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^ 109 ••••••••• 45 • From the Diary of SBA [1–3 December 1896] Tues. Dec. 1, 1896. Left Bensonhurst at 3 p.m. barely reached Fall River Boat at 6 Oclock—Rachel with me— 1 it was my first Sound trip since 30 years ago—pleasant but cold— R. got into berth with me & talked until almost morning—while the great machinery paddled us along— R. is a wonderfully strong woman in many directions— If only she hadn’t put that censure of Mrs Stanton’s Bible into her last years report as Cor. Sec.!!—I should say in all directions—but that was caused either by a weak or wicked spirit— I cannot divine which—even at this distance— 1. A part of Brooklyn, Bensonhurst was home to Carrie Catt. SBA spent ten days traveling east from California, stopping to attend state suffrage meetings in Reno and Kansas City and reaching Rochester in time to attend the New York association ’s annual meeting there. She was en route to Boston for meetings of the National Council of Women. By taking the Fall River Line, she and Rachel Avery could sleep while making the trip. Ships of this line traveled the East River north to Long Island Sound, eastward the length of the Sound, around Point Judith in Rhode Island, and up Narragansett Bay to Fall River, Massachusetts. A train carried passengers from there north to Boston. Wed. Dec. 2, 1896. Wm L. & Ellen W. Garrison 1 1763—Brooklineneaconp Street Brookline Mass— Rachel Foster Avery & I reached the Hotel Vondome—Boston 2 & there found—the first I met Mrs Emma Shafter Howard 3 of Oakland—Mrs Charles Webb Howard the fashionables call her— after breakfast—I went to her room & talked & rested & lunched until 2 p.m.then went into Council Ex.Com.meeting in parlor—Miss Shaw with very many of officers present— 4 at 5.30—Miss Shaw & self went out to the Garrisons— William was going off to speak this evening—so we visited with dear Ellen & Agnes all the evening— 1. Ellen Wright Garrison (1840–1931) and William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., (1838– 1909) often hosted SBA at their home near Boston. Growing up in Auburn, New York, the daughter of Martha Coffin Wright, Ellen Garrison had adored SBA, and she remained a friend for life. William Garrison was both businessman and reformer with a strong interest in the woman suffrage movement. He was probably 1–3 december 1896 110 & out lecturing on the Single Tax; he would later take a prominent part in the antiimperialist movement. Agnes Garrison (1866–1950) was the eldest of their five children. (Wright genealogical files, Garrison Papers, MNS-S; New York Times, 13 September 1909. See also Papers 1–5.) 2. The Vendome was an eight-story, marble palace of a hotel, located on Commonwealth Avenue, two blocks north of Copley Square. 3. Emma Lovell Shafter Howard (1842–1916), the estranged wife of Charles Webb Howard, met SBA in Oakland, California, in 1895 and befriended her again during her stay in 1896. When SBA sailed to London in 1899, Howard was one of her companions. Born in Vermont, Howard moved west while a child, attended high school in San Francisco, married in 1862, and gave birth to six children. Her husband, her father (Justice Oscar L. Shafter of the state supreme court), and her uncle,owned seventy thousand acres at Point Reyes Station on which they created dairy farms, and her husband also owned a waterworks that supplied San Francisco . At the time of C. W. Howard’s death in 1908, all this wealth pitted mother against children in a contest over her share of the couple’s community property. (Woman’s Who’s Who 1914; California Tombstone Project, Mountain View Cemetery ,Oakland,on-line transcriptions; Jacob G.Ullery,comp.,Men of Vermont: An Illustrated Biographical History of Vermonters and Sons of Vermont [Brattleboro, Vt., 1894], pt. 3, pp. 88, 90; Mildred Brooke Hoover, Hero Eugene Rensch, and Ethel Grace Rensch, Historic Spots in California, 3d ed. [Stanford, Calif., 1966], 179–80; San Francisco Call, 20 August, 3 November 1908.) 4. For this meeting of the executive committee, see Louise Barnum Robbins, ed., History and Minutes of the National Council of Women of the United States (Boston, 1898), pp. 276–84, Film, 36:118ff. Thur. Dec. 3, 1896. In Boston Ex Com—Public Meeting Young Men’s Christian Ass’n Hall—at 9.50— 1 not over 200 gathered at during the whole morning— Lunched with dear Mrs Garrison...

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