Welcome! We are delighted to illuminate the important work of Lavinia Goodell. This blog shares significant moments in Lavinia’s life and excerpts from her personal papers. You may browse the posts or use the Table of Contents to find posts that interest you. Please subscribe and help spread the word about Wisconsin's first woman lawyer.
“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.”
“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.”
Christian Union, October 29, 1879
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!”
“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.”
“There is no death – what seems so is transition.”
Lavinia Goodell, quoting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, November 1861
At this time of year, those of us who live in the northern states become keenly aware that summer is over. Leisurely drives to observe the fall colors are a favored pastime for many.
Lavinia Goodell, too, was a fan of autumn. The Goodell family’s correspondence in the 1860s and 1870s often contained some comment about the weather, and Lavinia’s letters made clear that she enjoyed the season. While she was still living in New York, Lavinia wrote to her parents, “It was a glorious day. It is quite cool and delicious autumn weather now, and I never felt better. “ After travelling by train from Pecatonica, Illinois to Janesville, Wisconsin after visiting her sister in 1873, she reported, “I think I never saw such fine autumn scenery.”
A decade earlier, twenty-two year old Lavinia had written a short piece titled “Autumn Leaves” for the Principia, her father’s anti-slavery newspaper. She began by quoting Longfellow, “There is no death – what seems so is transition.”
During this week in 1871, thirty-two year old Lavinia Goodell left New York City and her job at Harper’s Bazar behind and boarded the first of a series of trains that would take her to Janesville, Wisconsin where she would live for the remaining eight and a half years of her life.
Lavinia’s departure from New York was unexpected. In June 1871, her sister and brother-in-law, Maria and Lewis Frost, with whom Lavinia’s elderly parents had been living on the south side of Janesville, rather abruptly announced they were moving out of the area. Apparently it was not possible for the elder Goodells to accompany them, and they could not manage a household on their own, so rather than them relocating back to the east coast, where they had lived until moving to Wisconsin in 1870, Lavinia decided to move to Janesville to help care for them.
During the Civil War years, when Lavinia Goodell assisted her father in publishing his anti-slavery newspaper, the Principia, she wrote a large number of pieces for the paper. (Some of them are featured here, here, and here.) None of Lavinia’s contributions bear her full name, and many are signed only “L” or “L.G.” The anonymity allowed Lavinia to assume the identity of a man or an older woman, depending on the subject of the piece. In letters to her sister, Lavinia said she enjoyed the fact that no one would know she was the author. The lack of attribution also allowed Lavinia to try out various literary forms, including poetry, short stories, and inspirational pieces.
The June 1, 1861 issue of the Principia featured a Lavinia piece titled “Analogies,” a light-hearted article that compared people to trees.
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.
Park Hotel, Madison, Wisconsin 1870s
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.
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 38th 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.
