March is ........ WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH.....

...Or should we call it Women's Herstory Month?  We believe HER-STORY is very important to HIS-STORY.    Our monthly talk from the Bullis Room will be about the Notable Women Represented in the Bullis Collection.

Not only do we have Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth but we also have many other women who impacted their society around them.  Hannah More became an abolitionist. Maria Edgeworth created moral tales for children and published a parenting book.  Olive Oatman survived being captured by the Native Americans in the Southwest.  Helena Rutherford Ely who wrote a book on gardening methods in the early 1900's.  Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson wrote a guide for Victorian era women going on mountain or hunting trips.  And then there was George Sand - enough said!!

The photo above is of Stacey Wicksall (Director) and Helen Darrow (Library Board President) posing along side a life size photo of Sojourner Truth on Library Advocacy Day 2017 in Albany.  All of these women have impacted those around them.  Her-Story is an important story.  Join us as we talk about these women who impacted their world on March 29 at 2 p.m. in the Bullis Room at the Macedon Public Library.  

Womens' History Month

March is Womens' History Month and because of that our Bullis display case is full of books written by and/or about women.  Some of the books displayed are about famous women (The heroines of history -Jenkins; Famous Authors (Women) - Harkins; A narrative of the life of Mary Jemison - Seaver; Famous Women: George Sand - Thomas; Life and work of Susan B. Anthony - Harper; Women of the War; Their Heroism and self-Sacrifice - Moore;  Narrative of Sojourner Truth - Truth; A New negro for a New Century - Washington).  A couple of books are about Women's experiences ranging from captivity to traveling with your husband in the West (Captivity of the Oatman Girls - Stratton and A Woman Tenderfoot by Grace Seton.)  There is fiction -Little Women by Alcott;  cultures and women ( Moslem women - Zwemer and Western Women in Eastern Lands- Montgomery); a local woman's diary where she chronicles the year of 1870 - the year her husband died; and a look back at choices a woman might make (If I were a girl again - Keeler).  And this is just a small sampling of books one might find in the collection that pertain to women.
We also have another exploration of the Bullis Books Library occurring on March 29 at 2 p.m.  And the topic will be Notable Women in the Bullis Collection. The photo shows a sampling.  One of my favorites is A Woman Tenderfoot. The author was traveling west with her husband.  She had appropriate riding clothes made and just was very common sense as she approached this travel plan.  And then she shares the details of the trip. There was adventure/danger and lots of stories to tell.  In preparation for our exploration I've found books that were owned by Kate Gleason from Gleason Works.  One wonders if she shared them with Nettie Bullis because she thought they were a good read or a different reason.  We will also talk some about Miss Bullis.  Hope you can join us!
Another program planned around women will be History Now: 2017 Women's March in Washington, DC.  Our presenters will be our own Pioneer Library System director, Lauren Moore, and Denise Munson, Esq.  Both women attended the march with their daughters and will share the details of their experience on Saturday, March 25 at 3 p.m.  Hope to see you at the Macedon Library.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

It's four years away from the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, the amendment that prohibited any United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex. And last Thursday (August 18) the 96th anniversary of this landmark legislation was celebrated at the Susan B. Anthony Museum in Rochester, just a "hop, skip and a jump" away from the Bullis Room.

Again, we remind you that The Life and Works of Susan B. Anthony  by Ida Husted Harper (1851-1931) is on the Bullis Room shelves.  Just ask for help at the library's front desk for help in locating and using this book.  (Just looking through it gives the reader a much greater appreciation of Anthony's accomplishments.)

We also hope you'll click on this link for our 2009 post on this blog, highlighting Nettie Bullis's influence on other women and girls of her generation as well as the work of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton:

http://bullisbookchronicles.blogspot.de/2009/08/womens-equality.html

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH

Last month, Bulls Room volunteers talked about how to recognize and observe International Women's Day (March 8) and Women's History Month (March). We decided to start by making a list women authors in the Bullis collection.

The spreadsheet is still in process and so far we have 245 items, which include well-known as well as lesser-known women authors. Here are some of the titles that have attracted our attention and are on our "must take a closer look" list:

Costumes of Colonial Times, Alice Earl (NY, 1894)

Gleanings from Old Shaker Journals, Clara Endicott Sears (Boston, 1916)

Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Ida Harper, (Ind., 1899)

Memoirs of the Emperor Napoleon, Madam Junot (Washington, 1901)

Tales of New England, Sarah Orne Jewett (Boston, 1895)

Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida Tarbell (NY, 1900)

Our next step is to display these books (and others) in the case outside the Bullis Room. We hope to have that completed tomorrow, so please stop by and see these books as well as others because they represent one of the many, many achievements of women in the past two centuries.

NINETEENTH AMENDMENT

This week was the 93rd anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the amendment that guaranteed women citizens of this country the right to vote.

Several of our posts over the last few years have focused on Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the role they played in getting this important privilege for women. (Please see our posts of August 27, 2009, March 4, 2010, and March 3, 2013, in which we thank these women for their support of women's suffrage and for drafting the text of the amendment.)

However,  there is another person we haven't thanked--Harry Burn, a 24-year-old Tennessee assembly member who cast the deciding vote, making Tennessee the 36th state needed to ratify the amendment. According to a report on public radio this week, Burn had originally planned to vote against the 19th amendment and changed his mind when he received a note from his mother encouraging him to be a "good boy" and vote for suffrage.

So, in honor of the 93rd anniversary of the 19th Amendment, we again say "thank you" to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton--and "thank you" for the first time to Harry Burn.

(Hmmm...this would have made a good Mother's Day post. Oh, well.)

CELEBRATING WOMEN

Around the globe International Women's Day is recognized in many different ways. Those of us who are privileged to work with the Bullis collection celebrate this day quietly in two ways. First, we again acknowledge (and thank) Nettie Bullis for her generosity to this community. And second, we review the collection's books on great women. We've already posted information on this blog about most of these books; thus we're listing below the posts for your reference.

Please link to our posts on:

March 26, 2009, "Women's History Month," for Bullis books on everyday women who have achieved great accomplishments;

August 19, 2009, "Women's Equality," for Bullis books on Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton;

November 5, 2009, "Women's Sufferage," for Bullis books on Susan B. Anthony;

and

September 10, 2011, "Two Amazing Women," for Bullis books on Sojourer Truth.

March is Women's History Month. We invite you to stop by the Bullis Room during the month to learn more about women's accomplishments and contributions to our society.

BULLIS HISTORY "POPPING UP"

A couple weeks ago we found a calendar issued at the time of the Macedon Bicentennial (1789-1989), for the month of March. The word "Lapham" caught our eye twice:

1.  "March 7, 1811 - Dr. Increase Lapham born in Macedon. Founder of U.S. Weather Bureau."
(In case you missed it, here is a paragraph from our December 11, 2010 post: "Through the Laphams, the Bullises were connected not only to the renowned Susan B.  Anthony but also to Increase Lapham (March 7, 1811–September 14, 1875), who emigrated from his birthplace in Palmyra, New York to Wisconsin, and is considered the “Father” of the United States Weather Service.")

2. "March 30, 1815 - During this year, Jacob Gannett and Daniel Lapham built first carding machine mill."

Once again, we are reminded of the Lapham family's strong  commitment to their community as well as their inventiveness, creativity, and business acumen.  Nettie Bullis was an embodiment of all these qualities, and this week we again celebrate and honor her birth. Here is a link to our March 19, 2009 post on Nettie Bullis: http://bullisbookchronicles.blogspot.com/2009/03/nettie-bullis.html

BULLIS-LAPHAM FAMILIES

The Bullis family connected with the Lapham family when Lydia Porter Lapham married Abraham Bullis and gave her maiden name to their first child, John Lapham Bullis, who was born in 1841.

According to Pioneers of Macedon (The Mail Printing House (compiled by Mary Louise Eldredge, Fairport, New York, 1912, pp. 36-37), the first Abraham Lapham was born in Smithfield, Rhode Island on July 15, 1755. “His father, Joshua Lapham, was a grandson of John Lapham, who came from England when he was a young man and settled in Providence, R.I., and here married Mary, daughter of William and Frances (Hopkins) Mann....Hannah, sister of Abraham Lapham, was the grandmother of the late Susan B. Anthony of Rochester.

“In 1791 Abraham Lapham brought his wife and children, coming then in company with Henry Wilbur and his family. Their new home was located among the Friends in Farmington. The members of that community, though disapproved for their venture and disowned by the parent society in Massachusetts, still held regular services. The meetings were held from house to house, and the home of Abraham and Esther Lapham was soon known as a place of meeting. In 1794 the colony was visited by a committee from Massachusetts and one of them was entertained in the home of Abraham Lapham. The early discipline of that society forbade its members to undertake a new enterprise, especially that of emigration, without the consent of ‘the meeting,’ which had been refused these pioneers, and they had been disowned. The report of the visiting committee was favorable, the disowned members were restored to membership and a meeting was organized in the same year, but a meeting house was not built until 1796....One member of the building committee was Ira, eldest son of Abraham Lapham.”

(Writers of John Lapham Bullis’s millitary experiences sometimes refer to his Quaker beliefs. Here in the Bullis Room, we’ve found no documentation of of that religious connection. We're looking for more information on this subject. If you can  help, please contact us.)

Through the Laphams, the Bullises were connected not only to the renowned Susan B.  Anthony but also to Increase Lapham (March 7, 1811–September 14, 1875), who emigrated from his birthplace in Palmyra, New York to Wisconsin, and is considered the “Father” of the United States Weather Service.

We’ll continue to report on the Lapham-Bullis connection in next week’s post.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

This week Women's History Month arrived and reminded us to look thorough our data base for books on local women of great achievement. Ida Husted Harper's work, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony: including public addresses, her own letters, and many from her contemporaries during fifty years (Indianapois: Bowen-Merrill, 1899, c.1898) immediately came to our attention.

Harper's dedication states: "To woman, for whose freedom Susan B. Anthony has given fifty years of noble endeavor this book is dedicated." In her introduction, she also states that "...in preparing these volumes over 20,000 letters have been read and, whenever possible, some of them used to tell the story, especially those written by Miss Anthony...." (Vol. 1, p. viii) This is a work of art by a woman, about a woman, and at times in the latter's own words.

There are over a thousand pages and 24 plates in these two volumes. Harper added a third volume to this set, but the Bullis Room has only the first two. All three volumes are available for loan to patrons in the PLS system. We encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to study the life of this great woman.

Harper's dedication states: "To woman, for whose freedom Susan B. Anthony has given fifty years of noble endeavor this book is dedicated." One hundred years later, we are grateful to Susan B. Anthony for her noble endeavors and to Ida Husted Harper for leaving us this comprehensive record of Miss Anthony's accomplishments.

WOME'S SUFFRAGE

The election this week focused our attention on a Bullis Collection book about a local women who played a significant role in attaining voting rights for women: The life and work of Susan B. Anthony: Including public addresses, her own letters and many from her contemporaries during fifty years, by Ida Husted Harper (Indianapolis: Bowen-Merrill, 1899). The title describes the contents, and it is a good read for anyone who wants to learn more about the struggle for suffrage in this country.

We wonder if Nettie Bullis read Ida Harper's book and how she might have been influenced by its message. The latter, we'll focus on in another posting.

Until then, please stop by the Bullis Room when you're in the library. If no one is on duty in the room when you're there, you can still look at the Bullis books displayed in the glassed case to the left of the window.

P.S. We also noticed that on this day in 1872, Susan B. Anthony defied the law by attempting to vote for President Ulysses S. Grant. (She was convicted but never paid the $100 fine give her by the judge.)

WOMEN'S EQUALITY

On August 26, 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed. Since that day, women have exercised their right to vote. Fifty-one years later August 26 was designated as Women's Equality Day to commemorate the passage of that Woman Suffrage Amendment.

Nettie Bullis was 27 years old in 1920. She began working for Gleason Works that same year, and held the position of Assistant Secretary of the Company at the time of her retirement in 1967. It was not common for a woman to advance to a high level of management in those days. This leads us to the conclusions that (1) Nettie Bullis was an extraordinary woman (which we already knew) and (2) the management at Gleason Works recognized early on the importance of equal opportunity, regardless of gender.

Nettie Bullis's father undoubtedly influenced his young daughter to think beyond traditional "women's work" when he allowed her to accompany him and take notes for his surveying projects. Both of her parents may also have encouraged her to read some of the books on great women from their collection. (Please see the list of books on the subject of women in our March 26, 2009 post entitled "Women's History Month.")

One other book in this collection that may have planted some seeds in Nettie Bullis's professional mind is THE LIFE AND WORK OF SUSAN B. ANTHONY F, by Ida Harper, published in 1899 by Bowen-Merrill in Indianapolis. And another document that Nettie Bullis may also have read with interest is ADDRESS TO LEGISLATURE OF NEW YORK, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1854. (Unfortunately, this document was destroyed in the library fire eight years ago so it can't be accessed here, but it is available from other sources and worth taking the time to read.)

The achievements of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton influenced our whole country. Nettie Bullis's achievements and generosity benefit the women, men, and children of this community and county. We are grateful for all three of these women and others like them who furthered women's equality.