There's More to New Jersey than the Sopranos

18 Mrs. Stanton Steps Out in Tenafly

Mrs. Stanton Steps Out in Tenafly 93 Evening Journal of Jersey City declared that the episode was an example of “priestly deception and tyranny.” The Protestants hoped to appeal the decision, but then came a bombshell . Father Doane sent to the newspapers a letter he said had been sent to him by Mary Ann. “Be so kind, Rev. Father, as to put a stop to my trial as I consider there is but one true religion, and in that I mean to live and hope to die. I confess myself a Catholic now, and I hope forever.” She expressed the desire to become a nun. Although some Protestants thought this was a forgery, there was nothing that could be done. The rumor arose a few years later that Mary Ann had left the Church and resumed life as a Protestant. But the story was unsubstantiated, and thereafter she seems to have disappeared from history. Father Doane did not. He stayed in Newark and lived on into a more tolerant era. He became a respected figure in the city and worked to establish parks, hospitals, libraries, and public works. When he died at age of seventy-five, in 1905, he was mourned by Protestants and Catholics alike. No mention was made of the painful Mary Smith episode of thirtyseven years before. Time really does heal wounds. 18 Mrs. Stanton Steps Out in Tenafly In November 1880 an elderly lady shocked the citizenry of Tenafly, New Jersey, by attempting to perform a forbidden act in public. Had she been lewd? Drunk? No, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, sixty-four, had tried to cast a ballot in an election. Stanton was born in 1815 to a wealthy family in upstate New York. When she was eleven, her older brother died. The body was placed in a casket in the parlor, which was darkened and draped in mourning cloth. 94 There’s More to New Jersey . . . When the young Elizabeth entered the room, she saw her father sitting sorrowfully next to the casket. She climbed on her father’s knee, and he put his arm around her.“We both sat in silence, he thinking of the wreck of all his hopes in the loss of a dear son, and I wondering what could be said or done to fill the void in his breast. At last he heaved a deep sigh and said: ‘Oh, my daughter, I wish you were a boy!’” It was a memory that burned in her mind for the rest of her life. When she was a twenty-five-year-old newlywed, she and her husband journeyed to London to attend an international gathering of antislavery activists. Before the conference could get down to business, a debate flared about a motion to allow the admission of women attendees Elizabeth Cady Stanton A leader of the women’s suffrage movement, the sixty-four-year-old Stanton shocked her Bergen County neighbors when she dared to cast a ballot in the 1880 presidential election. Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries. Mrs. Stanton Steps Out in Tenafly 95 as delegates. The motion was soundly defeated, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton stormed out. Once back home she began to talk to other women who, like her, were affronted by the way they were treated in the world of men, and she took the lead in organizing the first women’s rights convention, held at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. As much as anybody, Stanton deserves to be considered the Founding Mother of the woman’s suffrage movement. Stanton did not live the life of a radical. She spent much of her adult life at home raising her seven children while her husband was away on business. But she had a deep vein of anger. “When I think of all the wrongs that have been heaped on womankind, I am ashamed that I am not forever in a condition of chronic wrath, stark mad, skin and bone, my eyes a fountain of tears, my lips overflowing with curses, and my hand against every man and brother.” She also had a strong ego and could be overbearing in pursuit of her cause. She argued that white, American women had more of a right to vote than immigrants off the boat and newly freed slaves. It was a position that helped to split the woman’s rights movement. Stanton...