspapers. After a year of study, Tracy accepted the position of matron of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum at Columbus, Ohio
(now the Ohio Institution for the Deaf and Dumb). In Columbus, Tracy met Frances Dana Barker Gage
, another abolitionist and feminist; both were interested in advancing the Free Soil Party
with its anti-slavery platform. Tracy helped in the effort to elect abolitionist Salmon P. Chase
to the United States Senate
. Because the Deaf and Dumb Asylum allowed only one of her children to remain in residence with her, in 1849 Tracy accepted a position as principal of the "female department" at Columbus' new public high school. Tracy attended a Presbyterian church in Columbus.
Tracy and Gage led the drive to organize a women's rights
convention in Akron
, in May 1851. Gage was elected president and Cutler secretary of the women's convention, where they met Sojourner Truth
and witnessed her famous speech: Ain't I a Woman?. Following the Akron conference, Tracy attended a Peace conference in Columbus, and was chosen as delegate to the upcoming Peace Congress to be held in London in August.
The owner of the Ohio Statesman, Colonel Samuel Medary
, asked Tracy to become his special correspondent at The Great Exhibition
in London. After the Akron convention, the newspaper paid for Tracy's trip to London so that she could report on the World's Fair. Tracy also carried credentials as the United States delegate to the Peace Congress, but arrived one day late, and was able to hear only the closing speeches. While in London, Tracy gave a series of women's rights lectures, the first ones that addressed women's legal rights, and found herself with great authors and members of Parliament taking in her words. The result was that she was invited to speak at colleges and in front of professional organizations; she refused a proposal to become a stage actress. Other speeches she gave covered temperance and physiology. She met Joseph Sturge
and William Ewart Gladstone
, but was more interested in hearing details about the Emancipation of the British West Indies
from anti-slavery activist Anna Knight. Tracy introduced the Bloomer costume
to English women.
Upon her return to the United States, Tracy paused in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
so that she could attend the Free Soil Convention; there she was urged to take the platform and speak about human rights. At a convention in Massillon, Ohio
held in 1852, Tracy was chosen president of the Ohio Woman's Rights Association. Later that year, Tracy married Colonel Samuel Cutler, a widower who had children of his own. The two bought farm land in Dwight, Illinois
near a proposed rail line, and together assumed farm duties. The new Mrs. Hannah Tracy Cutler carried out much of the work herself, including "spinning, weaving, knitting, tailoring, baking, dairying, basket-weaving, shoe-making, and hat-braiding," according to a later account by her daughter Mary. Cutler home-schooled all the children of the family.
Cutler wrote an article for The Una
defending the essential difference between men and women:
alongside Ernestine Rose
, Frances Gage, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott
, Thomas Wentworth Higginson
and William Lloyd Garrison
. Cutler expressed to the convention her belief that the spirit of the Bible
was more important than the letter. Rather than focusing on isolated passages that had no modern-day application, Cutler recommended her audience "proclaim the beautiful spirit breathed through all its commands and precepts."
In late May 1856, Cutler was on her way to preside over a Woman's Temperance Convention in Chicago when she heard about arson and crimes committed in Lawrence, Kansas
against abolitionists. During the successful temperance convention, Cutler conceived and planned for a Woman's Kansas Aid Convention to follow two weeks afterward, for the purpose of helping displaced citizens and preventing Kansas from becoming a slave state. Frances Dana Barker Gage and Josephine Griffing assisted in the work of gathering supplies and forwarding them to those in need in Kansas. Spurred by the women's effort, Gerrit Smith
, Thurlow Weed
and other politically active men organized a National Kansas Aid Convention in Buffalo, New York
beginning July 10. Cutler and Gage attended; soon, the Woman's Society was consolidated into the national group.
In October 1859, Cutler joined with Susan B. Anthony
on a lecture tour of New York state, resulting in legislation for expanded property rights for New York women passed the next year. In late 1860, Cutler toured the interior and western parts of Illinois with Gage to influence legislation under consideration in that state. Cutler consulted repeatedly with Abraham Lincoln
before he left for Washington, D.C., and she drafted a law affecting married women's property which saw passage in February, 1861. In the spring of 1861, Cutler returned to Ohio to join a group of women arguing before a joint house-senate committee regarding a woman's right to keep her own earnings, and for a woman's right to joint guardianship of her children.
A year or two later, Cutler presented to the Illinois Assembly petitions for a law which proposed to give a woman guardianship of her children, and to allow a woman to easily assume the estate of her deceased husband if the estate were not more valuable than $5,000, in a manner similar to a state law applying to male widowers. Cutler described the scene in the Assembly:
During the Civil War
, Cutler served as president of the Western Union Aid Commission in Chicago. From 1862 to 1864, the Commission worked to provide for war refugees of all colors streaming into Chicago. Her son John Martin Tracy and the sons of Colonel Samuel Cutler served in the Union Army. A conversation with Reverend Doctor Thomas M. Eddy about Lincoln's stated wish to be pressured strongly by abolitionists to free the slaves as an emergency war measure caused Cutler to begin gathering such signatures in the West. Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony were alerted by Cutler, and began gathering petitions in the East. Charles Sumner
presented the combined petitions to the Senate, and told Cutler that four men were required to carry the massed documents. While in Washington, Cutler was invited by former governor William Bebb
to address the Union League; she gave a speech entitled "The Union as it was, the Constitution as it is," an argument that slavery had been, despite states' rights
, a violation of the national constitution from the very first. Bebb agreed with Joseph Holt
, Preston King
and other jurists that Cutler's speech was "the most able and conclusive argument that they had ever listened to upon that subject." Cutler joined with Dorothea Dix
to appeal to the surgeon general
to empower his examining surgeons the ability to extend sick furloughs and grant discharges to severely wounded soldiers. The women were successful in their mission. Colonel Samuel Cutler learned of the death of one of his sons in the Second Battle of Fort Wagner. John Martin Tracy survived the war, and was commended for his stealthy reconnaissance work. Hannah Tracy Cutler's final service in the war was to help the Union Aid Society gather and send six thousand bushels of seed corn to farmers in the war-torn southwest. Samuel Cutler was unnerved and weakened from age and from the loss of a son, and the couple could no longer work the farm in Dwight. They moved to Cobden, Illinois
where his health improved from her ministrations.
In the autumn of 1868, Cutler moved with her husband to Ohio so that she could attend the Women's Homeopathic College of Medicine and Surgery in Cleveland
. She received her medical degree in February, 1869. Cutler was offered a professorship at the college, and went into medical practice in Cleveland.
Cutler never stopped writing articles for journals and newspapers. She contributed to the Farmer's Advocate after it was bought by Jeriah Bonham in 1860, and she submitted articles to the Rural Messenger from its inception in 1868.
From 1866 to 1869, Cutler served as president of the Ohio delegation to the American Equal Rights Association
(AERA). In 1869, Cutler was approached by Anthony and Stanton to join their splinter group of more radical feminists. Cutler kept notes of the meetings, and provided Lucy Stone with a typewritten account of the events which led to the formation, behind Stone's back, of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). The machinations of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were described in detail by Cutler. The Ohio Equal Rights Society held a convention in Cincinnati in mid-September, and Stone and her husband Henry Browne Blackwell gave speeches. A proposal was made to form an Ohio Equal Rights Society, and Cutler was made president. Stone responded to Anthony and Stanton by forming the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) in November, in Cleveland, November 24–25, 1869 in front of a "vast hall being well filled." Cutler chaired the afternoon session on the second day; then served as president of AWSA in 1870–1871. Cutler spoke in Battle Creek, Michigan
for the Michigan State Suffrage Society in January 1870, then at a mass meeting for Ohioans in Dayton in late April. At their home in Cleveland, Samuel Cutler "could not endure the spring winds on the Lakes," so the two moved back to Illinois in 1870.
The AWSA held a mass convention at Steinway Hall
in New York City in May, 1870. Three sessions per day were held for two days, and Cutler was the first speaker for the first evening session. She compared slave's rights to women's rights, and quoted the Declaration of Independence
which states "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." She continued, "The women of America pay taxes for the support of the Government, and their consent should be had in matters affecting their welfare and their lives. ...the only way to remedy the evil is to get the ballot."
In June 1870, Cutler and Amelia Bloomer
held two meetings in Des Moines, Iowa
, one on the subject of temperance, held in the open air on land planned for a new capitol building, and a second held in a Baptist church, on the subject of women's voting rights. A woman suffrage convention was held in Mt. Pleasant in mid-June; Cutler was the leading speaker, and helped the Iowans form the Iowa Woman Suffrage Society. Later that summer, Bloomer and Cutler lectured in Oskaloosa, Iowa
and sparked the formation of a woman suffrage society there, building on a much earlier visit by Frances Dana Barker Gage in 1854. In December 1870, Cutler spoke several times in Lincoln, Nebraska
while on her way to California. "Her womanliness and logic won and convinced her hearers", but didn't result in the formation of a local woman suffrage organization until Susan B. Anthony came through later that winter.
In 1871, Cutler made the opening and closing addresses at the annual AWSA convention in Philadelphia. After speeches by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe
, Lucretia Mott and others, Cutler spoke about the right to vote:
Samuel Cutler died in 1873. Hannah Tracy Cutler returned to Ohio to join in a strenuous effort to put woman suffrage into the state constitution. Throughout the late summer and fall, Cutler canvassed Ohio county by county, lecturing and gathering signatures for the petition. Cutler's personal style was folksy and feminine, and her manner of lecturing put her listeners at ease. Cutler introduced woman suffrage concepts within a more traditional religious framework, and folded suffrage into speeches about temperance which were likely to have greater appeal with conservative audiences. During the Ohio push, she was described by a fellow suffragist as "Strong in body as well as mind, she endures with comparative ease the fatigues and discomforts of the lecture field, and sends the truth to the hearts of her hearers with a force and directness that is seldom surpassed." At the close of the unsuccessful campaign, "completely exhausted," Cutler went to France with her son, John Martin Tracy, a landscape artist. Worn out, Cutler became seriously ill, and remained in France until 1875. Cutler returned to the United States to practice medicine in Cobden, Illinois, and later in Brentwood, California
, where her daughter Mary Tracy Mott lived and wrote.
Cutler attended the Ninth Annual Meeting of the AWSA, held at the Masonic Hall in Indianapolis in 1878. Regarding the battle for woman suffrage, she stood up to say "Many of us have grown old in this work, and yet some people say, "Why do you work in a hopeless cause?" The cause is not hopeless. Great reforms develop slowly, but truth will prevail, and the work that we have been doing for thirty years has paid as well as any work that has ever been done for humanity."
From December 1881 through April 1882, Cutler lived in Hollister, California
. She gave a well-received speech from a Congregational
pulpit one Sunday in Hollister in early April, and was reported as being "en route for the East".
In 1882, under consideration in Nebraska was an amendment which would remove the word 'male' from the constitution and thus allow women to vote. Both AWSA and NWSA held their annual conventions in Omaha, Nebraska
in September for the purpose of influencing votes. Lucy Stone, Henry Browne Blackwell and Cutler were among the featured speakers at the AWSA convention in mid-September, and all three remained afterward to canvass the state. From October 2 to November 4, Cutler gave 24 speeches while touring by rail. The effort failed, but one of the 11 counties that passed the measure was where Cutler spent the days immediately preceding the vote. Cutler finished writing a biographical essay about her first husband and about her own life's work. The essay was published in a collection of biographies about "Eminent Citizens" of Illinois.
In 1883, Cutler gave a series of lectures throughout backwoods Vermont; her influence led to the founding of the Vermont Woman Suffrage Association. On December 13, 1884 Cutler published in the Woman's Journal
a eulogy for her longtime friend, Frances Dana Barker Gage.
On December 21, 1887, Cutler was appointed by Anthony and Stone to a committee tasked with joining the AWSA with the NWSA to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association
(NAWSA). For the next two years, Cutler worked with Alice Stone Blackwell
and Rachel Foster Avery
to help establish a common structure and mission for the combined organization.
in 1889. Melanie left behind her husband Parker Earle, a horticulturist, who died in 1917. Mary Tracy Earle, their daughter born in 1864, published seven fiction works in Harper's Magazine
.
In 1892 at the Ocean Springs home of her daughter, writer and journalist Mary Tracy Mott, Hannah Tracy Cutler suffered a paralytic attack on top of an advancing case of glaucoma.
Cutler's son John Martin Tracy became a landscape painter featuring hunting dogs in his work, and came to Ocean Springs from Greenwich, Connecticut
with his wife Melanie G. Tracy after the death of his sister Melanie. He died four years later in March 1893.
Cutler died February 11, 1896 at the age of 80, and was buried in Ocean Springs at Evergreen Cemetery on Fort Bayou. An Episcopal service was given at her funeral. Mary Tracy Mott finished then submitted her mother's autobiography to Alice Stone Blackwell to be published in a series of Woman's Journal issues from September through October 1896.
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
as well as a leader of the temperance
Temperance movement
A temperance movement is a social movement urging reduced use of alcoholic beverages. Temperance movements may criticize excessive alcohol use, promote complete abstinence , or pressure the government to enact anti-alcohol legislation or complete prohibition of alcohol.-Temperance movement by...
and women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
movements in the United States. Cutler served as president of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Cutler helped to shape the merger of two feminist factions into the combined National American Woman Suffrage Association
National American Woman Suffrage Association
The National American Woman Suffrage Association was an American women's rights organization formed in May 1890 as a unification of the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association...
(NAWSA).
Cutler wrote for newspapers and journals; she drafted laws and authored several books. She lectured on physiology and attained a medical degree at the age of 53. Cutler presented petitions to state and federal legislatures, and helped to form temperance, abolition, suffrage and women's aid societies in Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Vermont.
Early life and Oberlin
Hannah Maria Conant was born in Becket, MassachusettsBecket, Massachusetts
Becket is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 1,779 at the 2010 census.- History :...
, on Christmas, 1815; the second daughter of John Conant and Orpha Johnson Conant. Hannah Maria Conant began at age 14 to study rhetoric and philosophy on her own, and she studied Latin with the family doctor. In 1831, the Conant family moved to Rochester, Ohio
Rochester, Ohio
Rochester is a village in Lorain County, Ohio, United States, along the West Branch of the Black River. The population was 190 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Rochester is located at ....
.
In 1833, nearby Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
began accepting women students, and Conant asked her father for tuition. He refused; he considered coeducation improper. In response, she married John Martin Tracy (1809–1844), an Oberlin theology student, in 1834. The new Mrs. Hannah Conant Tracy studied her husband's textbooks and the newlyweds discussed what he had learned in class. John Tracy turned to study law, and his wife continued to study his legal homework with him, discovering in the process the common law limitations placed on women, especially married women. Later, John Tracy became an anti-slavery lecturer and activist. The couple had two daughters, Melanie in 1836 and Mary in 1841, and a son was on the way when in August 1844, John Tracy died of pneumonia taken as a result of exposure and abuse suffered when he was pursued by a mob while helping escaped slaves. The young widow Hannah Conant Tracy moved with her children to Rochester, Ohio where her father still lived, and bore her third child: John Martin Tracy, named after his martyred father. To earn money, Tracy wrote for Ohio newspapers including for Cassius Marcellus Clay's True American (writing under a pseudonym) and for Josiah A. Harris
Josiah A. Harris
Josiah A. Harris was the mayor of Cleveland, Ohio in 1847.Harris moved from Becket, Massachusetts in 1818 to North Amherst in Lorain County. Harris was elected sheriff of Elyria in 1832 and began the Ohio Atlas & Elyria Advertiser, a weekly newspaper...
at the Cleveland Herald. Tracy also taught school, and helped to form a temperance society and a Women's Anti-Slavery Society, which attracted only three members at first.
In 1847, Tracy enrolled at Oberlin to study more directly. There, she joined Lucy Stone
Lucy Stone
Lucy Stone was a prominent American abolitionist and suffragist, and a vocal advocate and organizer promoting rights for women. In 1847, Stone was the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She spoke out for women's rights and against slavery at a time when women were discouraged...
's clandestine debating society for women, and formed a warm friendship with Stone. Tracy continued to support herself and her children by running a boardinghouse and by writing for newspapers. After a year of study, Tracy accepted the position of matron of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum at Columbus, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...
(now the Ohio Institution for the Deaf and Dumb). In Columbus, Tracy met Frances Dana Barker Gage
Frances Dana Barker Gage
Frances Dana Barker Gage was a leading American reformer, feminist and abolitionist. She worked closely with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, along with other leaders of the early women's rights movement in the United States...
, another abolitionist and feminist; both were interested in advancing the Free Soil Party
Free Soil Party
The Free Soil Party was a short-lived political party in the United States active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. It was a third party and a single-issue party that largely appealed to and drew its greatest strength from New York State. The party leadership...
with its anti-slavery platform. Tracy helped in the effort to elect abolitionist Salmon P. Chase
Salmon P. Chase
Salmon Portland Chase was an American politician and jurist who served as U.S. Senator from Ohio and the 23rd Governor of Ohio; as U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln; and as the sixth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.Chase was one of the most prominent members...
to the United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
. Because the Deaf and Dumb Asylum allowed only one of her children to remain in residence with her, in 1849 Tracy accepted a position as principal of the "female department" at Columbus' new public high school. Tracy attended a Presbyterian church in Columbus.
Journalism and women's rights
To augment her income as principal, Tracy continued to write for newspapers, especially the Ohio Cultivator, a farmer's newspaper for which she contributed two long-running columns, popular with the readership. One column was "Letters to Housekeepers" directed at farmer's wives, and the other was an advice column for farm girls, where Tracy answered letters under the pen name "Aunt Patience".Tracy and Gage led the drive to organize a women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
convention in Akron
Akron, Ohio
Akron , is the fifth largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Summit County. It is located in the Great Lakes region approximately south of Lake Erie along the Little Cuyahoga River. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 199,110. The Akron Metropolitan...
, in May 1851. Gage was elected president and Cutler secretary of the women's convention, where they met Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth was the self-given name, from 1843 onward, of Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son, she...
and witnessed her famous speech: Ain't I a Woman?. Following the Akron conference, Tracy attended a Peace conference in Columbus, and was chosen as delegate to the upcoming Peace Congress to be held in London in August.
The owner of the Ohio Statesman, Colonel Samuel Medary
Samuel Medary
Samuel Medary Born and raised in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, he settled in Ohio in 1825. After a term in the Ohio House of Representatives and the Ohio State Senate as a Jackson Democrat, he purchased a newspaper in Columbus that became the Ohio Statesman, which he edited until 1857...
, asked Tracy to become his special correspondent at The Great Exhibition
The Great Exhibition
The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations or The Great Exhibition, sometimes referred to as the Crystal Palace Exhibition in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held, was an international exhibition that took place in Hyde Park, London, from 1 May to 15 October...
in London. After the Akron convention, the newspaper paid for Tracy's trip to London so that she could report on the World's Fair. Tracy also carried credentials as the United States delegate to the Peace Congress, but arrived one day late, and was able to hear only the closing speeches. While in London, Tracy gave a series of women's rights lectures, the first ones that addressed women's legal rights, and found herself with great authors and members of Parliament taking in her words. The result was that she was invited to speak at colleges and in front of professional organizations; she refused a proposal to become a stage actress. Other speeches she gave covered temperance and physiology. She met Joseph Sturge
Joseph Sturge
Joseph Sturge , son of a farmer in Gloucestershire, was an English Quaker, abolitionist and activist. He founded the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society . He worked throughout his life in Radical political actions supporting pacifism, working-class rights, and the universal emancipation of...
and William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...
, but was more interested in hearing details about the Emancipation of the British West Indies
Emancipation of the British West Indies
The Emancipation of the British West Indies was proposed as early as 1787, but was not achieved until the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 ....
from anti-slavery activist Anna Knight. Tracy introduced the Bloomer costume
Bloomers (clothing)
Bloomers is a word which has been applied to several types of divided women's garments for the lower body at various times.-Fashion bloomers :...
to English women.
Upon her return to the United States, Tracy paused in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
so that she could attend the Free Soil Convention; there she was urged to take the platform and speak about human rights. At a convention in Massillon, Ohio
Massillon, Ohio
Massillon is a city located in Stark County in the U.S. state of Ohio, approximately 8 miles to the west of Canton, Ohio, 20 miles south of Akron, Ohio, and 50 miles south of Cleveland, Ohio. The population was 32,149 at the 2010 census....
held in 1852, Tracy was chosen president of the Ohio Woman's Rights Association. Later that year, Tracy married Colonel Samuel Cutler, a widower who had children of his own. The two bought farm land in Dwight, Illinois
Dwight, Illinois
Dwight is a village in located mainly in Livingston County, Illinois, with a small portion in Grundy County, Illinois. The population was 4,260 at the 2010 census. Dwight contains an original stretch of the famous U.S. Route 66, and uses a railroad station designed in 1891 by Henry Ives Cobb. It is...
near a proposed rail line, and together assumed farm duties. The new Mrs. Hannah Tracy Cutler carried out much of the work herself, including "spinning, weaving, knitting, tailoring, baking, dairying, basket-weaving, shoe-making, and hat-braiding," according to a later account by her daughter Mary. Cutler home-schooled all the children of the family.
Cutler wrote an article for The Una
The Una
The Una was the first feminist periodical that was owned, written, and edited entirely by women. Launched in Providence, Rhode Island by Paulina Wright Davis in February 1853, it eventually relocated to Boston, where it continued to be published until October 1855...
defending the essential difference between men and women:
National stature
In Philadelphia in 1854, Cutler spoke at the National Women's Rights ConventionNational Women's Rights Convention
The National Women's Rights Convention was an annual series of meetings that increased the visibility of the early women's rights movement in the United States. First held in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts, the National Women's Rights Convention combined both male and female leadership, and...
alongside Ernestine Rose
Ernestine Rose
Ernestine Louise Rose was an atheist feminist, Individualist Feminist, and abolitionist. She was one of the major intellectual forces behind the women's rights movement in nineteenth-century America....
, Frances Gage, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott
Lucretia Mott
Lucretia Coffin Mott was an American Quaker, abolitionist, social reformer, and proponent of women's rights.- Early life and education:...
, Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Thomas Wentworth Higginson was an American Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, and soldier. He was active in the American Abolitionism movement during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism...
and William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United...
. Cutler expressed to the convention her belief that the spirit of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
was more important than the letter. Rather than focusing on isolated passages that had no modern-day application, Cutler recommended her audience "proclaim the beautiful spirit breathed through all its commands and precepts."
In late May 1856, Cutler was on her way to preside over a Woman's Temperance Convention in Chicago when she heard about arson and crimes committed in Lawrence, Kansas
Sacking of Lawrence
In the northern spring of 1856, the Sacking of Lawrence helped ratchet up the guerrilla war in Kansas Territory that became known as Bleeding Kansas.-Background:...
against abolitionists. During the successful temperance convention, Cutler conceived and planned for a Woman's Kansas Aid Convention to follow two weeks afterward, for the purpose of helping displaced citizens and preventing Kansas from becoming a slave state. Frances Dana Barker Gage and Josephine Griffing assisted in the work of gathering supplies and forwarding them to those in need in Kansas. Spurred by the women's effort, Gerrit Smith
Gerrit Smith
Gerrit Smith was a leading United States social reformer, abolitionist, politician, and philanthropist...
, Thurlow Weed
Thurlow Weed
Thurlow Weed was a New York newspaper publisher, politician, and party boss. He was the principal political advisor to the prominent New York politician William H...
and other politically active men organized a National Kansas Aid Convention in Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
beginning July 10. Cutler and Gage attended; soon, the Woman's Society was consolidated into the national group.
In October 1859, Cutler joined with Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony
Susan Brownell Anthony was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States. She was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President...
on a lecture tour of New York state, resulting in legislation for expanded property rights for New York women passed the next year. In late 1860, Cutler toured the interior and western parts of Illinois with Gage to influence legislation under consideration in that state. Cutler consulted repeatedly with Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
before he left for Washington, D.C., and she drafted a law affecting married women's property which saw passage in February, 1861. In the spring of 1861, Cutler returned to Ohio to join a group of women arguing before a joint house-senate committee regarding a woman's right to keep her own earnings, and for a woman's right to joint guardianship of her children.
A year or two later, Cutler presented to the Illinois Assembly petitions for a law which proposed to give a woman guardianship of her children, and to allow a woman to easily assume the estate of her deceased husband if the estate were not more valuable than $5,000, in a manner similar to a state law applying to male widowers. Cutler described the scene in the Assembly:
During the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, Cutler served as president of the Western Union Aid Commission in Chicago. From 1862 to 1864, the Commission worked to provide for war refugees of all colors streaming into Chicago. Her son John Martin Tracy and the sons of Colonel Samuel Cutler served in the Union Army. A conversation with Reverend Doctor Thomas M. Eddy about Lincoln's stated wish to be pressured strongly by abolitionists to free the slaves as an emergency war measure caused Cutler to begin gathering such signatures in the West. Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early woman's movement...
and Susan B. Anthony were alerted by Cutler, and began gathering petitions in the East. Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner was an American politician and senator from Massachusetts. An academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the United States Senate during the American Civil War and Reconstruction,...
presented the combined petitions to the Senate, and told Cutler that four men were required to carry the massed documents. While in Washington, Cutler was invited by former governor William Bebb
William Bebb
William Bebb was a Whig politician from Ohio. He served as the 19th Governor of Ohio, he was the third native Ohioan to be elected to the office....
to address the Union League; she gave a speech entitled "The Union as it was, the Constitution as it is," an argument that slavery had been, despite states' rights
States' rights
States' rights in U.S. politics refers to political powers reserved for the U.S. state governments rather than the federal government. It is often considered a loaded term because of its use in opposition to federally mandated racial desegregation...
, a violation of the national constitution from the very first. Bebb agreed with Joseph Holt
Joseph Holt
General Joseph Holt was a leading member of the Buchanan administration and was Judge Advocate General of the United States Army, most notably during the Lincoln assassination trials.-Early life:...
, Preston King
Preston King
Preston King was a United States Representative and Senator from New York.- Biography :Born in Ogdensburg, New York, he pursued classical studies and graduated from Union College in 1827, where he was an early member of The Kappa Alpha Society. He studied law and was admitted to the bar. He...
and other jurists that Cutler's speech was "the most able and conclusive argument that they had ever listened to upon that subject." Cutler joined with Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Lynde Dix was an American activist on behalf of the indigent insane who, through a vigorous program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first generation of American mental asylums...
to appeal to the surgeon general
Surgeon General of the United States
The Surgeon General of the United States is the operational head of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and thus the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the federal government...
to empower his examining surgeons the ability to extend sick furloughs and grant discharges to severely wounded soldiers. The women were successful in their mission. Colonel Samuel Cutler learned of the death of one of his sons in the Second Battle of Fort Wagner. John Martin Tracy survived the war, and was commended for his stealthy reconnaissance work. Hannah Tracy Cutler's final service in the war was to help the Union Aid Society gather and send six thousand bushels of seed corn to farmers in the war-torn southwest. Samuel Cutler was unnerved and weakened from age and from the loss of a son, and the couple could no longer work the farm in Dwight. They moved to Cobden, Illinois
Cobden, Illinois
Cobden is a village in Union County, Illinois, United States. The population was 1,157 at the 2010 census. It is named after British politician and free-trade advocate Richard Cobden, who visited the town in 1859. Cobden originated as a farming community known for its apples and peaches...
where his health improved from her ministrations.
In the autumn of 1868, Cutler moved with her husband to Ohio so that she could attend the Women's Homeopathic College of Medicine and Surgery in Cleveland
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
. She received her medical degree in February, 1869. Cutler was offered a professorship at the college, and went into medical practice in Cleveland.
Cutler never stopped writing articles for journals and newspapers. She contributed to the Farmer's Advocate after it was bought by Jeriah Bonham in 1860, and she submitted articles to the Rural Messenger from its inception in 1868.
From 1866 to 1869, Cutler served as president of the Ohio delegation to the American Equal Rights Association
American Equal Rights Association
The American Equal Rights Association , also known as the Equal Rights Association, was an organization formed by women's rights and black rights activists in 1866 in the United States. Its goal was to join the cause of gender equality with that of racial equality...
(AERA). In 1869, Cutler was approached by Anthony and Stanton to join their splinter group of more radical feminists. Cutler kept notes of the meetings, and provided Lucy Stone with a typewritten account of the events which led to the formation, behind Stone's back, of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). The machinations of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were described in detail by Cutler. The Ohio Equal Rights Society held a convention in Cincinnati in mid-September, and Stone and her husband Henry Browne Blackwell gave speeches. A proposal was made to form an Ohio Equal Rights Society, and Cutler was made president. Stone responded to Anthony and Stanton by forming the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) in November, in Cleveland, November 24–25, 1869 in front of a "vast hall being well filled." Cutler chaired the afternoon session on the second day; then served as president of AWSA in 1870–1871. Cutler spoke in Battle Creek, Michigan
Battle Creek, Michigan
Battle Creek is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan, in northwest Calhoun County, at the confluence of the Kalamazoo and Battle Creek Rivers. It is the principal city of the Battle Creek, Michigan Metropolitan Statistical Area , which encompasses all of Calhoun county...
for the Michigan State Suffrage Society in January 1870, then at a mass meeting for Ohioans in Dayton in late April. At their home in Cleveland, Samuel Cutler "could not endure the spring winds on the Lakes," so the two moved back to Illinois in 1870.
The AWSA held a mass convention at Steinway Hall
Steinway Hall
Steinway Hall is the name of buildings housing concert halls, showrooms and sales departments for Steinway & Sons pianos. The first Steinway Hall was opened 1866 in New York City. Today, Steinway Halls and Steinway-Häuser are located in world cities such as New York City, London, Hamburg, Berlin,...
in New York City in May, 1870. Three sessions per day were held for two days, and Cutler was the first speaker for the first evening session. She compared slave's rights to women's rights, and quoted the Declaration of Independence
United States Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a...
which states "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." She continued, "The women of America pay taxes for the support of the Government, and their consent should be had in matters affecting their welfare and their lives. ...the only way to remedy the evil is to get the ballot."
In June 1870, Cutler and Amelia Bloomer
Amelia Bloomer
Amelia Jenks Bloomer was an American women's rights and temperance advocate. Even though she did not create the women's clothing reform style known as bloomers, her name became associated with it because of her early and strong advocacy.-Early life:Bloomer came from a family of modest means and...
held two meetings in Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines is the capital and the most populous city in the US state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small portion of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines which was shortened to "Des Moines" in 1857...
, one on the subject of temperance, held in the open air on land planned for a new capitol building, and a second held in a Baptist church, on the subject of women's voting rights. A woman suffrage convention was held in Mt. Pleasant in mid-June; Cutler was the leading speaker, and helped the Iowans form the Iowa Woman Suffrage Society. Later that summer, Bloomer and Cutler lectured in Oskaloosa, Iowa
Oskaloosa, Iowa
Oskaloosa is the county seat of Mahaska County, Iowa, United States. The population was 11,463 in the 2010 census, an increase from 10,938 in the 2000 census. -History:...
and sparked the formation of a woman suffrage society there, building on a much earlier visit by Frances Dana Barker Gage in 1854. In December 1870, Cutler spoke several times in Lincoln, Nebraska
Lincoln, Nebraska
The City of Lincoln is the capital and the second-most populous city of the US state of Nebraska. Lincoln is also the county seat of Lancaster County and the home of the University of Nebraska. Lincoln's 2010 Census population was 258,379....
while on her way to California. "Her womanliness and logic won and convinced her hearers", but didn't result in the formation of a local woman suffrage organization until Susan B. Anthony came through later that winter.
In 1871, Cutler made the opening and closing addresses at the annual AWSA convention in Philadelphia. After speeches by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe
Julia Ward Howe
Julia Ward Howe was a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet, most famous as the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".-Biography:...
, Lucretia Mott and others, Cutler spoke about the right to vote:
Samuel Cutler died in 1873. Hannah Tracy Cutler returned to Ohio to join in a strenuous effort to put woman suffrage into the state constitution. Throughout the late summer and fall, Cutler canvassed Ohio county by county, lecturing and gathering signatures for the petition. Cutler's personal style was folksy and feminine, and her manner of lecturing put her listeners at ease. Cutler introduced woman suffrage concepts within a more traditional religious framework, and folded suffrage into speeches about temperance which were likely to have greater appeal with conservative audiences. During the Ohio push, she was described by a fellow suffragist as "Strong in body as well as mind, she endures with comparative ease the fatigues and discomforts of the lecture field, and sends the truth to the hearts of her hearers with a force and directness that is seldom surpassed." At the close of the unsuccessful campaign, "completely exhausted," Cutler went to France with her son, John Martin Tracy, a landscape artist. Worn out, Cutler became seriously ill, and remained in France until 1875. Cutler returned to the United States to practice medicine in Cobden, Illinois, and later in Brentwood, California
Brentwood, California
Brentwood is a city in Contra Costa County, California, United States. It is located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. The population is 51,481 as of 2010....
, where her daughter Mary Tracy Mott lived and wrote.
Cutler attended the Ninth Annual Meeting of the AWSA, held at the Masonic Hall in Indianapolis in 1878. Regarding the battle for woman suffrage, she stood up to say "Many of us have grown old in this work, and yet some people say, "Why do you work in a hopeless cause?" The cause is not hopeless. Great reforms develop slowly, but truth will prevail, and the work that we have been doing for thirty years has paid as well as any work that has ever been done for humanity."
From December 1881 through April 1882, Cutler lived in Hollister, California
Hollister, California
Hollister is a city in and the county seat of San Benito County, California, United States. The population was 34,928 at the 2010 census. Hollister is primarily an agricultural town.-History:...
. She gave a well-received speech from a Congregational
Congregational church
Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs....
pulpit one Sunday in Hollister in early April, and was reported as being "en route for the East".
In 1882, under consideration in Nebraska was an amendment which would remove the word 'male' from the constitution and thus allow women to vote. Both AWSA and NWSA held their annual conventions in Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha is the largest city in the state of Nebraska, United States, and is the county seat of Douglas County. It is located in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about 20 miles north of the mouth of the Platte River...
in September for the purpose of influencing votes. Lucy Stone, Henry Browne Blackwell and Cutler were among the featured speakers at the AWSA convention in mid-September, and all three remained afterward to canvass the state. From October 2 to November 4, Cutler gave 24 speeches while touring by rail. The effort failed, but one of the 11 counties that passed the measure was where Cutler spent the days immediately preceding the vote. Cutler finished writing a biographical essay about her first husband and about her own life's work. The essay was published in a collection of biographies about "Eminent Citizens" of Illinois.
In 1883, Cutler gave a series of lectures throughout backwoods Vermont; her influence led to the founding of the Vermont Woman Suffrage Association. On December 13, 1884 Cutler published in the Woman's Journal
Woman's Journal
Woman's Journal was a women's rights periodical published from 1870-1931.Woman's Journal was founded in 1870 in Boston, Massachusetts by Lucy Stone and her husband Henry Browne Blackwell as a weekly newspaper. The new paper incorporated Mary A...
a eulogy for her longtime friend, Frances Dana Barker Gage.
On December 21, 1887, Cutler was appointed by Anthony and Stone to a committee tasked with joining the AWSA with the NWSA to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association
National American Woman Suffrage Association
The National American Woman Suffrage Association was an American women's rights organization formed in May 1890 as a unification of the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association...
(NAWSA). For the next two years, Cutler worked with Alice Stone Blackwell
Alice Stone Blackwell
Alice Stone Blackwell was an American feminist, journalist and human rights advocate.-Biography:The daughter of Henry Brown Blackwell and Lucy Stone, she was born in East Orange, New Jersey....
and Rachel Foster Avery
Rachel Foster Avery
Rachel Foster Avery was a corresponding secretary of the National American Woman Suffrage Association during the late 19th century.-Biography:...
to help establish a common structure and mission for the combined organization.
Death and legacy
Cutler's daughter Melanie Tracy Earle followed in her mother's footsteps to become a journalist. She died in Ocean Springs, MississippiOcean Springs, Mississippi
Ocean Springs is a city in Jackson County, Mississippi, United States, about east of Biloxi. It is part of the Pascagoula, Mississippi Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 17,225 at the 2000 census...
in 1889. Melanie left behind her husband Parker Earle, a horticulturist, who died in 1917. Mary Tracy Earle, their daughter born in 1864, published seven fiction works in Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
.
In 1892 at the Ocean Springs home of her daughter, writer and journalist Mary Tracy Mott, Hannah Tracy Cutler suffered a paralytic attack on top of an advancing case of glaucoma.
Cutler's son John Martin Tracy became a landscape painter featuring hunting dogs in his work, and came to Ocean Springs from Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town had a total population of 61,171. It is home to many hedge funds and other financial service companies. Greenwich is the southernmost and westernmost municipality in Connecticut and is 38+ minutes ...
with his wife Melanie G. Tracy after the death of his sister Melanie. He died four years later in March 1893.
Cutler died February 11, 1896 at the age of 80, and was buried in Ocean Springs at Evergreen Cemetery on Fort Bayou. An Episcopal service was given at her funeral. Mary Tracy Mott finished then submitted her mother's autobiography to Alice Stone Blackwell to be published in a series of Woman's Journal issues from September through October 1896.
Speeches and writings
- Woman as She Was, Is, and Should Be (New York, 1846)
- One of Sixty Thousand
- Phillipia, or a Woman's Question (Dwight, Illinois, 1886)
- The Fortunes of Michael Doyle, or Home Rule for Ireland (Chicago, 1886)