Later today, I'm returning to the Shore & back to work on Stirring Up The World. So here's another post re our recent women's history road trip: Trip summary: Three days, 880 miles, mostly through central New York. Three drive-in movie theaters. (No, we didn't go). Farm stands with delicious cherries, blueberries, peaches, melons, raspberries. (Yes, we indulged.) Farm stand with piles of gorgeous purple and green heads of cabbage and corn and a pay-on-an-honor system lockbox. Nursery with table after table loaded with lush annuals and perennials. (We bought violet-purple phlox, parsley and snapdragons in a array of colors) and an honor-system-payment- lockbox. Visited 19 towns with women's history sites featuring both women and men.
The picture is of Elizabeth Smith Miller's house in Peterboro; recently bought by a couple who are determined to restore it. Since the early 1980s, her birthday has been celebrated in Peterboro. The program this year on 9/28, is highlighting her suffrage activities.
I'm counting on Dot to add a comment about Elizabeth Smith Miller!
1 comment:
Dear Penny,
I've just sent a letter to the docent at the Gerrit Smith land office museum in Peterboro, NY telling about my Elizabeth Smith Miller connection.
I explained that while a freshman at William Smith College in Geneva, NY I lived in a dormitory called "Miller House". On the living room wall was a large oil painting of an elegantly dressed elderly lady. I assumed it was Mrs. Miller and figured she probably had a wealthy husband who chose to honor her by giving money to the new college for a girls' dormitory. Little did I know!!
It was about twenty years later while working in my hometown library in Ridgewood, NJ that I learned from a children's book that ESM was the woman who designed and first wore trousers which became popularized by Amelia Bloomer and forever known as "bloomers". Why was this never mentioned while I was in college?? Well, it WAS the early 1950s.
Since learning about Mrs. Miller, her family and her accomplishments, I've been on a one-woman crusade to inform girls, and any one who will listen, about her life. I continue to marvel at what a hotbed of activism the central upstate New York area was for both women and men! From Dot
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