NOVEMBER 12 –1815 Happy birthday Elizabeth Cady Stanton; 1864 Sherman burns Atlanta; 1966 The Mothman Cometh to W. VA
NOVEMBER 12
1815 — happy birthday Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Suffragist, social activist, abolitionist, author, one of the main influences in the women’s suffrage movement of the late 19th century. Elizabeth Cady, the 8th of eleven children, was born in Johnstown New York to Daniel Cady and Margaret Livingston. Daniel was a judge, congressman and slave owner, and Elizabeth learned a few things about law from her dad while growing up.
She received a great education at the Johnstown Academy and later Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary in New York before she became an advocate for women’s rights, being the daughter of a slave owner and all, she was an abolitionist. . The fact that Daniel once told his daughter he wished she was a boy probably fueled her movement. In 1840 she married speaker and co-0founder of the Republican Party Henry Brewster Stanton, with whom she had seven children.
Henry had a cousin named Gerrit Smith, an abolitionist who ran for president three times. During the wedding, she had the word obey removed from her wedding vows. That’s funny.
I didn’t do that for my wedding. I didn’t even know that was an option. Now look at me. All I ever do is obeying my wife. Haha.Happy wife happy life, right fellas? You know what they say, marriage is grand. Divorce on the other hand; you’re looking at around a hundred grand. Anyway.
During the honeymoon in London England, she tried to attend the World’s anti-Slavery Convention but she was not admitted inside. However, n she met Lucretius Botswana that’s when she developed a passion for leading the women’s rights movement. In July 1848 she and her friend Bott would the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in New York.
This is where she gave her Declaration of Sentiments during her speech, which went far beyond simply the right to vote for women. It also included right to own land and earn wages, legal representation as well as divorce and child custody rights, and other reforms for college educations, participating in church affairs and the moral concept of submission to men.
Just so everybody knows, when my wife tells me to jump me say Sir How High.
Just like that the women’s movement was in full swing. Three years later she met Susan B. Anthony, and the two would pledge their lives to the tireless effort of women’s right. There was more to women’s suffrage than writing articles and publishing books with Susan Anthony, and they often had to tour and give speeches.
That’s kinda hard to do when you have seven children to rise, so Anthony was able to carry the heavy load there. When the Civil War broke out, they founded the Women’s Loyal National League to encourage the passing of the 13th amendment to abolish slavery. However, when it came to the 14th and 15th amendment which gave black men the right to vote, Stanton fought the bill, creating a schism between women Americans and African Americans.
This schism would lead to Stanton and Anthony creating the National Women Suffrage Association four years after the end of the Civil War. In 1876 she helped to write the Declaration of Rights of Women which Anthony presented in Philadelphia. By 1890 the two major women’s suffrage organizations merged to become the national American Women’s Suffrage Association. Getting up there in her years, she spent less time travelling and more time writing.
With her daughters help she wrote and published two volumes of The Woman’s Bible, which drew fire from the church goers within the organization. On October 26 1902, Elizabeth Cady Stanton died, before she got a chance to see the difference that her restless journey had not just in America, but the world as well. Through her efforts, she became the long overdue voice of freedom for women everywhere, and her challenge for women to stop being submissive to men no doubt influenced the passing of the women’s right to vote eighteen years after her death.
Happy birthday Elizabeth!
1954 – Ellis Island closes its doors.
…In the old days, this is how immigration to the US worked If you were first class or second class you’d get a descent ride on the boat. If you were third class, you would join the other 3,000 third class riders on the lower deck of the ship. The first thing you’d see when you come to America is of course, the Statue of Liberty. There’s a good chance you’re smiling at this point, or maybe jumping up and down ith joy, or maybe crying. Or maybe all the above. Health officers would board the ship and do a quick inspection on everyone and everything. Now the first thing you’d do when you get off is register. You’d get a number.
If you don’t speak English, and there’s a decent chance you didn’t, no worries. Just take the number, go upstairs to the registration area. Doctors would watch as you climb up the stairs, if climbing the stairs seems to be a problem for you you’ll get checked out right away. Otherwise, you’d proceed to the great hall with thousands of others going through legal and medical inspection. If you had trachoma, or an eye disease, you’d have to go back to your home country. Sorry, can’t have that here. If you appeared lung problems or if you seemed like a nutcase, you’d be marked with chalk on your clothes and sent somewhere else for further review.
Otherwise, you would proceed to the legal inspection. Where were you born, have you ever committed a crime, where are you going, what do you do, etc. If you pass all these tests, you can get your currency exchanged for US dollars, and you go to the kissing room to see your family and friends who have been waiting for you. Heavy sigh. The immigration policy just made so much more sense back in those days. After 1924, ellis island changed from a processing center to a detention center for illegal immigrants, a hospital for wounded soldiers during WWII, and a Coast Guard training center. These days it’s a museum.
1864 – Sherman burns Atlanta.
…When Union General William T. Sherman took Atlanta from Confederate Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood in early September, that would turn out to be not only the greatest Union victory in the civil War until Vicksburg and Gettysburg, ; it also clinched President Lincoln’s reelection in 1864.
If you’ve seen Gone with the Wind you know this story. Sherman divided his army and sent General George Thomas back to Nashville to deal with Hood, while Sherman prepared to move to Savannah. On the way out, his soldiers literally destroyed Atlanta. One disobedient officer lit up 28 boxcars full of ammunition it create quite possibly the largest explosion of the entire war and destroyed every building within a quarter mile. Out of 3600 homes, only 400 were left standing. This took some explaining on Sherman’s part, but let’s just says that although he didn’t authorize the Atlanta to be burnt until it was nothing but a smoldering shell, he didn’t exactly do much to stop it. Speaking of fire in the sky…
1799 – Elliott records the first meteor shower in the America. Andrew Ellicott was an American surveyor helped to make maps for territories west of the Appalachians, he surveyed the boundaries and completed Pierre L’Enfant’s work of what would become Washington DC and taught Meriwether Lewis survey methods. And on November 12, 1799, he made the first known record of a meteor shower observation in the US from a ship off the coast of Florida Keys.
1966 – The Mothman cometh.
On this night in 1966, five men were digging a grave at a cemetery in Point Pleasant in West Virginia when they saw a humanlike figure flying low through the air.
I’ve heard that West Virginia can have some big mosquitos, but this takes it to a whole new level. Several days later the Mothman was seen again with ten foot wings whose eyes glowed red. I realize Halloween was two weeks ago, but the sightings occurred in November, what can I say.
In December 1967, over a year later, the Silver Bridge collapsed, killing dozens, and the Mothman was blamed though hadn’t been sighted since the year prior. Local police have called it more of a bird than a human-shaped moth, perhaps a heron or perhaps a sandhill crane that flew off course its migration pattern, such as the one that West Virginia University biology professor Dr. Robert Smith describes which would have a wingspan of over seven feet and a reddish area around the eyes.
Regardless of what it is or what planet it’s from, this maerry marvelous moth monster from Point Pleasant is celebrated every year at the Mothman Festival every third week in September. Yes, there went the neighborhood on this day in 1966, and it hasn’t been the same since. If you visit, make sure you come equipped with giant mothballs so your clothes don’t get chomped. The festival includes a mothman hayride, a mothman pageant, and a mothman 5k, or maybe a fly-k I don’t know.