Priscilla Holmes Buell Drake (June 18, 1812 - February 11, 1892) was an American suffragist.
Priscilla Holmes Buell Drake (June 18, 1812 - February 11, 1892) was an American suffragist.
Priscilla Holmes Buell Drake was born in Ithaca, New York, on June 18, 1812. She was the youngest child of Judge Samuel/Salmon Buell (1764-1828) and Joanna Sturdevant, both of Cayuga County, New York. Judge Buell was a man of much intellectual vigor and marked attainments. He held several important offices in his State, and as senator served more than one term with De Witt Clinton, Martin Van Buren and others of distinction. Judge Buell moved with his family from New York to Marietta, Ohio, where he was held in great esteem. [1]
Drake and her husband worked with Robert Dale Owen during the Indiana Constitutional Convention of 1850 and 1851 to remove the legal disabilities of women. Before the sections were presented, which worked such benefit to women, they were discussed, line by line, in Drake's parlor. She had an acute legal mind, and Owen was not slow to recognize her valuable aid in the construction of the important clauses. It was she who suggested a memorial to Robert Dale Owen from the many noble mothers who comprehended the scope of his work for women. When Lucy Stone delivered her first lecture in Indianapolis, Drake was the only woman in attendance. She was also present at a notable meeting, shortly afterward, when Lucretia Mott presided. The acquaintance thus formed led to an interesting correspondence. Drake was in possession of main valuable letters from distinguished men and women, addressed to herself and husband. [1]
Priscilla Holmes Drake became the wife of James Perry Drake (1797-1876), a native of North Carolina, at Lawrenceburg, Indiana. He had held office under President Monroe and was then receiver of public moneys in Indianapolis, Indiana, appointed by President Jackson. While a resident of Posey County, Indiana, he had been brought into intimate business and social relations with the New Harmony Community, under the Rapps, father and son, and when their possessions were transferred to the Scotch philanthropist, Robert Owen, he naturally held the same relations with the Owen association. Those two communities, although striving in different ways to benefit humanity, had much to do with broadening his views and making his after-life tolerant and charitable, and probably had an influence in developing his young wife's interest in the laws relating to women. Their home was the center of happiness and progress, and it was only widening the circle of early associations to find therein a hearty welcome for David, Richard and Robert Dale Owen, the distinguished soils of Robert Owen. [1]
In 1861 they moved to Alabama, near Huntsville, where they continued their interest and work in the cause of woman's suffrage. Drake was left a widow in 1876 and died at her residence, on February 11, 1892, and is buried at Maple Hill Cemetery (Huntsville, Alabama). She was the mother of seven children, among whom Annie Buell Drake Robertson (1841-1930), four of whom survived her. [1]
Her nephew was Civil War Major General Don Carlos Buell.
New Harmony is a historic town on the Wabash River in Harmony Township, Posey County, Indiana. It lies 15 miles (24 km) north of Mount Vernon, the county seat, and is part of the Evansville metropolitan area. The town's population was 690 at the 2020 census.
Robert Owen was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the co-operative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic communities, and sought a more collective approach to child-rearing, including government control of education. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating aged 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his Utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing co-operatives and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools.
Caroline Lavinia Harrison was an American music teacher and the first lady of the United States from 1889 until her death. She was married to President Benjamin Harrison, and she was the second first lady to die while serving in that role.
Robert Dale Owen was a Scottish-born Welsh-American social reformer who was active in Indiana politics as member of the Democratic Party in the Indiana House of Representatives and represented Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives (1843–47). As a member of Congress, Owen successfully pushed through the bill that established Smithsonian Institution and served on the Institution's first Board of Regents. Owen also served as a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850 and was appointed as U.S. chargé d'affaires (1853–58) to Naples.
Abel Delos Streight was a peacetime lumber merchant and publisher, and was a Union Army colonel in the American Civil War. His command precipitated a notable cavalry raid in 1863, known as Streight's Raid. He was a prisoner of war for 10 months. On March 12, 1866, his nomination for appointment to the grade of brevet brigadier general, to rank from March 13, 1865 was confirmed. He later became a politician, and served as a state senator in Indiana for two terms.
Maple Hill Cemetery is the oldest and largest cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama, United States. Founded on two acres in about the year 1822, it now encompasses nearly 100 acres and contains over 80,000 burials. It was added to the Alabama Historical Commission's Historic Cemetery Register in 2008, and to the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. Its occupants include five governors of Alabama, five United States senators, and numerous other figures of local, state, and national note. It is located east of the Twickenham Historic District.
Zerelda Gray Sanders Wallace was the First Lady of Indiana from 1837 to 1840, and a temperance activist, women's suffrage leader, and inspirational speaker in the 1870s and 1880s. She was a charter member of Central Christian Church, the first Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her husband was David Wallace, the sixth governor of Indiana; Lew Wallace, one of her stepsons, became an American Civil War general and author.
Virginia Clay-Clopton (1825–1915) was a political hostess and activist in Alabama and Washington, D.C. She was also known as Virginia Tunstall, Virginia Clay, and Mrs. Clement Claiborne Clay. She took on different responsibilities after the Civil War. As the wife of US Senator Clement Claiborne Clay from Alabama, she was part of a group of young southerners who boarded together in the capital in particular hotels. In the immediate postwar period, she worked to gain her husband's freedom from imprisonment at Fort Monroe, where Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederacy, was also held.
Jabez Leftwich was an American politician, planter and military officer who represented Virginia's 14th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1821 and 1825, as well as served in the Virginia House of Delegates representing Bedford County, and finally represented Madison County, Alabama in the Alabama House of Representatives after moving to that new state.
Robert Dale Owen Memorial is a public artwork located at the south entrance of the Indiana Statehouse along Washington Street in Indianapolis, Indiana. The memorial was donated to the state of Indiana and dedicated in 1911 in honor of the Indiana politician, Robert Dale Owen (1807–1877). The bronze portrait bust by Indiana sculptor, Frances M. Goodwin, has been missing from this memorial since 1970. The memorial's remaining pedestal is made from three stone blocks and includes a commemorative plaque.
Sarah Tittle Bolton née Barrett was an American poet and women's rights activist who is considered an unofficial poet laureat of Indiana. Bolton collaborated with Robert Dale Owen during Indiana's 1850–1851 constitutional convention to include the recognition of women's property rights in the revised state constitution of 1851. Bolton was little known outside of Indiana, and her writings have been mostly forgotten. "Paddle Your Own Canoe" (1850), her most famous poem, and "Indiana," a poetic tribute to her longtime home, are among her best-known poems.
John Dennis Phelan was an American editor, politician and jurist. He served as Speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives.
Clara Elenore Carl was an American writer and repeat murderer. In 1922, she was convicted of having poisoned her second husband, Frank Emmerson Carl, and his father, Alonzo Carl. She was sentenced to life imprisonment but paroled after 15 years. During her time in prison she escaped once and evaded recapture for a week. It is suspected that she killed her first husband, Robert Gibson, as well. She was "considered one of the most daring woman criminals in the country," earning the nickname "feminine Bluebeard."
Caroline Brown Buell was an American activist who lectured and wrote on behalf of temperance and suffrage. She served as the assistant recording secretary (1878–80), corresponding secretary (1880–93), and a member of the Our Union publication committee (1876–83) of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU); as well as the president (1904) and corresponding secretary (1875–86) of the Connecticut WCTU. She also originated the plan of the Loyal Temperance Legion, the children's society of the WCTU. Buell wrote extensively for temperance publications, and other papers and magazines. She made her home in East Hampton, Connecticut.
Martina Swafford was an American poet of the long nineteenth century. Widely known by her pen-name, "Belle Bremer", her vision was greatly impaired, so much so that much of the time, she was unable to read or write. Swafford was a native of Indiana, and by education, environment, and primary attachments, she was an Indiana poet. Yet she called herself semi-Southern, because of her Virginian parentage and her own yearly temporary home in the South. She spent her winters at Huntsville, Alabama, a noted health resort of the time, where much of her poetical work was done. It was said that the cheerful, hopeful tone of these poems, made more effective by an underlying pathos, was a pleasing contrast to the melancholy which marred the work of so many versemakers of the time.
This is a timeline of women's suffrage in Alabama. Women's suffrage in Alabama starts in the late 1860s and grows over time in the 1890s. Much of the women's suffrage work stopped after 1901, only to pick up again in 1910. Alabama did not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until 1953 and African-Americans and women were affected by poll taxes and other issues until the mid 1960s.
Women's suffrage in Alabama went through several stages. Early women's suffrage work in Alabama started in the 1860s. Priscilla Holmes Drake was the driving force behind suffrage work until the 1890s. Several suffrage groups were formed, including a state suffrage group, the Alabama Woman Suffrage Organization (AWSO). The Alabama Constitution had a convention in 1901 and suffragists spoke and lobbied for women's rights provisions. However, the final constitution continued to exclude women. Women's suffrage efforts were mainly dormant until the 1910s when new suffrage groups were formed. Suffragists in Alabama worked to get a state amendment ratified and when this failed, got behind the push for a federal amendment. Alabama did not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until 1953. For many years, both white women and African American women were disenfranchised by poll taxes. Black women had other barriers to voting including literacy tests and intimidation. Black women would not be able to fully access their right to vote until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Julia Pleasants Creswell was a poet and novelist of Southern United States literature who lived in Alabama and Louisiana. She was author of Aphelia, and Other Poems by Two Cousins of the South, in conjunction with Thomas M. Bibb Bradley, of Huntsville, published in 1854; Poems; Callamura, an allegorical novel, published 1868; posthumous volume of poems; Abracadabra, a novel which was never published; and a book of short poems which she had ready for publication but never published, dedicated to George D. Prentice in appreciation of his devotion to Southern literature.
Drusilla Wilson was an American temperance leader and Quaker pastor. She was the second president of the Kansas Woman's Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.).
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain .