Life in Wisconsin: 1871-1880 Archives - Page 4 of 16

Dec

2022

“Clear and cold. Got up late.”

Lavinia Goodell, January 1, 1879

With the exception of 1878, Lavinia Goodell made daily entries in a diary from 1873 until shortly before she died in 1880. The small leather bound volumes are part of the William Goodell family papers housed in the special collections and archives at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. (Lavinia’s beloved eldest nephew, William Goodell Frost, was the long time president of Berea College.)

The diaries and vast cache of family correspondence provide a firsthand view of Lavinia’s life. The amount of primary source material written by Lavinia herself is truly astounding and allows us to know what she was doing and thinking on an almost daily basis.

1878 had been a difficult year for Lavinia. Both of her parents died, and she spent months in the east undergoing and then recovering from major surgery to remove an ovarian tumor. No diary survives from this annus horribilis, but Lavinia took up her pen again in 1879.

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Dec

2022

“Was at the prison most of the day.”

Lavinia Goodell, March 18, 1879

During the years she practiced law in Janesville, Wisconsin, Lavinia Goodell was appointed to represent a number of criminal defendants. (Read more about her experience here.) She also started a jail school, believing that if the men were educated they had a much better chance of becoming productive members of society after their release.

Lavinia took a personal interest in the inmates and formed close relationships with some of them. She encouraged them to write to her. Some called her “Mother” and gave her photographs of themselves. Judging by the number of times she mentioned them and corresponded with them, two of her favorites were named Sutton and Sullivan. Both men were ultimately sent to the state prison in Waupun, Wisconsin. The prison had opened in the 1850s.

Lavinia visited Waupun to see her “boys” in March of 1879. According to her diary, she “Brought presents for the boys” and “had good talks” with Sutton, Sullivan, and others the night of her arrival.

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Nov

2022

“My admission seems to amuse Deacon Eldred.”

Lavinia Goodell, June 30, 1874

During the eight years that Lavinia Goodell lived in Janesville, Wisconsin, in addition to first studying and then practicing law, she was a member of the Congregational Church, actively promoted temperance, and worked to establish a free reading room in the city. Through her participation in these activities she met many prominent Janesville citizens with common interests. One of them was F. S. Eldred.

Frederick Starr Eldred was born in New York State in 1821. He came to Wisconsin in 1842 and moved to Janesville in 1856. In his early years in the city he engaged in the lumber business, after which he went into the grocery trade.

Eldred was one of the organizers of the Janesville Cotton Manufacturing Company. He served as an alderman and was one of the incorporators of the First National bank and its first vice-president. He was an active supporter of the temperance cause. In 1873, Eldred’s wife joined Lavinia Goodell and other local women in marching to city hall to protest the granting of additional liquor licenses.

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Nov

2022

“Miss Goodell will be admitted to practice in this court.”

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Oramus Cole, June 18, 1879

Lavinia Goodell’s name will forever be linked with that of Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Edward Ryan since he was the author of the infamous opinion that held only men were eligible to practice law in Wisconsin and denied Lavinia’s first petition for admission to practice before the Wisconsin Supreme Court . (Read more here). Ryan’s life and career have been heavily scrutinized for 150 years, but the justice who, in 1879, authored the very short opinion granting Lavinia’s second motion to be admitted to the Supreme Court bar receives much less attention. That is unfortunate because Justice Orasmus Cole was a valued member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for nearly four decades.

Cole was born in New York State in 1819. Both of his grandfathers served in the Revolutionary war. He studied law and was admitted to the New York bar in 1845. Late that year he settled in the small southwest Wisconsin mining town of Potosi. In 1847, he served as a delegate to the second Wisconsin constitutional convention. In 1848, after the constitution was ratified, the Whig party nominated Cole as their candidate for Congress. He won the election. He refused to support the fugitive slave provisions of the 1850 compromise that gave new states coming into the union the choice of whether to allow slavery, and he was defeated in his 1850 bid for reelection.

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Oct

2022

“Sent for Dr. Chittenden and had a consultation with him.”

Lavinia Goodell, May 7, 1877

When Lavinia Goodell and her parents lived in Janesville, Wisconsin in the 1870s, their family physician was G. W. Chittenden, a surgeon as well as a homeopathic practitioner.

George Washington Chittenden was born in Oneida County, New York in 1820. His father fought in the Revolutionary War. Dr. Chittenden graduated from Albany Medical College in 1846 and after practicing a few months in Chicago, where he investigated the principles of homeopathic medicine, he settled in Janesville in 1846 and practiced there for the rest of his life.

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Oct

2022

“Went to the excursion to the Dells. Splendid scenery.”

Lavinia Goodell, October 11, 1879

In October 1879, less than six months before her death, Lavinia Goodell attended the American Women’s Association Congress in Madison. Read more about it here and here. While Lavinia reported that the convention included “no end of unsatisfactory Board meetings,” on Saturday, October 11, she joined one hundred other women – and less than a dozen men – on a train trip to the scenic Dells of the Wisconsin River. Her diary entry for the day read, “Splendid scenery and a pleasant but fatiguing time.”

Lavinia Goodell diary entry, October 11, 1879

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Sep

2022

“Let a man repose the same trust in the woman he marries that she reposes in him.”

Lavinia Goodell, November 1879

A previous post discussed how in the fall of 1879 Lavinia Goodell, in a series of articles published in the Woman’s Journal, countered editorials in the Christian Union newspaper which advised women to submit to their husbands.

In its October 29, 1879 issue, the Christian Union called out Lavinia by name and said her proposition that a wife is her husband’s equal was “a delusion and a snare.”

The Christian Union closed its piece by proclaiming in capital letters, “WE EXHORT THE WIFE TO SUBMIT HERSELF TO HER HUSBAND RATHER THAN HAVE STRIFE WITH HIM.” Read the entire Christian Union piece here.

Lavinia was not about to let the Christian Union have the last word. Her diary entry for November 1, 1879 read, “Wrote a piece for Woman’s Journal in reply to Chr. Union.” In her opening salvo, she said the Christian Union’s editorial might be briefly summarized as, “I say ‘tis, too, so there, now! I TELL YOU I SAY IT IS, NOW!”

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Sep

2022

“Abject submission is not the way to an honorable peace.”

Lavinia Goodell, September 1879

Lavinia Goodell never married or had children, but she was a lifelong proponent of full equal rights for women, including marriage equality. In the fall of 1879, she wrote a series of articles (read more here) countering pieces that appeared in the Christian Union newspaper that admonished women to defer to their husbands. Lavinia’s rebuttals ran in Lucy Stone’s Woman’s Journal. Lavinia’s first offering, titled “The way to peace,” was written in late August 1879 and appeared in the September 13 Woman’s Journal issue.

Lavinia began by quoting the Christian Union’s premise that wives should submit themselves to their husbands because “a two-headed creature is always a monstrosity.”