“Baby’s rights was the watchword.”

Maria Goodell Frost, speaking of her sister Lavinia as an infant

On May 2, 1839, Rhoda Lavinia Goodell was born in Utica, New York.

 A previous post recounted her father’s letter informing his father-in-law about the birth. Lavinia’s sister, Maria, who was twelve years old at the time, reminisced about the event in her unpublished biography of Lavinia:

Thursday, the 2^nd day of May 1839 was ushered into the household a being who seemed to have pre-existed, to have experience, to have formed views on various subjects of physiology, law, government, ethics, policy, language, evolution, in short all of the varied elements that simply or combined go to make up the different phases of theory and practice in human life.  She was destined at the outset to overthrow existing institutions. 

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“If we are true to our own higher nature, we cannot fail.”

Lavinia Goodell, 1858

Graduation season is just around the corner. In 1858, Lavinia Goodell graduated from the Brooklyn Heights Seminary, a school for girls.

Lavinia wrote a graduation essay, which was read by a male professor at the commencement ceremony. Maria Goodell Frost included a rough draft of the essay in her unpublished biography of her sister. At age nineteen, Lavinia was still developing as a writer, but her piece clearly shows her love of learning and her optimism about the future. She began:

It is a queer place this world we find ourselves in when we first open the eyes of our minds and look about us. It is a vast unexplored field, everything a phenomenon to be studied, investigated solved.

She said, “In childhood there is a vague general idea that everything commenced with us. We are the center around which all revolves.” But as children age and have contact with others, who are also seeking after truth, “we open our hearts to them, admit them into the brotherhood.”

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“Folks don’t write Sundays.”

Lavinia Goodell to her father, early 1840s

According to the unpublished biography of Lavinia Goodell written by her older sister, Maria Goodell Frost, Lavinia’s first experience attending church was in Whitesboro, New York. The minister was Rev. Beriah Green.

Green was born in Connecticut in 1795. He became the pastor of a Congregational church in the early 1820s. By the 1830s he became acquainted with William Lloyd Garrison and became a staunch abolitionist, a calling shared by Lavinia’s father, William Goodell. In 1833, Green became the president of the Oneida Institute, a Presbyterian institution in Whitesboro, New York. Green, along with William Goodell and Alvan Stewart, were founding members of the New York Anti-Slavery society.

In 1836, in a sermon at the Whitesboro Presbyterian church, Green called American slavery “a system of fraud, adultery and murder,” and argued that the slave had been “robbed of inalienable rights.” By the late 1830s, 59 members of that church seceded over the issue of abolition and formed the Congregational Church of Whitesboro. Green served as the church’s pastor from 1843 to 1867. This was the first church that little Lavinia attended. According to Maria Frost Lavinia was excited to see Rev. Green:

A little trill of joy escaped her as her sole known friend appeared in the pulpit, for that goodly man, so like his master, who “suffered the little children to come unto him,” knew all the lambs of his flock and none better than Lavinia.

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“She shall be worth ten thousand dollars to you, Brother Goodell.”

Attorney Alvan Stewart to William Goodell, 1842

One of the first lawyers Lavinia Goodell ever met was Alvan Stewart.

Born in 1790 in New York State, Stewart had the reputation of a brilliant lawyer. Alvan Stewart moved to Utica in 1832, and the Goodell family was living in Utica at the time of Lavinia’s birth in 1839. In addition to his law practice, Stewart was active in the anti-slavery and temperance movements, as was William Goodell.

In 1842, when Lavinia was three years old, Stewart was a candidate for New York governor on the Liberty party ticket. According to Lavinia’s sister, Maria Goodell Frost, who was a teenager at the time, one evening Mrs. Goodell announced that Stewart would be paying them a visit. William Goodell said he was “very glad he was coming” as he “wished to speak with him on some points of law.”

Little Lavinia, who by all accounts was a rather difficult child, allowed herself to be washed and dressed in a dignified way so as to be ready to meet the distinguished guest.

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“Lewis has come, but no horse.”

Maria Frost, July 12, 1854

Life in the mid eighteenth century was often both hard and unpredictable.

In the summer of 1853, fourteen-year-old Lavinia Goodell and her parents had recently moved to Brooklyn. Lavinia’s older sister and brother-in-law, Maria and Lewis Frost, lived in Bristol, New York, a town thirty miles southeast of Rochester. Lewis Frost was a Congregational preacher who, at that time, did not have his own church but rather filled in as needed at churches in the surrounding area.

In June 1853, Maria had written to Lavinia and her parents saying that she felt discouraged and worn out, but begged her family “not be anxious about me as I shall let you know if I am worse so you may consider all right, unless you hear to the contrary.”

The following month Maria reported more bad news: their horse had run away.

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“I am anxious to go to school next quarter.”

Lavinia Goodell, December 26, 1853

Lavinia Goodell was a sickly child and, as a result, had very little in the way of formal education until she and her parents moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1853. It has long been known that Lavinia graduated from the Brooklyn Heights Seminary, a girl’s school, in 1858, but we have recently discovered that before matriculating there, she briefly attended two other schools. We do not know the names of these schools, but Goodell family letters describe her coursework and experience at these institutions.

Lavinia apparently did not commence school until early 1854 since in a letter written in late December of 1853 she told her sister, “I am anxious to go to school next quarter but don’t know where to go.” By February 1854, fourteen-year-old Lavinia had begun a course of study but was apparently not enthralled with all aspects of the instruction. Lavinia’s mother wrote to her elder daughter:

I am glad she is in school. Her teacher gives her words with the definition and wants her to write sentences and bring in those words. I cannot see any great advantages from that myself. L does not like it very well.  

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“If a woman can’t dress in a rational and decent way, I shouldn’t like to live among such barbarians.”

Lavinia Goodell, December 8, 1853

In 1853, fourteen year old Lavinia Goodell tried unsuccessfully to encourage her twenty-six year old sister Maria to try a new fashion trend: bloomers.

In the mid 1800s, women wore corsets and multiple petticoats weighing as much as fifteen pounds in order to fill out their skirts. These voluminous undergarments made movement difficult and sometimes impaired breathing. In 1851, an editorial appeared in the Seneca [New York]  County Courier suggesting that women wear “Turkish pantaloons and a skirt reaching a little below the knee.” Amelia Bloomer, the editor of an upstate New York women’s newspaper called The Lily, chided the male Courier writer for advocating for dress reform but not for women’s rights.

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