Women of the West
Created by Dorothy Emerson and Christine Jaronski
Unitarian Universalist Women’s Heritage Society Worship Service
Unitarian Universalist General Assembly, June 28, 1999, Salt Lake City, Utah
Opening Words: Mary C. Ward Granniss Webster Billings (1824-1904)
God of Mercy! God of Love!
Thou enthroned all worlds above.
Bless us as we meet today,
While we sing and while we pray!
May Thy grace with us abide;
May our lives Thy wisdom guide;
And these hours of worship be
Helps to raise our souls to Thee!
God of Goodness! God of Grace!
Filling all creation’s space:
High above; yet near to all
Who in truth, upon Thee call;—
Be
Thy gracious presence near;
Be
Thy Holy Spirit here; May we each with heart and voice,
In
Thy Truth and Love rejoice.
From
“Fifty Years Ago in Texas”, Christian Leader,
November 28, 1936
These words, written by
the Rev. Mary C. Billings, were the opening hymn of the first
Universalist Association gathering in Texas, held in September, 1886,
in Meridian. Mary’s third husband was the first Texas State
Missionary sent there to bring the good news of Universalism to
Texas. A life-long Universalist born in Connecticut, Mary was
well-known to Universalists through her contributions to Ladies’
Repository, Rose of Sharon, Lily of the Valley, and other
denominational publications. She was licensed to preach in 1886 and
ordained in 1892.
Chalice Lighting
We light our chalice
today in honor of women of the West who, like Mary Billings, showed
great courage in bringing the good news of Universalism and
Unitarianism wherever their life paths led. We would do well to do
likewise.
Please join in our
chalice lighting words—the motto of the Unitarian Universalist
Women’s Heritage Society—which you will find printed in
your program:
The
flame of our heritage lights the way to our future.
Opening Hymn: Ada
Choate Burpee Bowles (1836-1928)
The words of our
opening hymn were written by Ada Choate Burpee Bowles, Universalist
minister who was born in Massachusetts, but came to California with
her minister-husband to spread the good news of Universalism on the
west coast. While in San Francisco, she edited a regular newspaper
column on women’s suffrage and was president of the San
Francisco Woman’s Suffrage Society.
This stirring hymn was
first sung at the World Congress of Representative Women, held in
Chicago in 1893. Let’s sing “Rise Up! Rise Up! 0 Woman.”
Moving Westward
Like Mary Billings and
Ada Bowles, many women from the East moved West during the 19th
century. After each of the stories of Unitarian and Universalist
women of the West we will be sharing in this service, we invite you
to join in the call and response you will find printed in your
program. The leader will say: “By following her example,”
and you will respond: we can fulfill our promise to help one
another.
Mary Phelps Austin
Holley (1784-1846)
Mary Phelps Austin
Holley was born in Connecticut. After her minister- husband died at
sea, she and her young son moved to Texas to be near her relatives,
including her cousin, Stephen F. Austin, who was instrumental in
founding the city that bears his name. In the early 1830s, she wrote
a book, Texas: Observations Historical, Geographical and
Descriptive, examining in detail all aspects of life in Texas,
including social conditions, political and diplomatic issues, and the
cultural milieu. This book was thought to have greatly encouraged
settlers to move to Texas and is still considered one of the most
reliable sources of information on Texas in that era.
One of her favorite
places in Texas was Galveston Bay, on the Gulf of Mexico. There she
found her faith renewed, despite the loss and turmoil of her life. In
this poem, she shows us how connecting with nature can give us
strength to overcome tragedy and find new meaning in life.
I
love the, sea; I could embrace thee, and
My
cares forget. In thy wide bosom there is
Room
for miseries like mine. Alone
I
should not be, for in thy depths is one,
To
whom my faith was pledged. Oh, what a world
Of
trials have been mine. What swells of anguish,
What
billowy cares were left for me, widowed,
To
buffet and to stem, since the blue waters
Closed
on him so mourned, so loved...
What
wealth is treasured in the sea! What loves
Within
the mermaids’ coral caverns sleep!
What
mysteries lie hid from mortal ken or aim!
Rapt
thought, bewildered, lost, in mazy wanderings
‘Mongst
the infinity of waters—peopled all,
And
filled with untold wonders, soars above
To
lighter elements; and, rushing through
Illimitable
space, hung with night’s starry lamps— Guides to the
mariner through trackless, devious ways:
Worlds
upon worlds—seeks the creating and
Sustaining
cause—The Hand Divine.
From the poem “Oh, how I love the sea”, The San Luis
Advocate, March 2, 1841
Mary Austin Holley
shows us how to turn tragedy into beauty, that faith will lead us on
to find new ways to utilize our abilities and make something of our
lives.
Leader:
By following her example,
Response:
We can fulfill our promise to help one another.
Georgiana Bruce
Kirby (1818-1887
Georgiana Bruce Kirby,
born in difficult circumstances in England, eventually found work in
Boston, Massachusetts, educated herself, and became part of various
reform movements fermenting there in the mid-l9th century. For three
years she participated in the socialist utopian community of Brook
Farm. There Margaret Fuller introduced her to Eliza Farnham, with
whom Georgiana worked on prison reform. Later the two traveled west
to share a 200-acre farm Eliza had inherited. Then both women
married, and Georgiana’s life in Santa Cruz, California,
continued in a more traditional fashion.
Pregnant with her first
child, Georgiana began a journal in which she described the hardships
she faced as a woman isolated on a farm, missing the daily
interactions that so enriched her earlier life. In this segment, she
acknowledged the importance of women’s friendships.
I
am not sure that anything whatever could relieve or comfort me under
my present very depressing condition of health, but if anything could
it would be a congenial female companion with whom I could chat and
be merry— sympathize and advise. The being alone all day from
eight in the morning to seven at night ensures a too great
seriousness. There is nothing to call out any other faculties of
mind, fancy, imagination, affection, mirthfulness, nothing in fact to
kindle or excite a worthy spirit life. . . . Every good woman needs a
companion of her own sex, no matter how numerous or valuable her male
acquaintances, no matter how close the union between herself and her
husband; if she have a genial, loving nature, the want of a female
friend is felt as a sad void.
From
Georgiana: Feminist Reformer of the West, Santa Cruz County
Historical Trust, 1987
Georgiana’s
courage in facing the hardships of her life, her ongoing commitment
to social reform, and her faith in the strength and support of women,
led her to record her thoughts, so that her children and those who
came after might know what life was like for women in the West.
Leader:
By following her example,
Response:
We can fulfill our promise to help one another.
Augusta Louise
Pierce Tabor (1833-1895)
Augusta Louise Pierce
Tabor, born in Maine, came west to Kansas Territory shortly after her
marriage. Later, after she and her husband had made a fortune in the
Colorado gold mines, he divorced her to marry a younger woman. Their
story is retold in an American opera, “The Ballad of Baby Doe.”
Augusta turned her personal tragedy to triumph by founding the
Pioneer Ladies Aid Society, an organization that offered friendship
and financial assistance to women who had accompanied their men into
mining camps and were later left alone by death, desertion, or
divorce.
Augusta’s name is
contained on many pages of the files and records of the Unitarian
Church in Denver. She was active on all kinds of committees. She
freely offered her mansion for teas and festivals, and these always
proved very popular and were effective money raisers One minister
admitted that this particular group was the most earnest, the most
devoted and the most self- sacrificing band of women he had ever
known. Without their resolution and their persistent endeavors, the
Unitarian Church might not have survived.
In an interview
conducted in 1884, Augusta gave this picture of what it was like on
the move westward:
What
I endured on the plains only those that crossed in ‘59 know.
There was no station until we got to within 80 miles of Denver—no
road a good part of the way. I was weak and feeble, having nearly
shaken myself to death with fever and ague in Kansas. .. . I had to
cook for all our party and I did not find it a pleasure. Sometimes
the wind would blow furiously and it is not very pleasant to cook
over a camp fire in a wind storm when that fire is made of buffalo
chips and every gust of wind would carry them over the barren
prairie. By the time I would get them gathered together, another puff
(and so on, lasting three or four days).
Every
Sunday we rested, if rested it could be called. The men would go
hunting, while I would cook, wash and iron, which kept me employed
all day. My baby was teething and was sick all the way across, which
with my other work, made it hard for me.
From
Augusta Tabor: A Pioneering Woman, by Betty Moynihan,
Cordillera Press, 1988
Augusta Tabor was a
woman who survived. She survived the move westward, and she survived
divorce. With the strength of her survival she helped other women and
a Unitarian church survive as well.
Leader:
By following her example,
Response:
We can fulfill our promise to help one another.
NATIVE AMERICAN
RIGHTS
An inevitable result of
the move westward by European Americans was encroachment upon the
homelands of indigenous people. Although some of our women clearly
felt entitled to the lands they settled, others were aware of the
injustice caused by the settlement of native lands by outsiders.
Helen Marie Fiske
Hunt Jackson (1830-1855)
Helen Maria Fiske Hunt
Jackson was one of those who recognized the injustice and used her
power as a writer to raise consciousness about the destruction of
native lands and culture. Born in Massachusetts, she was pushed her
into writing as a career by the death of her husband and infant son
and the support of several Unitarian ministers. She soon became a
celebrity as a poet and journalist.
Because of chronic
illness, she moved to Colorado in her late 30s. There she became
outraged at the plight of indigenous people and published a document
called A Century of Dishonor, which she had bound with
blood-red covers and sent to government officials and members of
Congress. Appointed to review the needs of the Mission Indians in
California, she decided to utilize fiction to launch a crusade to
help native people. Her novel, Ramona, about the tottering
Spanish society and the Indians victimized by gringo usurpers, has
gone through over three hundred editions. Three movies have been
based on it; and in Hemet, California, there is an annual pageant to
reenact it. Here is a selection from A Century of Dishonor:
There
is not among these three hundred bands of Indians one which has not
suffered cruelly at the hands either of the Government or of white
settlers. These Indians found themselves of a sudden surrounded by
and caught up in the great influx of gold-seeking settlers, as
helpless creatures on a shore are caught up in a tidal wave.. . . The
tale of the wrongs, the oppressions, the murders of the Pacific-slope
Indians in the last thirty years would be a volume by itself, and is
too monstrous to be believed.
It
makes little difference, however, where one opens the record of the
history of the Indians; every page and every year has its dark stain.
The story of one tribe is the story of all, varied only by
differences of time and place; but neither time nor place makes any
difference in the main facts... . [T]he United States Government
breaks its promises now as deftly as then, and with an added
ingenuity from long practice.
From A Century of Dishonor, Harpers, 1881
Helen Hunt Jackson
shows us how we can put the talents we have to use in the struggle
for justice for all who are oppressed by the systems of society and
government under which we live and benefit.
Leader:
By following her example,
Response:
We can fulfill our promise to help one another.
Sarah Pratt Carr
(1850-1935)
Although Sarah Pratt
Carr was born in Maine, her family moved to California when she was
an infant and she spent the rest of her life in the West. Because of
her father’s job building railroads, Sarah grew up in a number
of different frontier settlements and saw first-hand the treatment of
Chinese workers and the conflicts between settlers and Indians. Under
the guidance of the Oakland minister, the Rev. Charles Wendte, Sarah
prepared for Unitarian ministry and was ordained. She organized and
served churches in the San Joaquin Valley, spreading the good news of
Unitarianism to newly developing communities. Later, after she moved
to Seattle, she wrote the libretto for an opera for which her
daughter, Mary Carr Moore, composed the music. Narcissa, or
The Cost of Empire told the story of the conquest of the West,
with equal sympathy for the missionaries, immigrant settlers, and
indigenous people caught in the terrible clash of cultures.
In a poem entitled
“Heritage,” Sarah affirmed the importance of the past as
a source for our unfolding lives.
•
. . within your soul
Lie
sleeping, all unguess’d
The
secrets of the past,
Dim
visions half confess’d
Of
other lives and other hearts
That
died to live anew,
The
sum of all that’s been,
The
Past’s bequest to you.
The
life of future years
From
all the past unfolds.
Each
day from deep within
New
truths the soul beholds.
And
there’s no bound’ry set
To
cage your fiery soul;
God’s
kingdom is your field,
Perfection
is your goal.
From
the poem “Heritage”, Pacific Unitarian, May 1894
Sarah Pratt Carr put
her Unitarian principles into action by sharing her faith with others
by founding new congregations and by examining the complexities of
acting justly in a changing world. Throughout her life she recognized
that we are our brother’s and sister’s keepers, that our
lives are inextricably bound together.
Leader:
By following her example,
Response:
We can fulfill our promise to help one another.
MINISTRY IN THE WEST
Like Sarah Pratt Carr,
Mary Billings, and Ada Bowles, women ministers found opportunities in
the West that were lacking in the more established churches of the
East.
Florence Ellen
Kollock Crooker (1848-1925)
Florence Ellen Kollock
Crooker was born in a log house in Wisconsin and grew up reading
Universalist journals and discussing them with her father. Upon the
advice of Mary Livermore, she attended St. Lawrence University and
was ordained in 1877. She served a variety of congregations all over
the country for over 40 years in what we would now call extension
ministry. Her expertise in reviving churches and helping them to
develop strong leadership led to her call to Throop Church in
Pasadena, California, where she got the church out of debt and made
it a self-sustaining organization. The financial secretary stated:
“She, a woman, showed our prosperous businessmen how to do
church business successfully.”
As President of the
Women’s Ministerial Conference, she was often asked to explain
why women should be ministers. Here is one response she gave in a
newspaper article.
The
question is sometimes asked: “Why should there be women
ministers?”
The
answer is plain: “For the same good reasons that there is a
male ministry.”
To
the mother, sister and daughter she carries with her a peculiar favor
and irresistible influence of the authority of a high priestess, and
through this she leads and guides, she comforts and consoles, and
thus the community and individual comes to realize “Why a woman
minister.”
Is
their ministry acceptable?
The
reply to this is geographical. Acceptable, yes, from the Mississippi
Valley West to the Pacific coast.
Let
New England speak for herself.
From
an article “Why Women Ministers?”, Sunday Post, January
11, 1914
Florence Kollock
Crooker refused to believe that there was anything women couldn’t
do, once the barriers were removed. She worked throughout her life to
pave the way for women to follow their true callings.
Leader:
By following her example,
Response:
We can fulfill our promise to help one another.
Mila Frances Tupper
Maynard (1864-1926)
Mila Frances Tupper
Maynard, born in Iowa, was nurtured and fostered in her ministry by
her sister, the Rev. Eliza Tupper Wilkes, who was first ordained as a
Universalist and then became a Unitarian. Mila served congregations
in Indiana and Michigan, where she met her future husband, who
apparently left a troubled marriage to follow her and become ordained
himself. Together they served churches in Nevada and Utah. During
their ministry in Salt Lake City, the First Unitarian Church grew to
over 350 members,
Much of Mila’s
later career was devoted to writing and lecturing in behalf of social
and economic justice. She eventually became part of the Christian
Socialist movement. Here is what she had to say about family values:
The
family is the great object lesson whereby is revealed the divine
truth that we are all brothers and sisters in a common family. The
day is dawning when men will awaken to what this means as never
before. .. . It is woman’s privilege to help mightily in
bringing the world to feel this.
From
an article in Transactions, 1891, National Council of Women of
the United States
Did
I say that the most important thing ... was to care for child
development? It was a mistake. The most important thing is to work
for better conditions for labor so that all may have a chance to be
human and rear the human child tenderly and wisely.
From
an article in California Social Democrat, May 17, 1913
Mila Tupper Maynard was
relentless in her pursuit of truth and justice. In her ministry and
through her writing and teaching, she touched the lives of many and
did her part to make a better world.
Leader:
By following her example,
Response:
We can fulfill our promise to help one another.
WORKING FOR THE
ADVANCEMENT OF WQMEN
An underlying theme in
all of these women’s lives and work was the struggle for the
advancement of women. Essential to that struggle was the movement to
gain the right for women to vote and the development of excellence in
higher education for women.
SONG—”I’m
Going to Vote, John,” by Mary Can Moore (1873-1957)
Mary Louise Carr Moore,
daughter of Unitarian minister Sarah Pratt Carr, became a major
composer of her time. Early in her career she added her musical
talents to the suffrage cause by composing a group of six songs in
support of the 1896 campaign for a suffrage amendment to the state
constitution in California. Only one of them survives, and we’ve
adapted it for group singing.
Aurelia Isabel Henry
Reinhardt (1877-1948)
Aurelia Isabel Henry
Reinhardt, a native Californian, was invited to become president of
Mills College when it was in a very shaky condition and no better-
known educator would have taken the risk. Through nearly 30 years of
leadership, she built the school into a women’s liberal arts
college for women with a worldwide reputation. She was also a lay
preacher at the Unitarian Church in Oakland and served on the first
Commission on Appraisal, helping to heal a major denominational split
with her essay on worship. She lectured and wrote extensively on
education for women and on peace, suffrage, and other issues of the
day. Here is a sampling of her thoughts on women and on education and
religion.
Yesterday’s
woman was expected to have individual interests, caring for the
brightness of the hearth fire and the comforts of the family group.
Today she has inherited the community and the community’s
welfare. .. . Civics, religion and education have become her field of
activity. She is homemaker and citizen.
Mjlls Quarterly, 1917
Religion
and education meet in their responsibility to make possible the
abundant life—the terms are intellectual and spiritual, rather
than material. Humane living is assured only to those. . . who have
disciplined themselves to choose and who have the ardor to strive for
the excellent “with heart and soul and mind.”
Address at Ohio State University, 1940
Aurelia Henry Reinhardt
took advantage of an opportunity that was offered to her and proved
to be more successful than anyone could have expected. Her leadership
in women’s education and in the Unitarian movement helped those
who knew her and beyond. May we remember her willingness to risk the
next time an opportunity comes our way.
Leader:
By following her example,
Response:
We can fulfill our promise to help one another.
WEAVING THE
INTERDEPENDENT WEB
Women of the West
encountered nature in more direct ways than did many of those who
lived in long-established communities. Perhaps it is this
interdependence with nature that has led some of our more
contemporary western women to their deep relationships and concern
for the natural environment and for the fate of the earth.
Eleanor Silver
Dowding Keeping (1903-1991)
Eleanor Silver Dowding
Keeping, known as Silver, was born in England and came to Western
Canada at the age of six. Although partially deaf from the age of 12,
she managed to earn a Master of Science degree in botany and become
an instructor and lecturer in that subject at the University of
Alberta, one of the first women to teach in a field other than home
economics or nursing. On an expedition to study the ecology of
Alberta, she became fascinated with fungus and went on later to
complete her PhD in mycology. For 20 years she investigated medically
important fungi and worked to interest physicians and public health
workers in the importance of medical mycology.
Silver and her husband
were founding members of the Unitarian Church in Edmonton. For many
years, bits of prose and poetry appeared in the church newsletter
under the title “Silverisms.” Here is a sample of
her writing, from a piece called “A Creed for Agnostics”:
Instead
of considering the communication of nuclear material between
microorganisms, let us now consider the communication of words
between one brain and another, or of thought within a single brain.
I
have always felt that brains were meant to be picked. If one of you
should cry, “That woman stole my words! There are laws of
copyright against that sort of thing! I will sue!” I could
reply, “And where did you get those words in the first place?”
Through communication, each of us becomes enriched. No one loses, we
all gain. We can no longer say, “I am not my brother’s
keeper.’
I
am my brother and my sister. I am part of all that I have met.
Communication is the tie that binds. Since we are all in this thing
together, it is not necessary for any of us to feel lonely or afraid.
From
Silverisms: Selected Writings of F. Silver Keeping, published
by the Unitarian Church of Edmonton, 1991
Silver Keeping
integrated her scientific knowledge and her Unitarian faith in ways
that enriched all those who knew her. She understood deeply the
connections among diverse strands of the web of life.
Leader:
By following her example,
Response:
We can fulfill our promise to help one another.
Billie Rose King
Wright (1922-1987)
Billie Rose King
Wright, born in Mississippi, was ordained in Anchorage, Alaska, in
1971. She and her minister-husband went as a research team for the
National Endowment for the Humanities, to study value formation among
indigenous people one hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. They
fell in love with wilderness living and returned to their 12 by 12
foot cabin on a mountain lake again and again over the next two
decades. They also established a wilderness retreat in the Sierra
Ancha Mountains in Arizona. In her journal of their first year in the
Alaskan wilderness, Billie writes:
[The
values of the inland Eskimos] were indecipherable viewed from a
non-native perspective. These elusive values were most striking in
that special relationship to the environment which is the basis of
the Eskimo’s rare and remarkable selfhood.
We
became keenly aware of this relationship, sensing its life-sustaining
importance in the Nunamiut hierarchy of values. But we knew, too, the
difficulty of translating, without loss or distortion, concepts which
are so lacking in our own technologized culture…..
Many
have written of the importance of the wild—Thoreau, Muir,
Leopold, Marshall, the Indian and Eskimo poets and storytellers. If
in sharing this very personal inner-outer world of mine with you I
have communicated the urgent necessity to cherish and protect this
last remnant of what is and always has been the best of our planet,
then it will have been worth the uneasiness I feel in agreeing to
publish my journals. My concern is that in writing, lovingly,
caringly, of wilderness I may be doing the wilderness, and perhaps
you, a great disservice.
From
Four Seasons North: A Journal of Life in the Alaskan Wilderness,
(1973; Sierra Club edition, 1991)
Billie Wright’s
personal journey of self-reliance and inner harmony led her to the
wilderness of Alaska and Arizona. There she came to know intimately
and to trust implicitly the teachings of the land and the natural
world. May we have the courage to encounter the wilderness of our
lives and to learn the lessons nature has to teach us.
Leader:
By following her example,
Response:
We can fulfill our promise to help one another.
SONG—Malvina
Reynolds (1900-1978)
Our closing song is by
Malvina Reynolds, one of the most outspoken songwriters on the
crucial topics of the 1960s and 70s. A native Californian, Malvina
turned to songwriting after earning a PhD in English Literature and
having a full career as a mother and newspaperwoman. Active in the
Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, she was at first too shy to perform
her own songs and gave them to fellow Unitarian Pete Seeger and
others to sing.
Finally, in her 60s,
she began to perform publicly, explaining that her cracked and
crotchety voice was to be expected—”with all the fallout
in the atmosphere.” This song was originally about nuclear
fallout, but it applies as well to acid rain. As we face the crucial
environmental Issues of today, we would do well to consider:
“What Have They
Done to the Rain?”
CLOSING WORDS—Mary
C. Billings
We hope these stories
and words of Women of the West will provide nourishment and
inspiration for all our lives. We, too, have stories to live, words
to share, lives to complete.
We end this service
where we began, with the words of the closing hymn Mary Billings
wrote for the first gathering of the Universalist Association in
Texas:
While
again Thy name addressing:
Spirit*
now to Thee we pray,
Give
us all a parting blessing,
That
shall help us on life’s way.
Guide
us ever
May
we never
From
Thy righteous precepts stray.
Thanks,
0 God! to Thee we render,
For
Thy never failing care;
For
Thy constant love, so tender;
For
Thy grace that all may share.
And
may gladness
Banish
sadness
Fill
our hearts with praise and prayer.
From
“Fifty Years Ago in Texas”, Christian Leader,
November 28, 1936
*Original says
“Father!”
EXTINGUISHING THE
CHALICE
And now, as we
extinguish this chalice, this symbol of the promise we share as
Unitarian Universalists, may its light go with us to illuminate our
journeys. May the flame of our heritage light the way through
whatever present challenges we face to the future fulfillment of our
dreams. Amen. Blessed Be.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This service was
created by Dorothy Emerson and Christine Jaronski, and edited by
Donna Clifford. Resources were provided by David Johnson, the
Unitarian Church of Edmonton, the Boston Athenaeum, the Unitarian
Universalist Collection at Andover-Harvard Library, and the library
of the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Heritage Society.
The song, “I’m
Going to Vote, John,” is available in a collection of songs by
Mary Carr Moore. Cost is $27.50, plus $6.75 postage.
Order from Hildegard
Publishing Company
Box 332, Bryn Mawr, PA
19010
Phone: 610-649--8649
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