Hopedale Knew Abby Kelley Foster

                                                                      By Peter Hackett

    A recent poll conducted by the Roper Organization, Inc indicates that 57 percent of
    American women, a majority for the first time, give a clear vote of confidence to efforts to
    change or strengthen their status.
    This report is but one of many indications in recent years that the women’s liberation
    movement has raised a swell of sentiment for equal rights between men and women
    even though most women have not wanted to be identified with militant feminism.

    As against this poll, it is significantly interesting to know that some 130 years ago women
    members of the so-called Hopedale Community enjoyed very largely the same, equal
    privileges and responsibilities as did the men. This, it might be stressed, was not due to
    any feminism or liberation movements. It was simply a pertinent example of the high but
    natural standing of the women who were members of the Community. The same, of
    course, could be said of the men.After all, the Community was founded on the basic
    principles of “practical Christianity” as understood by the Rev. Adin Ballou and his
    followers.

    The constitution under which the community was established in 1840 was signed by 32
    members, 15 of whom were women. Due to the possible historical significance of their
    names, here they are: Lucy Hunt Ballou, Mary Lamson, Ann Eliza Fish, Caroline Hayden
    Lillie, Mary Louisa Brown, Mary Ann Pitts, Charlotte Taft Thayer, Martha Harris, Abigail
    Draper Cook, Ruth Shove Gladding, Jemima Sherman, Anna Thwing Draper, Miriam P.
    Wheeler, Emily Gay and Barbara Barker Colburn.

    Election of officers was held at the annual meeting. They were styled Intendants,
    meaning in effect, chairmen of the many boards and committees. At the second annual
    meeting Abby H. Price was elected secretary. In 1851, Lucy Ballou (wife of Adin Ballou)
    and Sylvia W. Bancroft were elected to the Council. Almira B. Humphrey and Abbie J.
    Spaulding were elected to the Relief Committee. In 1854, Mary A. Walden was elected
    Recorder (probably secretary), Anna T. Draper and Ann E. Fish were elected to the
    Council, Caroline M. May and Catharine G. Munyan were elected to the Board of
    Education. Sarah B. Rich and Anna T. Draper were elected to the promulgation
    committee.
    It should be understood, of course, that these committees were composed of men also.
    It was the committees, men and woman, that managed the Community and saw to it that
    everything was in accordance with the Constitution.

    With respect to the women, Ballou noted that the “Female Department found much to do
    in caring for and helping individuals and families that, by reason of sickness, misfortune
    or otherwise, were brought into circumstances of dependence and need, thus obviating
    the necessity in numerous cases of presenting demands upon the common treasury for
    means of relieve or in any way making public the exigencies to which improvidence or
    adversity or injustice may have brought those who silently or openly appealed to our
    sympathies and friendliness for aid”

    This service by the women was their contribution to the economy of the Community.
    There were many other ways they rendered valuable service such as teaching school,
    conducting Sunday School classes, coaching plays for concerts and the Community
    sponsored Lyceum.

    The official organ of the Community, the Practical Christian, published semi-monthly,
    served a useful purpose. It kept the Community members duly informed of their own
    affairs as well as those of the outside world. Theirs, it should be remembered, was a little
    world of its own. The press that printed it also, from time to time, published tracts, most
    of them written by Ballou. He tells about a small book that came off that press, entitled
    “The Hopedale Collection of Hymns and Songs for the Use of Practical Christians.” It was
    compiled by Ballou and contained 316 devotional hymns and songs, 20 written by
    himself and, as he noted, “about a dozen each from the pens of Sisters, Abby Price and
    Mary J. Colburn.”

    He gave some examples in the book he wrote, “The History of the Hopedale
    Community,” with the thought that “they were illustrative of the spirit in which the work at
    Hopedale was carried on and of the means employed to nourish the better life in our
    own and each other’s souls, and to stimulate ourselves and others to a faithful
    discharge of the duties and obligations set forth and enjoined in the Gospel of Jesus
    Christ.

    Women of the Hopedale Community, as noted, enjoyed the same status as the men.
    They, as did the men, looked with favor upon the women who were abolitionists and
    social reformers generally. Ballous “Hopedale Community” names no reference to
    Abigail Kelley Foster, noted abolitionist, but we have reason to believe she once visited
    Hopedale. (One reason would be Anna Thwing Fields' memory of her as a speaker in
    Hopedale, which she mentioned in Hopedale Reminiscences.)

    The American Antiquarian Society, as late as March, this year, placed on exhibit at the
    Society’s building about a dozen items from the collection of Foster’s participation in the
    anti-slavery and feminist movements of the 19th century.

    A brief reference to this Abby should not be amiss. She was born in Pelham, a
    community now known as “one of those towns under the Quabbin Reservoir.” (Wikipedia
    give the population of Pelham in 2010 as 1321. That's a lot of people to be living
    underwater.) Her father was “an Irish Quaker yeoman” who moved his family to
    Worcester in 1811 when Abby was only a year old.

    In time she became a school teacher and also an ardent follower of William Lloyd
    Garrison, the famous abolitionist. Her reputation as a speaker brought her many calls to
    lecture. As a result she gave up teaching and briefly joined her family, then living in
    Millbury.

    After a personal retreat during which she prayed, meditated and reflected about the
    cause of abolition, Miss Kelley began a series of lectures, “first in Hopedale, Hopkinton,
    Milford and nearby towns.”
    In the course of her travels she met a famous abolitionist, Stephen S. Foster, who, after
    a four year courtship, she married. Together they suffered unbelievably in the course of
    their travels, lecturing; were often thrown off platforms, out of windows, stoned, chased,
    had eggs thrown at them, all for their views.

    The Fosters mellowed with age and after the Civil War settled in a farm they bought on
    Mower Street, Worcester. They refused to pay their taxes on the grounds that Abby was
    not allowed to vote. The city promptly seized the property and sold the farm at auction. It
    was purchased by friends and neighbors who returned it to the Fosters, satisfied Abby
    had dramatized women’s need for the vote.

    Lucy Stone, a reformer and long time admirer of Abby, wrote these lines. “Over the
    highway she helped build, slaves walked to freedom, and over the highway whose
    foundation stones she laid with bleeding hands, women are marching to their equal
    rights.”

    Hopedale knew Abby Kelley Foster. Milford Daily News, October 19, 1974.

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    The above are from a slide show about Abby Kelley Foster produced
    by the National Park Service. Click here to begin the entire program.