Laura Smith Haviland (December 20, 1808 - April 20, 1898) is an American reformer, suffrage, and social reformer. He is an important figure in the history of the Underground Railroad.
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Early years and families
Laura Smith Haviland was born on December 20, 1808, in Kitley Township, Ontario, Canada to American parents, Daniel Smith and Asenath "Sene" Blancher, who had immigrated shortly before his birth. Haviland writes that Daniel is "a man of great skill and influence, perception, and strength of reason," while his mother, Sene, is "a softer man... a calm spirit, kind and kind to all, and is well loved by all who know him. "The Smiths, the peasants in a simple way, was a devout member of the Society of Friends, better known as Quaker. Haviland's father was a minister in the Society and his mother was an Elder.
Although Quakers are modestly dressed, and strictly prohibit other dances, songs, and other pursuits that they take for granted, many of their views are progressive by day's standards. The Quakers encourage equal education between men and women, an extraordinary forward thinking position in an age when most individuals are illiterate, and providing a woman with a thorough education is largely seen as unnecessary. Quaker women and men act as ministers. While most Quakers are not nervously vocal for abolition, the majority condemn slavery as brutal and unjust. It was in this atmosphere that Haviland grew up.
In 1815, his family left Canada and returned to the United States, settling in the remote and populous town of Cambria, west of New York. At that time there was no school near their home, and for the next six years Haviland's education consisted only of "spelling lessons" given to him daily by his mother. Haviland describes himself as a curious child, very interested in the workings of the world around him, who at a young age began to question his parents about everything from the scriptures to Newton's Law of Universal Gravity. Once he mastered the spelling, Haviland completed his minimal education by devouring every book he could borrow from friends, relatives and neighbors, reading everything from religious material to serious historical studies.
At the age of sixteen, Laura met Charles Haviland, Jr., a pious young Quaker, whose parents were both honorable ministers. They married on November 11, 1825, in Lockport, New York. According to Laura, Charles is a devoted husband and their marriage is happy. They are the parents of eight children.
Havilands spent the first four years of their marriage at Royalton Township, near Lockport, New York, before moving in September, 1829, to Raisin, Lenawee County in the Michigan Territory. They settled three miles (5 km) from the homestead that their parents had acquired four years earlier. At that time Michigan was an unspoiled wilderness, but the land was cheap, and there were a number of other Quakers around.
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Anti-slavery work and Raisin Institute
Haviland clearly remembered seeing African Americans verbally abused, and even physically assaulted, in Lockport, New York, when he was a child. These experiences, combined with the dreadful descriptions in the history of the slave trade of John Woolman, make an indelible impression.
The images of these overloaded slave ships, with the cruelty of the slavery system after they were brought to our country, often influenced me to cry... My sympathy became too deep for the poor negrous who were thus enslaved to remove.
Haviland and other members of the Raisin community helped Elizabeth Margaret Chandler organize the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1832. This was the first anti-slavery organization in Michigan. Five years later, in 1837, Haviland and her husband established a "manual labor school...... designed for poor children," later to be known as Raisin Institute. Haviland instructed the girls in housework, while her husband and one of her brothers, Harvey Smith, taught the boys to do farm work. At the urging of Havilands, the school is open to all children, "regardless of race, creed, or sex." It was the first racial school integrated in Michigan. Some white students of Haviland, after learning that they will study with African-Americans, threatened to leave. Most were persuaded to stay, and Laura wrote that once the students were together in their prejudice classes "soon disappeared."
In 1838 Harvey Smith sold his field, and the proceeds were used to establish accommodation for fifty students. Havilands expands the school curriculum, operating closer along traditional secondary and secondary school lines. They then hired Oberlin College graduates to serve as principals. Because of their perseverance, the Raisin Institute was soon recognized as one of the best schools in the Territory.
When Havilands became more actively involved in anti-slavery work, tension grew in the Quaker community. There is a division between what is called a "radical abolitionist," like Havilands, who wants immediate emancipation, and the majority of the Orthodox Quakers. Although Quaker condemned slavery, most did not approve of active participation in abolitionist societies. In 1839, to continue their abolitionist work, Havilands, his parents, and fourteen other like-minded Quakers, felt compelled to resign from their membership. They then joined a group of Methodists known as Wesleyans, who were both devoted to abolitionist goals.
In the spring of 1845, an erysipelas epidemic killed six members of the Haviland family, including both his parents, her husband, and her youngest son. Haviland also fell ill, but survived. At the age of thirty-six, Haviland found himself a widow with seven children to support, a farm to run, the Raisin Institution to manage, and huge debt to repay. Unfortunately, just two years later the tragedy happened again, when his eldest son died. Due to lack of funds, Haviland was forced to close the Raisin Institute in 1849.
Regardless of his personal loss, he continued his abolitionist work, and in 1851, he helped organize the Refugee Home Society in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. The fugitive slaves settled there, a church and a school was set up for them, and each family was given twenty-five acres of farmland. Laura stayed for several months as a residential teacher. He then went to Ohio, where, with his daughter Anna, he taught at an established school for African American children in Cincinnati and Toledo, Ohio.
In 1856, he had raised enough funds to reopen the Raisin Institute, and returned to Michigan. The new curriculum includes having a former slave giving lectures on the reality of life on a slave farm. The Institute closed once again in 1864, after most of the staff, and some students, enlisted to fight during the Civil War.
Working for Underground Railroad
During the 1830s, the Haviland family began to hide escaped slaves on their farms. Their home became the first subway station set up in Michigan. After the death of her husband, Haviland continues to overshadow the fugitive slaves at his home, in some cases, personally escorting them to Canada. He played an important role in the Detroit group's branch, where he was considered a "train inspector", with George DeBaptiste as "president" and William Lambert as "vice president" or "secretary".
He also traveled south on several occasions to help escaped slaves. His first trip was carried out in 1846, in an attempt to free the children from the burial slaves, Willis and Elsie Hamilton. Children are still in possession of the owner of their former slave boy, John P. Chester, a shopkeeper in Washington County, Tennessee.
Chester had known of Hamilton and sent slaves after them. When that failed, Chester tried to lure Hamiltons into his plantation with the promise that they would be treated as liberated and reunited with their children. Suspicious, Haviland went to Tennessee at their place, accompanied by his son, Daniel, and a student from the Raisin Institute, James Martin, who plays Willis Hamilton. Mr. Chester became angry after he realized Willis Hamilton was not with Mrs Haviland. He holds the trio at gunpoint, threatening to kill them, kidnap James Martin, and enslave him to replace Willis Hamilton. They managed to escape, but Mr. Chester had not forgotten Laura Haviland. His family will continue to haunt him for fifteen years, chasing him lawfully in court and in private with the slave catcher, while scolding him with insulting letters. The following letter was sent by Chester's son Thomas K. Chester in February 1847. This provides a good example of a tone that permeates Chester's family correspondence with Haviland:
... With that wise and wise God, my father has many more busy, oily, slick people. , and fat; and they are not deceived to death because of their hard earned income by abolitionists who are evil and cruel, whose philanthropy is a flower, and whose sole desire is to deceive the slave owner from his own property, and turn his hard work into his infernal abundance own...Who do you think will be at odds with a thief, a just plunderer of human rights, recognized by our noble Constitution of the Union! Such condescending attitude would make an honest man, would put simplicity on the red hue. What! To engage in a contest with you? A criminal, a cursed thief, a Negro burglar, a runaway, a villain in the eyes of all honest men;... I'd rather be caught with other people's sheep on my back than engaging in such subjects, and with individuals like old Laura Haviland, a fucking negro burglar...
You can tell Elsie that from the time we returned, my father bought his eldest daughter; that he is now his and the mother of a possible man, whom I call Daniel Haviland after your beautiful son.... What do you think your portion will be on the Great Judgment Day? I thought it would be an inner temple of hell.
Haviland responded, sarcastically thanking him for naming the child after his family and declared that he hoped "like Moses, may he be instrumental in leading his people away from slavery worse than Egypt." what he considered insolent, Thomas Chester placed a bounty on Haviland's head. Throughout the South he distributed hand-bills that depicted Mrs. Haviland, detailing his abolitionist work, mentioned his place of residence and offered $ 3000, a large sum at the time, to anyone willing to kidnap or kill him on an interest.
Three years later, following the passing of the Fugitive Massacre Act, Chester's family tried to get Haviland tried under new laws to "steal " their slaves. Haviland not only bears the risk of being physically wounded by angry slave owners, like the Chesters, or their slave catchers, if found guilty of violating the Law of the Fugitive Servant, he will also be subject to large fines and imprisonment. However, Haviland is determined to continue his work, whatever his personal expenses:
... I do not want my right hand to be a tool in returning one slave who fled to slavery. I firmly believe in our Declaration of Independence, that all human beings are created free and equal, and that no human has the right to make other people's merchandise born in the lower station, and to place them on equal footing with horses, cows, and sheep. , dropping them from the auction block to the highest bidder, binding family ties, and scolding the purest and most gentle human feelings.
Fortunately for Haviland, his case was brought before Judge Ross Wilkins, who sympathized with the abolitionists. The Chesters attempted to retake the Former Prefect region by force, but were prevented by Haviland and his neighbors. Judge Wilkins suspended his case, allowing Haviland to help Hamiltons escape to Canada. In the end, Haviland avoids official punishment.
In addition to other failed rescue efforts, detailed in his autobiography, Haviland then made another more successful trip to the south that was not mentioned in his memoirs. In the disguise of a white cook, and once even posed as a skin-light skinned person, he visited the plantation and managed to help some slaves escape northward.
Civil War and Reconstruction
During the Civil War, Laura visited many refugee camps and hospitals, even ventured into the frontlines, to distribute supplies to displaced people, freeing slaves, and soldiers.
In the spring of 1865, the newly formed Freedmen Bureau commissioner, General Oliver O. Howard, was named Haviland Inspector of Hospitals. Haviland's real job consists of far more than examining the hospital. He spent the next two years traveling through Virginia, Tennessee, Kansas and Washington, DC, distributing supplies, reporting on the living conditions of poor Freedmen and whites, organizing refugee camps, setting up schools, working as a teacher, volunteering as a nurse at Freedmen hospital, and giving public lectures. In an effort to help the white man understand what Freedmen had experienced under slavery, he visited abandoned estates and collected chains, irons, restraints, and other equipment that had been used on slaves. Haviland transported these items to the north and flaunted them during his lecture. He also met privately with President Andrew Johnson to petition for the release of a former slave who is still being held in a South prison for trying many years before escaping from slavery.
While working at Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C., Haviland met and became friends with Sojourner Truth, who later recalled an incident that happened one day when they went to town to get supplies. Haviland suggested that they take the road car back to the hospital. Truth describes what happens next as follows:
When Mrs. Haviland signaled to the car, I stepped to one side as if to continue my journey and when stopped I ran and jumped aboard. The conductor pushed me back, said, 'Get out of the way and let this woman in.' I said 'I'm a woman too.' We left without further resistance until we had to change cars. A man who came out when we got into the next car asked if 'niggers were allowed up.' The conductor pulled at my shoulders and jerked me away, instructing me to get out. I told him I would not do it.
Mrs. Haviland grabbed my other arm and said, "Do not let him out." The conductor asked me if I belonged to him. "No," she answered. Haviland, "He belongs to mankind."
Haviland Home orphanage
After the Civil War, the Freedmen Assistance Commission acquired the former Raisin Institute, renamed it Haviland House, and turned it into an orphanage for African American children. His first inhabitants were seventy-five homeless children brought by Haviland from Kansas. As the other kids joined their ranks, and their numbers increased, many white people in Michigan became unnerved. They claim that Haviland weighed on white taxpayers and demanded that Haviland Home be closed. The problem arose in 1867, when the orphanage was bought by the American Missionary Association, which closed the orphanage, and actually threw the orphans into the streets.
Haviland left his job in Washington, D.C., to return to Michigan and help the children. He managed to collect enough donations to buy an orphanage and start managing it himself. In 1870, funds were scarce. The situation became so horrible that, at the urging of Haviland, the state took over the orphanage and became Asphyxian Orphan Michigan.
Next year
When the Reconstruction ended in 1877, many African Americans fled from the South, where they were subjected to attacks by racist individuals and groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Thousands of African American men, women and children, squeezed in emergency refugee camps in Kansas. Determined to help, Haviland departs with his daughter, Anna, to Washington, D.C., where he testifies about the terrible conditions at the camp, before traveling to Kansas with supplies to the refugees. Using his personal savings, Haviland buys 240 acres (0.97 km km in Kansas) for Kansas for Freedmen in one of the refugee camps for life and farming.
Death and inheritance
During his lifetime, Laura Haviland not only fought slavery and worked to improve the living conditions of Freedmen, he was also actively involved in other social causes, advocating women's suffrage, and assisted in organizing Christian Christian Temperance Unity in Michigan.
Laura Haviland died on April 20, 1898 at Grand Rapids, Michigan, at his brother's house, Samuel Smith. She was buried next to her husband at the Raisin Valley Cemetery in Adrian, Michigan.
Symbolically, in the Haviland cemetery, hymns were sung by a white African and African American singing choir, and then his coffin was taken to a grave by a group of whites and African Americans.
In recognition of his efforts, the city of Haviland, Kansas was named in his honor. The Laura Haviland statue stands in front of the Lenawee County Historical Museum in Adrian, Michigan. The inscription on the statue reads:
Award for Consecrated Life for Humanitarian Improvement.
Laura Smith's Haviland Elementary School in Waterford, Michigan is named in his honor.
Jobs selected
- (1866) Letter from Laura Smith Haviland to Sojourner
Messages
A Woman's Life-Work: Workers and Experience Laura S. Haviland (1882) - Library of Congress calls the number 10101385 Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/womanslifeworkla01havi
References
Further reading
- Haviland, Laura Smith. Women's Life: Work and Experience Laura S. Haviland . Cincinnati: Waldon & amp; Stowe, 1882.
- Danforth, Mildred E. A Quaker Pioneer: Laura Smith Haviland, Underground Inspector. Exposition, 1961.
- Lindquist, Charles. Underground Antislavery Underground Movement in Lenawee County, Michigan, 1830-1860. Lenawee County Historical Society, 1999.
- Berson, Robin Kadison. Line up to a Different Drummer: Heroes of Unknown American History. Greenwood Press, 1994.
External links
- "Lenawee County Michigan Monument # 11: Presented to Laura Smith Haviland," http://www.geocities.com/lenaweemi/monu11.html (December 20, 2006).
- Claus Bernet (2011). "Laura Smith Haviland". At Bautz, Traugott. Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German). 32 . Nordhausen: Bautz. cols. 640-643. ISBN: 978-3-88309-615-5.
- "Laura Smith Haviland: Wesleyan Pioneer," History's Women: The Unung Heroines, http://www.historyswomen.com/womenoffaith/LauraSmithHaviland.htm (December 20, 2006).
- "Mrs. Laura (Smith) Haviland," Havilands.com, http://www.havilands.org/HavilandsCom/Biographies/LauraSmithHaviland/index.html (February 14, 2007).
- Laura Smith Haviland Cemetery. Gravesite at Discover A Grave
- Laura Smith Haviland. Michigan History Center, History Department, Arts and Library. Official Website of the State of Michigan. http://www.michigan.gov/hal/0,1607,7-160-15481_19271_19357-163242--,00.html
- Ã, "Haveland, Laura Smith". Appletons' CyclopÃÆ'Â|dia of American Biography . 1892.
- Works by Laura Smith Haviland at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Laura Smith Haviland in the Internet Archive
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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