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

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.”

For Lavinia, this was “enough to make the blood of any intelligent, self-respecting woman boil with indignation.”

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Aug

2022

“Put up at Park Hotel. Quite a stylish place.”

Lavinia Goodell, December 20, 1875

During the time Lavinia Goodell lived in Janesville, Wisconsin in the 1870s, she would occasionally have to take the train to Madison, the state’s capitol, for business. When she needed to stay overnight in Madison, she chose the Park Hotel.

The Park Hotel, at the corner of Main and Carroll Streets on the capitol square, opened in August of 1871 and cost $125,000 to construct. The day before its grand opening, the Wisconsin State Journal reported:

The site chosen is so superior, that even those who first objected to it, now express entire satisfaction with it, and most of them admit that it is the best that could have been found.
It is built of Milwaukee pressed cream colored brick, with trimmings of the best of Madison stone…; is four stories high, with Mansard roof of elaborate finish…. The exterior of the building presents a most pleasing appearance, and is greatly admired by all who see it.

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Aug

2022

“The Gazette is on the side of the people.”

Wisconsin State Journal, July 12, 1875

1870s Janesville, Wisconsin was not a large city, and its residents frequently encountered one another in both business and social settings. During her years in Janesville, Lavinia Goodell developed a very cordial relationship with the proprietors of the Janesville Gazette, both the local editor, Nicholas Smith, and the paper’s co-owner and editor-in-chief, General James Bintliff.

General James Bintliff (Photo courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society)

Bintliff was born in Halifax, England in 1824. He came to New York City in 1842 and in 1851 moved to Monroe, Wisconsin where he took a job at a bank. While in Monroe he was elected the Green County register of deeds and in 1859 he was admitted to the bar. In 1860 he became part owner of the Monroe Sentinel newspaper. Bintliff was a passionate abolitionist and helped found Wisconsin’s Republican party.

In 1862, Bintliff recruited a company of Monroe soldiers and was elected their captain. In 1863, his company was attacked and captured by Confederate forces in Tennessee and imprisoned. A few months later the men were freed as part of a prisoner exchange. In 1864, Bintliff was promoted to serve as colonel of the 38^th Wisconsin Infantry. In 1865, he was brevetted Brigadier General for leading a successful charge upon Fort Mahone in Virginia. After the war, he returned to Monroe and resumed publication of the Sentinel.

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Aug

2022

“The heavy, barred gates of the professions creak on their hinges.”

Lavinia Goodell, November 1875

In November of 1875, the seventh annual meeting of the American Woman Suffrage Association was held at Steinway Hall in New York. Over 200 delegates, both men and women, attended.

Lavinia Goodell was unable to attend, but she wrote a letter for the occasion, and her friend and mentor, Lucy Stone, chairman of the executive committee, read it to the group. The letter was published in the Woman’s Journal, Lucy Stone’s publication, in early December.

Lucy Stone’s own address apparently caused a stir. The New York Daily Herald reported that it “was an exposition of what she considers the indecorum and absurdity of the Centennial celebration of independence by men who deny to one-half of the citizens of the United States the right of self-government, and urged all women to refuse to participate in the mockery.” A male delegate from Pennsylvania took issue with Lucy Stone on this issue and said while it was true that the Revolution did not enfranchise women, the new government was based upon principles which would naturally and inevitably lead to woman’s suffrage, so women should join in the Centennial celebration.

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