She Has Always Exercised and Enjoyed Those Rights
As I said in my last post, my three times great-granduncle Elias Longley and his wife Margaret Vater Longley were idealists. Among Elias’s many publishing ventures was a newspaper, The Type of the Times. Its slogan was “Devoted to all true interests of the human race,” which, as one writer notes, included “women’s rights, as well as abolition, temperance, and even vegetarianism” (Durack 2020). Of these varied interests, the one to which Margaret, in particular, devoted the most time and energy was women’s suffrage.
A Manifest Incongruity
Because my family has lived in America for a very long time, I am eligible to join many of the lineage societies that limit their membership to the descendants of early settlers or men who served in various wars. I can’t say I’ve ever had the desire to actually join any of these societies, however, with one exception.
Her Children Sign from the Breast
In a 1684 treatise with a title far too long to include here, Increase Mather, a noted Puritan minister, set out to describe instances where God had intervened in the world in remarkable and miraculous ways. Among the “illustrious providences” he recounted was the story of my nine times great-grandparents Matthew and Sarah (Hunt) Pratt, both of whom were hearing and speech impaired but who were also respected members of the church and community in 17th century Weymouth, Massachusetts.
Brave Women
Late last year, the Austin Chronicle published a short Texas history trivia quiz. One of the questions was as follows:
Q: After statehood in 1845, the U.S. built a series of around three dozen frontier forts along a boundary that kept shifting westward. Native Americans only attacked one. Which one?