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December 23

12-23 TABLE of CONTENTS: Traditional Family Values DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS QUOTE by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. "Family Values"       What exactly are the traditional family values? Let a few writers from the 1800s describe it:       Eliza W. Farnham called the male population of Illinois in the early 1800s "unequivocally indolent. On a bright day they mount their horses and throng the little town in the vicinity of their homes, drinking and trading horses till late in the evenings."       Thomas Ashe, noted: "On entering the house, which was a long one fitted up very well, the Kentuckyan never exchanged a word with his wife or his children... notwithstanding he had been absent several days. No tender enquiry, not affection or sentiment, but a contemptuous silence and a stern brutality which block up all the avenues to the heart."       Another journalist commented: "Woman is expected to daily endure a strain that no man would tolerate for any length of time. Until what is modestly called housekeeping is recognized as a noble science that it really is, and is carefully studied, the slaughter of women by overwork will continue." | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | 12-23 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS B. 12-23-1657, Hannah Duston, captured by Indians less than a week after the birth of her eigth child, was able to secure a hatchet with the help of an English boy captive while they were on the way back to the Indian village and she attacked their captors. She killed nine of the ten Indians and scalped them to prove the deed before escaping. She received 25 pounds from the British general in Boston who gave rewards for scalps. B. 12-23-1860, Harriet Monroe, perhaps a minor poet but a great visionary who championed freer movement in poetry. In 1912, established (and edited) Poetry, a Magazine of Verse that drew the leading poets of the English-speaking world and introduced some of the most memorable poetry of the twentieth century. It became the principal vehicle for modern poetry of the English-speaking world. B. 12-23-1867, Madame Charles J. Walker (Sarah Breedlove), first woman-self-made millionaire in U.S. She was black and made her fortune in hair straightener and care products. Orphaned and then widowed, she had been a $1.50 a day washerwoman before developing her products which were sold much in the way Avon and Mary Kay products are sold today. She was a noted philanthropist in black causes. B. 12-23-1904, Nancy Stevenson Graves, artist best known for her sculptures. B. 12-23-1946 (?48), Susan Lucci, actress noted for her portrayal of Erica Kane in the TV show All My Children and never winning an Emmy although nominated a record number of times. Her mother was a nurse. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE | | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | QUOTES DU JOUR STANTON, ELIZABETH CADY:       "I learned to drive, to leap a fence and ditch on horseback. I taxed every power, hoping some day to hear my father say: Well a girl IS as good as a boy after all. But he never said it."       [But this girl continued to study hard and finally won - over all the boys - a prize in Greek scholarship.]       "[My father] took up the book and asked me some questions about the class, the teachers, the spectators, and evidently pleased, handed it back to me. Then, while I stood looking and waiting for him to say something which would show that he recognized the equality of the daughter with the son, he kissed me on the forehead and exclaimed with a sigh, 'Ah, you should have been a boy!'"             -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her autobiography. Stanton was the foremost feminist philosopher and activist of the American women's rights movement. She was the prime organizer of the first U.S. women's rights convention in 1848, and the first women's right convention in historical times. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE | | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |