How Did Oberlin Women Students Draw on Their College Experience to
Participate in Antebellum Social Movements, 1831-1861?
Endnotes
1. The definitive history of the founding of the college and colony is Robert Samuel Fletcher, A History of Oberlin College: From Its Foundation Through the Civil War, 2 volumes (Oberlin: Oberlin College, 1943). For the special place of Oberlin in the history of women’s education, see Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). Several essays in Carol Lasser, ed., Educating Men and Women Together: Coeducation in a Changing World (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), address the pioneering role Oberlin played in the education of women.
Back To Text2. For a variety of perspectives on these questions, see Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman’s Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Anne Firor Scott, Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in American History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991); Kathryn Kish Sklar, Women’s Rights Emerges within the Antislavery Movement, 1830-1870: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000); Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Nancy A. Hewitt,Women’s Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822-1872 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).
Back To Text3. For discussions of divisions among women, see Anne M. Boylan, The Origins of Women's Activism: New York and Boston, 1797-1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Lori D. Ginzberg,. Women in Antebellum Reform.(Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, 2000); Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (New York: Knopf, 1986); Gerda Lerner, “The Lady and the Mill Girl,” in The Majority Finds its Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). On questions of racial conflicts among women, see Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne, eds. The Abolitionist Sisterhood:Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). The force of religion is addressed by Barbara Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity : Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century (Middletown, CT : Wesleyan University Press,1981). See also Anna Speicher, The Religious World of Antislavery Women: Spirituality in the Lives of Five Abolitionist Lecturers (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000).
Back To Text4. On the Great Awakening , see Robert Abzug, Cosmos Crumbing: American Reform and the Religious Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Classic works include: Whitney Cross, The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850 (New York: Harper and Row, 1950) and Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York,1815-1837 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978); Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War Against Slavery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997). Paul Goodman, Of One Blood : Abolitionism and the Origins of Racial Equality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) is especially effective in linking abolitionist principles to the Second Great Awakening.
Back To Text5. For another document project focusing on women in the moral reform movement see "What Was the Appeal of Moral Reform to Antebellum Northern Women?" also on this website.
Back To Text6. See Lori D. Ginzberg, “The ‘Joint Education of the Sexes’: Oberlin’s Original Vision,” in Lasser, ed., Educating Men and Women Together. In another example, the Oberlin Maternal Association extended warm thanks to the founders of the Oberlin Paternal Association, founded to enhance men’s understanding of their roles as fathers.
Back To Text7. For parallel documents on other northern white women (including Oberlin graduate Sallie Holley) who went south to teach in schools for former slaves, see "How Did White Women Aid Former Slaves during and after the Civil War and What Obstacles Did They Face?" also on this website.
Back To Text8. On Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown (later Blackwell), see Carol Lasser and Marlene D. Merrill, Friends and Sisters: Letters Between Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, 1846-93 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987); Andrea Kerr, Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992); Elizabeth Cazden, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, a Biography (New York: The Feminist Press, 1983) On Sallie Holley, see Speicher, The Religious World of Antislavery Women and John Chadwick White, A Life for Liberty: Anti-Slavery and Other Letters of Sallie Holley (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1899).
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9. For a useful discussion of New England women's religious associational activities in this period, see Cott, Bonds of Womanhood, chap. 4.
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10. For more on the Lane Rebels and the formation of Oberlin, see Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catherine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), p. 116. See also Sklar, Women's Rights Emerges Within the Antislavery Movement, pp. 14-24.
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11. Asa Mahan (1799-1889) was appointed president of Oberlin in 1835, and also served as Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and Professor of Theology. Before coming to Oberlin, he had served on the faculty at the Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Back To Text12. Mary Hartwell Dix Mahan (d. 1863), Asa Mahan's wife, was integrally connected with the Oberlin Collegiate Institute.
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13. This letter survives as a transcription probably done by an Oberlin College student working for Robert S. Fletcher whose two-volume History of Oberlin: From Its Foundation through the Civil War (Oberlin: Oberlin College) was published in 1943.
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14. Information on the Vincent Family is taken from the Oberlin College Alumni Records for Mary Sheldon Vincent, and Leo Vincent and Merrily Cummings Ford, eds., Vincent Family Record (typescript).
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15. For more information, see Rachel Seidman, "The Ladies Literary Society of Oberlin College: A Study in Early Feminism," Oberlin College History Department Honors Thesis, 1985.
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16. Myrtilla Miner (1815-1864) a white abolitionist, opened the Colored Girls School in Washington, D.C. in 1851.
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17. Fletcher, History of Oberlin College, 2:883.
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18. H.E. Woodcock, "Miss Woodcock," American Missionary 20 (1876): 237
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19. Samuel A. Cravath, Autobiography,1901 typescript, Student File of Samuel A. Cravath, Oberlin College Archives.
Back To Text20. Sarah C. Little, "Oberlin and the Education of Women," The Oberlin Jubilee 1833-1883, W.G. Ballantine, ed. (Oberlin, Ohio: E.J. Goodrich, 1883), p. 151.
Back To Text21. Interview with Marlene D. Merrill, May 2002.
Back To Text22. Student File of Fannie Forester Ric, Oberlin College Archives.
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