Starting from Seneca Falls

by Karen Schwabach

  “The same reason you wanted to know it, Mrs. Stanton,” said Rose.

  This was talking back, and Mrs. Stanton frowned.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Rose, not sounding particularly sorry.

  Mrs. Stanton gave her a harried look and went upstairs to see after little Gat, who was sick with the ague again.

  “Why do you want to know it?” Bridie asked.

  “Because numbers explain everything,” said Rose.

  “Oh,” said Bridie.

  “Did you know there are nearly three times as many slaves in the United States today as there were in 1800?” said Rose.

  “No,” said Bridie.

  “It’s like we’re not doing anything,” said Rose. “When we help people escape. It’s like cutting off the head of a what-do-you-call-it.”

  “But it matters to the people you help,” said Bridie.

  “I don’t think Mrs. Stanton likes me knowing things that most people don’t know except her,” said Rose.

  Bridie worked this out. She wasn’t sure if it was true or not. “Can’t you ask your teacher?”

  “I think…” Rose fiddled with the corner of a page. “I think I’m getting to the part of the book where Mr. Davis doesn’t know it either.”

  Bridie was surprised. “You’re only halfway into it!”

  “Yes, but most teachers don’t really know mathematics. I mean, they mostly didn’t go to a fancy academy like Mrs. Stanton did.” Rose was looking worried.

  Bridie could see that there were a lot more pages in the book. And she knew Rose would want to learn them all.

  Mrs. Stanton came downstairs. “I ought to sit up with him tonight—”

  There was a loud, frantic knock at the front door.

  Mrs. Stanton went to open it. A white woman burst in, disheveled and out of breath from running.

  “You’ve got to come down to the Flats, Mrs. Stanton! Mikey is fittin’ to kill his wife if she don’t kill him first!”

  Mrs. Stanton went. She got called on to break up fights and arguments a lot. Maybe it was because her father was a judge.

  * * *

  On Sunday, Gat was better, and Mrs. Stanton announced that she was going to a tea party in Waterloo, the next town over. She wanted Bridie and Rose to go along to watch the children.

  Mrs. Stanton wouldn’t take them on the train, because a man had been killed jumping out of it just the day before. Mrs. Stanton worried that the boys would take it into their heads to jump out of the train. So she rented a horse and buggy from the livery stable.

  It was hard to cram everybody into the carriage. There was Mrs. Stanton, who was driving, with Neil and Gat sitting on either side of her, and Bridie and Rose in back with four-year-old Kit.

  They jounced along over roads corduroyed with logs. They bounced and flew into the air every time they hit a crooked log, and everyone but Mrs. Stanton got the giggles so hard they almost fell out of the carriage.

  At last they reached Jane and Richard Hunt’s house, on the outskirts of Waterloo. It was a grand brick mansion, with tall white fluted columns in front. These must be very rich people, Bridie thought. She thought so even more when they got inside—there were carpets, and sofas, and camphene lamps, and all the things that rich people had.

  Mrs. Hunt came to greet them. She was carrying a very new baby, and Mrs. Stanton cooed over the baby and pulled back the blanket to look at its tiny red face.

  “Isn’t she the most precious thing ever!”

  Bridie and Rose exchanged a glance. It looked about like a baby to them.

  The blanket the baby was wrapped in was embroidered with the words

  “What a little darling!” Mrs. Stanton fussed over the baby. “Does she find her anti-slavery wardrobe sufficiently supplied?”

  “Yes, we were lucky to find a few yards of cotton grown by free labor. I’m so glad thee could come, Lizzie. And the children, of course—”

  Mrs. Hunt looked a bit doubtful about this last item, which meant that the children were about to be sent outside. That was fine with Bridie. There were a lot of adults here and you could tell they were getting ready to talk about boring stuff.

  Tiny Mrs. Mott from the Fourth of July was there, and her sister Martha Coffin Wright, and a lady named Mary Ann McClintock with her grown-up daughter Elizabeth. They all kept saying thee instead of you, which meant they were all Quakers, except Mrs. Stanton, of course.

  Mrs. Mott came over and said, “Good afternoon, Phoebe.”

  Bridie was surprised the old lady remembered her. People mostly didn’t notice Bridie, let alone remember her. She curtsied and said how-do-you-do.

  To Bridie’s relief, the babies were put upstairs for a nap, to be watched over by one of Mrs. Hunt’s servants.

  The older children were sent outside, where ten-year-old Richard pointed out that there were enough of them to play Run Sheep Run.

  It was the most fun Bridie had had in forever.

  Rose and Richard were the team captains. Bridie was on Rose’s team. They hid behind the icehouse, and when it looked like Richard’s team was about to find them, Rose yelled, “Run, sheep, run!” and they all dashed around the house and hid behind the fluted columns.

  Richard sent his team after them. Rose yelled, “Run, sheep, run!” again, and they ran to the barn, with Richard’s team howling in pursuit. From there they fled to the woodshed, and then down toward the creek bed, where they were finally caught.

  They were all lying down on the ground, panting with exhaustion, when Mrs. Hunt’s servant came out and said, “You children need to play something quieter. It’s Sunday. Or rather First Day, I should say. Mary, come in and get some cookies for your guests.”

  Nine-year-old Mary grabbed Bridie by the sleeve. “Come with me!”

  Bridie went. She expected they would go into the kitchen. But Mary led the way to the parlor, where the adults were all sitting around the tea table, talking earnestly.

  “And when you consider that, even with the new married woman’s property law, a woman still doesn’t have the right to her own wages!” Mrs. Stanton was saying.

  Bridie stopped cold. That was what had happened. That was how she and her mother had ended up at the poorhouse. Bridie had thought it was something that had just happened to them. But now the women at the table were talking about it as if it was a big problem, one that affected lots of people.

  “If there’s to be a convention, then I do hope it will be before Mr. Mott and I leave the area,” said Mrs. Mott.

  “It will have to be,” said Mrs. McClintock. “People will come just to hear the famous Lucretia Mott speak, I’m sure.”

  Bridie looked at the tiny Mrs. Mott with renewed interest. She hadn’t known she was famous.

  “And, Lucretia, thee is the only one of us who can give a speech, really—” said Mrs. Wright.

  “I’m sure all of us can give speeches if we set our minds to it,” said Mrs. Stanton, with some asperity.

  “Thee is going to write some sort of manifesto for us, Lizzie—”

  Bridie and Mary just stood there and waited to be noticed. They had both been taught that children should be seen and not heard. Bridie looked at the teapot on the table, which bore the words

  HEALTH TO THE SICK

  HONOUR TO THE BRAVE

  SUCCESS TO THE LOVER

  FREEDOM TO THE SLAVE

  “A declaration of some kind—” someone said.

  “Do you think there’s time to have an actual convention, though, with just a few days’ notice?”

  “More than a week—”

  “If we put a notice in the paper—”

  “Where should we have the convention?”

  “The Wesleyan Meeting House. Thee knows they are abolitionists there and—”

  �
�And it will be mostly abolitionists that show up, if anyone does.” Mrs. Hunt turned to Mrs. Stanton. “Could thee see about renting the building, Lizzie? And put a notice in the paper.”

  “I wonder if Frederick Douglass would come.”

  “We can ask. And Lydia Maria Child?”

  “It’s too far for her, but she might send a letter….”

  Finally someone noticed Bridie and Mary. The girls waited while the women gathered up cookies and wrapped them in a napkin. Bridie and Mary said thank you and took them outside to the others.

  There were ginger snaps, and lemon jumbles, and sugar cookies, and everyone had one of each. Bridie ate hers slowly, savoring each sweet and spicy crumb, and decided she liked the lemon jumbles best.

  Since they’d been told Run Sheep Run was too noisy, they played Sardines instead. Bridie was It. She hid behind the kindling box next to the back steps. Rose found her first and crawled in beside her.

  “I should be studying my arithmetic,” said Rose as they watched a spider crawl across the edge of the box.

  “You have to have fun sometime,” said Bridie.

  “But Mr. Davis keeps getting headaches, and then there’s the big boys.”

  “Big boys?” said Bridie.

  “In the winter the big boys come to school, and they pick a fight with the teacher. The teacher has to be able to win the fight.”

  “What, he has to win against all of them together?” Bridie wasn’t sure what this had to do with Rose.

  “Yes,” said Rose. “It’s kind of traditional.”

  “Oh,” said Bridie.

  There were some things about America that she found very strange.

  “That didn’t happen when I went to school on State Street,” she added.

  And it certainly didn’t happen at the poorhouse school. For one thing, there hadn’t been any big boys.

  “Yes, but the school at Locust Hill is more of a country school,” said Rose. “It’s a country tradition. I don’t think Mr. Davis could win.”

  “I’m surprised anyone could win,” said Bridie.

  “Well, the school board generally looks for a man who has a fighting chance,” said Rose. “For the winter term, anyway. If Mr. Davis leaves, then I might not get another chance to go to school.”

  “But if you think you’re already running out of the arithmetic he knows—”

  “I think he’s studying at night to keep up with me.”

  “Can’t you learn it on your own? You can read.”

  It was generally held that if you could read and spell, and had beautiful handwriting, you could take it from there.

  “It’s hard, though. And I want to be a scientist.”

  The spider made its way down the side of the box.

  “Why?” said Bridie. She’d never, ever heard a girl say she wanted to be something before. For the first time, she wondered if she wanted to be something.

  “I want to find out things. Mankind is finding out all sorts of new things these days about how the world works, and how the stars work, and how we work, just…everything.”

  “Well, mankind,” Bridie pointed out.

  “Doesn’t mean I can’t do it too. Did you know there’s a woman studying to be a doctor right now, right over in Geneva?”

  Geneva was the next town over from Waterloo. Of course Bridie knew. Everyone knew. It was in all the newspapers. People sometimes went to Geneva just to catch a glimpse of this strange woman, Elizabeth Blackwell.

  “And there’s a woman who found a comet—her name is Maria Mitchell. She just found it. Just last winter she published a paper about it in her father’s name, but then people found out it was her.”

  Neil slipped into the hiding space. “I heard you talking; that’s how I found you.”

  Bridie and Rose had scooted over to make room for him.

  Bridie was thinking about what Rose had said. Imagine wanting to be something. She thought of all the things that boys could grow up to do. Boys could be doctors, and sailors, and college professors. They could be stonemasons and carpenters. They could be railroad engineers and newspaper reporters.

  Supposing a girl could do any of those things. What would she want to do?

  The next day Bridie was sent over the river to run some errands. She walked with Rose, who had just gotten out of school.

  Bridie had to pick up a loaf of sugar from the store, and take a message about renting the Wesleyan Chapel to one of the church trustees, and drop off a notice to be published in the Seneca County Courier.

  She and Rose crossed the bridge, passing a honking flock of geese. It was a hot day, and Bridie was glad she wasn’t cooped up in one of the factories creaking and rattling away on the river. A mule on the towpath flicked its ears, and a boatman sang out, “Low bridge!” as a barge slid past beneath them.

  Fall Street was crowded and dusty and smelled of too many horses. Rose said she would drop off the note about the rental with Mr. Wright, who lived near her. He was one of the trustees. The Wesleyan Chapel was the only strictly abolitionist church in town, and the only church with both colored and white trustees.

  Bridie went into the newspaper office. Behind the high wooden counter sat the printing press, its iron jaws open. A boy about her own age was setting type, choosing the metal letters and sliding them into a composing stick so quickly that Bridie was amazed.

  She handed Mrs. Stanton’s notice to Mr. Milliken, the editor.

  He looked at it. “Women’s rights convention! Don’t women have too many rights already?”

  “I don’t know.” Bridie thought of her mother, and of what had happened at the mill and how they’d ended up in the poorhouse. “Maybe you should come to the convention and find out.”

  Mr. Milliken peered at the notice. “July nineteenth and twentieth? It says, ‘On the first day, the meeting will be exclusively for Women, Which all are earnestly invited to attend.’ Which is it?”

  “Which is what?” said Bridie.

  “Women, or All? Can’t be both.”

  Mr. Milliken sounded amused, and Bridie was incensed on Mrs. Stanton’s behalf. “I could take the notice somewhere else,” she said.

  America was swimming in newspapers. Every little town had one, or two, or five. Big cities had hundreds. Seneca Falls had at least four.

  “No, no, I’m just teasing,” said Mr. Milliken. “The Courier believes in rights. Here, Davey! Put this on page three, column two.”

  The boy, Davey, came up and took the notice. He was wearing a blue apron, and he was covered in ink.

  Bridie felt jealous of him. Imagine working here every day, instead of pumping and hauling endless water and scrubbing things so they could be made dirty again.

  Davey smiled at her. “Want to watch me set the type?”

  Bridie did. Mr. Milliken lifted up a section of the counter, and Bridie went back to the machine.

  “It’ll go right there,” said Davey, pointing to an empty square.

  Just below it, Bridie saw the words . The backward lettering would come out frontward on the printed page.

  The boy picked up an empty composing stick and started selecting the type, and, fascinated, Bridie watched go into the stick.

  “You can do the next word if you want,” Davey offered.

  Bridie did want. He handed her the composing stick.

  The moment it was in her hand, it felt like it belonged there.

  She held it for a moment. She felt as if she was standing on the edge of something important. It was like when she’d boarded the Canada-bound ship in Liverpool with her mother. It wasn’t a scary feeling, exactly. A new world was waiting beyond the edge. She just had to jump.

  Davey pointed. “You pick out the capital R from the upper case, and then the other letters from this case; it’s called lower
case.”

  She searched through the partitioned box for the Rs, found them, and put one in—“Other way, it’s upside down,” said Davey—and turned it around, and then went to the lower case and reached for the i, and the g…h…t…s.

  “And now you slide it into the press.”

  Still with that feeling of standing on the edge of something important, she slid the letters into place, in the empty square over the .

  Davey pursed his lips and nodded. “That’s how you do it. Now don’t touch anything. Here.”

  He handed her a rag. Bridie took it and realized her hands were smeared all over with black ink.

  She wiped her hands vigorously on the rag. Some of the ink came off, but it seemed her hands were going to be stained for a long time.

  “It’ll wear off eventually. It never does with me….” Davey displayed his ink-stained hands.

  Bridie didn’t care whether it wore off or not. She’d put words into a printing press! Well, just one word, but it would go out into the world and people would read it and maybe that word would still be out there a hundred years from now.

  The word . Rights. She’d set the type herself.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “No problem,” said Davey.

  Bridie stepped back out into the bright sunshine. The street still seemed the same as when she’d walked in—horses and wagons and people and a couple of wandering pigs—but Bridie was different. She was like Rose now: She wanted to be something. Specifically, she wanted to be a printer.

  She didn’t know how she could make that happen. But somehow she would.

  Meanwhile, she had work to do. She went to Hoskins’s store and asked for a sugar loaf. Mr. Hoskins went to a shelf behind the counter, where a row of cone-shaped sugar loaves stood in their blue paper wrappers. “Large or small?”

  “Small, please.” Even the small ones weighed several pounds.

  He took one down. “Stantons’ account?”

  He looked through his file box, found the Stantons’ card, and wrote down four shillings. Bridie signed her initials beside it, remembering to write P for Phoebe instead of B for Bridie.