Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony

Men - Their rights and nothing more

Women - Their rights and nothing less

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her
daughter

- Susan B. Anthony

I grew up with this woman's profile on my dollar coins.  I knew that she was a feminist, but I am just now learning what Susan B. Anthony brought to my world.  A Quaker, Mrs. Anthony was dedicated to all people living with dignity.  While not quite as enlightened as her good friend, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony fought for the downtrodden, especially women.  Both women were married.  Both women became mothers.  Both women were champions for women's suffrage.  And both women were staunchly pro-life. 

As we teach our sons and daughters about the founding mothers of feminism, let us teach how they fought for the dignity of women's bodies, and their natural ability to bear children. 

  

"When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit."  - Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Letter to Julia Ward Howe, October 16, 1873, recorded in Howe's diary at Harvard University Library

"Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive (for abortion), love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!" 

- Susan B. Anthony

11 Degrees 

Let's link the founding mothers of American feminism to Pope John Paul II via degrees of good works!  I realize that 11 is more than usual, but they are wonderful degrees and I learned a lot while writing them.  Enjoy!

(11th Degree,) Susan B. Anthony and (10th Degree,)  Elizabeth Cady Stanton
late in the 19th Century

Elizabeth Cady Stanton worked closely with
(9th Degree,) Frederick Douglass
to end slavery and promote the rights of all Americans

Frederick Douglass escaped slavery in Maryland via ship.  He came to New Bedford, Massachusetts
by way of New York.  He then connected to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, becoming a public speaker.  He had a close association with a Quaker and fellow abolishionist,...

William Lloyd Garrison.  (8th Degree,) Mr. Garrison
published a book by the former slave woman, 

Sojourner Truth.  (7th Degree,) Ms Truth is shown here in a portrait with (6th Degree,)
Abraham Lincoln.
We linked President Lincoln to Pope John Paul II
by 6 and 7 degrees in February.  Here is that post.

Where did your Christ come from?

"Ain't I a woman?"  - Sojourner Truth
and
The Theotokos!

Thomas Jefferson

Happy Valentine's Day!  Let's explore love, black history, and presidency with T.J. and Sally Hemings.

Sixth Degree: Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, penned
The Constitution, was a founding father of two families and our country.

De'Shante Hemmings, son of
Thomas Jefferson and
Sally Hemmings

There are no extant pictures of Sarah (Sally) Hemings.
This portrait of a mixed race woman is as good as any, and
I think it captures an innocent captivity that I associate with
Sally Hemings.  The Hemings family were referred to as "mulatto, "
a term from the latin root for "mule," a half-breed animal.  

Fifth Degree: Sally Hemmings

"Thomas, when I brought the Hemings as a wedding
gift, I didn't mean that kind of gift.  I'll free her over my
dead body.  Oh, wait, not even over my dead body."

Slave, mistress, half-sister-in-law, and trusted servant to Mrs. Jefferson, Ms Hemings has captured the imagination of millions.  We must never lose sight of the fact that she was enslaved and therefore robbed of self-determination.  Her children were promised freedom, but that promise was never kept.  Martha didn't free her half-sister in her will, and Thomas felt compelled to bed Martha's enslaved sister in order to keep his promise never to remarry.  And you think your family has issues!


Below is a video of Annette Gordon-Reed, a law professor at Harvard University and a Jefferson and Hemmings historian.  You can buy her book here.  I'm in the middle of it and absolutely love it.  It's upsetting, shocking, and inspiring.


Fourth Degree: Dr. Robert Sutton

Dr. Sutton administering the first vaccines

Sometimes being in a clinical trial or being the subject of medical research is a good thing, sometimes not.  In the 18th century it was usually not so great.  While Ms Hemmings and President Jefferson were in Paris, the smallpox vaccine was still experimental and new.  Dr. Robert Sutton was the doctor to the stars and he inoculated Sally Hemmings against smallpox.  It is doubtful that Jefferson was inoculated concurrent with Hemmings.  Most likely, he waited to see how she would react to the vaccine.

Louis XV visiting his youngest daughter.

Third Degree: King Louis XV
In 1774, Dr. Sutton was called to the bedside of King Louis XV to save him from small pox.  He was unsuccessful.

Marie as a child in Versailles

Second Degree: Louise Marie de France
Louis' seventh legitimate child became a Carmelite nun in 1770.  Some suppose that she did this to help compensate for her father's lax sexual morals.  Her father kept a seraglio of young women to feed his sexual appetites and cavorted with Madame Pompadour among others.

Louise Marie was raised and educated in Fontevrault Abbey with 3 of her siblings.  Plans to marry her off to a nobleman did not come to fruition and her father, Louis XV gave his permission for her to take the veil.   


Louis Marie became Mother Superior of her convent, and led an exemplary life.  She was stricken with a stomach ailment and passed into the Kingdom of Heaven on December 23, 1787.  She was made venerable by 


First Degree: Pope Pius IX, the longest reigning pope in history, (almost 32 years.)  


Fun Facts about Pius IX

Pius IX was pope longer than any other.  His 31 years and 236 days on the throne of Peter saw reforms and changes.  Here's a short list of Pius IX's innovations and accomplishments.

• overseeing the First Vatican Council
• he declared The Immaculate Conception, the first of only two times that papal infallibility has been declared
• Italy became a country during his reign
• he was the last pontiff to have his entire papacy during the 19th century
• Pius IX refused to sanction the declaration of war against Catholic Austria and was beseiged by the new Italian government.  This was before the sovereign state of The Vatican, and the pope was in grave danger.  He was helped to escape by German and French military.  
• Loss of the Pope Pius IX's temporal power led to the ignoring of concordats throughout Europe.  Catholics were persecuted and their rights were removed from Prussia to France, Germany to Switzerland.  
• The concordat with Spain was successful.  
• he wrote an encyclical which warned against and condemned the "False Liberalism" of the age, namely,  pantheism, naturalism, rationalism, indifferentism, socialism, communism, freemasonry, and the various kinds ofreligious liberalism. 
• He ordered dozens of American diocese to be established
• He built the Latin American College in Rome
• He built College of the United States of America at his own expense

for a biography of Pope Pius IX, click here. 

Abraham Lincoln

Two reckonings of Abraham Lincoln, one through great African-Americans and one through the man who murdered him.  

Reckoning 1

7 Degrees

Seventh Degree: Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln is a president that all Americans are proud of.  Republicans, Democrats, Tea Partiers, Lefties, Righties, Women, Men, Blacks, Whites, Browns, etc. all love Abraham Lincoln.  Here are two videos about Lincoln, one from the right-ish and one from the left-ish.

Watch the full episode. See more Bill Moyers.

Sixth Degree: Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington
It pains me to put these two great men on one degree.  They deserve their own degree.  But you see, their paths cross a few generations down the line with their great-great grand children.  To read Nettie Douglas' letter to her great grandfather, click here.  

Fifth Degree: Nettie Washington Douglas and her son, Kenneth B. Morris Jr. 
Mrs. Douglas presented 4th Degree, Joe DiMaggio with the first Booker T. Washington half-dollar in San Francisco in 1950.

"I let no man drag me down so low

as to make me hate him." - Booker T. Washington

American Slavery Still Exists!
Watch a video of Mrs. Douglas and Mr. Morris discussing modern slavery here.
To see a video with comments by Ashley Judd and other celebrities click here.
For a CBS morning show spot on human trafikking in the Us click here.  

Slavery is mentioned in the bible.  You may remember the section about "slaves, obey your masters."  It's a shocking phrase.  In this post I found a website that ranted against the Catholic Church for supporting slavery in its history.  I was actually a bit surprised that this site didn't dig up more.  To my eyes, a dozen phrases spoken or written in 2000 years of popes is not a lot of evidence.  

We all know that some popes are more holy than others.  By the grace of the Holy Spirit, the church has survived some dark years.  What's really amazing is how consistent the teachings of the church are in spite of its 2 millenia of history peppered with a few unholy popes.  The United States is not even 250 years old and its history is liberally peppered with poor presidencies.  What we agree on is that the United States is a great country and she is worth fighting for.  As Catholics, we know that our church is that of Jesus Christ and worth fighting for.  We fight with ideas, we fight with our bodies, we fight with our resources, but ultimately, we fight with love.  

For the official Catholic word on slavery, click here.  

Degree: John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln

6 degrees

Descendants of  Fifth Degree, John Wilkes Booth are maintaining that Booth lived for 40 years after the assassination.  Here is a link for an episode of "Decoders" from The History Channel.  I hope you enjoy the video.

Dr. Samuel A. Mudd
"His name is Mudd," the probable
origin of that idiom.

Fourth Degree: Dr. Samuel A. Mudd

Weather you believe that Booth died in a barn just after the shooting, or that he lived in obscurity for decades thereafter, there are elements of the shooting that are beyond doubt.  A jump from the presidential box or a fall from his get-away horse caused Booth to break his leg the day of the shooting.  His injuries were too severe for him to dismount on the way to medical attention.  

The couch on which Booth was treated by Dr. Mudd

As Booth wound his way from Ford's Theater with his co-conspirators, he sought remedy for his painfully broken leg.  In the wee hours of the morning, he came to the house of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd.  Mudd, a southerner who was raised on a tobacco plantation, set the leg, cared for the wound and sent Booth on his way.

Dr. Mudd's aid and comfort to the assassin is the origin of the term, "Your name is mudd."

Third Degree: Roger Mudd
Decades later, in February of 1928, a distant relative of Dr. Mudd, Roger Mudd was born in The District of Columbia.  This Mudd grew up to be a journalist on the order of Walter Cronkite.  Here he is in his most famous interview, with
Second Degree, Senator Ted Kennedy.

First Degree: Pope Pius XII
Young Ted Kennedy received his first communion from Pope Pius XII.  It appears from her veil and white dress, that his sister did as well.

The Kennedy family were very wealthy, but devoted to public service.  Living out their Catholic faith has been inconsistent in their family, as it is in most Catholic families.  The virtue of marital fidelity is hard to come by in the Kennedy men, but modesty was common among the women.  All Kennedys seem to have a deep sense of public service and need to sacrifice for their countrymen.  Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find a family who has lost more of its members to assassination than the Kennedys.   

Eunice Kennedy at the center of a candid photo from Jack and Jackie's
wedding day.  

The most saintly Kennedy in my opinion is the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver.  She lived a beautiful life, never bowing to popular will, but only to the will of God.  She is most popularly known as the founder of Special Olympics.  This alone is accomplishment for a lifetime, but she did much more than that.  For a list of her awards and honors is here.  

Massasoit

House in Betty's Neck on
 Lake Assawompset

McMansion

Massasoit had many children, but has few descendants.  His sons tended to die fighting the English, and his daughters married Wampanoag or men from nearby tribes who died fighting the English.  I kept hitting dead ends as I pursued Massasoit's blood lines.  I managed to find his last surviving granddaughters (many generations down the line,) living on Betty's Neck road in Lakeville, Massachusetts.  These women died in the late 1800s and their home is NOT  a museum.  It abuts a development of McMansions.  

Wamsutta James

A member of Massasoit's tribe, the Wampanoag, was invited to speak at the annual Massachusetts chapter of Mayflower Descendants' annual Thanksgiving reenactment in Plymouth.  After the Descendants read the speech, they withdrew their invitation.  To read Wamsutta James' speech, click here.  

The last known
descendants of
Massasoit

Canadian Trappers brought disease that
decimated Massasoit's people

In the 1610's, French Canadian trappers brought a host of microbes to the Indians of current day Massachusetts.  As a result, thousands died.  Estimates of the deaths range from 30-95% of the population.  Bacteria were not to be discovered for another 50 years.  The concept of infection control was 150 years away.  Massasoit and the families of the dead thought that the white man had unleashed some sort of evil force on them.  It's not surprising that Massasoit sent Samoset to declare peace to the white men as they arrived.  

He didn't want his people to be annihilated by another round of disease

The rest of the story in 7 degrees will be told in pictures.  Please excuse the twist I published.  After all the depressing research about Massasoit's family, disease, oppression, and plague, I needed a smile.  

7 Degrees

Massasoit
King of Wampanoags

Massasoit made peace with John Carver, John Bradford, Myles Standish
and other pilgrims against the Narragansett and for mutual protection.

Guess who is descended from John Bradford?

This is Natasha, she posed in Heff's magazine.  Natasha married the grandson of......

The Shah of Iran, who met.....

Ted Kennedy in 1975.  Mr Kennedy wrote a letter to....

Benedict XVI.  The pope sent a message back to Kennedy's
family.  Read the correspondences here.  

Brothers!

Massasoit to John Bradford to Hugh Heffner to Natasha to Shah to Kennedy to Pope to Pope

Did you know?  It's never too late for confession and reconciliation.