Clarina I. H. Nichols
Clarina I. H. Nichols | |
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| Born | Clarina Irene Howard January 25, 1810 |
| Died | January 11, 1885 (aged 74) California |
| Occupation(s) | journalist lobbyist public speaker |
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| Children | 3 |
Clarina Irene Howard Nichols (January 25, 1810 – January 11, 1885) was a journalist, lobbyist, and public speaker involved in all three of the major reform movements of the mid-19th century: temperance, abolition, and the women's movement that emerged largely out of the ranks of the first two. Though prominent enough in her time to merit her own chapter in Anthony's History of Woman Suffrage, Nichols has been overlooked since 1900 and only recently have her contributions to equal rights undergone a reassessment.
Biography
[edit]Clarina Irene Howard was born in West Townshend, Vermont in 1810, into a prosperous New England family. She graduated from a private school at the age of 18 and proceeded to teach for two years. In 1830, she married Justin Carpenter, with whom she had one daughter, Birsha, and two sons, Chapin and Aurelius.[1]
The marriage was a disastrous one, ending in divorce, and Clarina fell on hard times. Supporting herself and her children on "women's wages" — one-half to one-third what men received for similar work — she began writing for a newspaper in Brattleboro, Vermont, the Windham County Democrat in 1845. She married the editor and publisher, George Nichols, and took his last name. When he became an invalid, she quietly took over his duties at the paper. Through her new profession, she was introduced to various reform movements of the day — temperance, women's rights, anti-slavery, dress and diet reform — and actively embraced many of them, helping to propel the fledgling women's movement in the East.
In October 1852, Nichols helped organize the first of several petitions submitted to the Vermont legislature to give women the right to vote in school meetings. When the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 threatened to establish slavery outside of the South, she uprooted her family to become a pioneer and activist in Kansas. Her efforts helped catapult her adopted state into the forefront of women's rights, gaining the respect and support of such women as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.[2]
Over the course of her life, Nichols served as teacher, lecturer, editor, writer, farmer, lay doctor and lawyer, government clerk, matron in a home for destitute black children and widows, and conductor on the Underground Railroad. She died in 1885 in California.[3]
See also
[edit]- Aurelius O. Carpenter, her son
Footnotes
[edit]- ^ Nichols, Clarina I. H. “The Forgotten Feminist of Kansas: The Papers of Clarina I. H. Nichols, 1854-1885.” Edited by Joseph G. Gambone. Kansas Historical Quarterly 39, no. 1 (1973): 12–57.
- ^ Blackwell, Marilyn Schultz (December 2005). "The Politics of Motherhood: Clarina Howard Nichols and School Suffrage". The New England Quarterly. 78 (4): 570–598.
- ^ Crump, Britney. “Nichols, Clarina Irene Howard.” Civil War on the Western Border.
Further reading
[edit]- Diane Eickhoff, Revolutionary Heart: Clarina Nichols and the Pioneering Crusade for Women's Rights. Kansas City, KS: Quindaro Press, 2006. [1] Also released in a YA version as Clarina Nichols: Frontier Crusader for Women's Rights. [2]
- Marilyn S. Blackwell and Kristen T. Oertel, Frontier Feminist: Clarina Howard Nichols and the Politics of Motherhood. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2010. [3]
External links
[edit]- Clarina Nichols, Women's Rights Activist And Journalist
- Biography, from a website created by the University of Kansas and the Kansas State Historical Society
- Clarina Irene Howard Nichols Papers. Schlesinger Library Archived 2012-05-09 at the Wayback Machine, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
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