Yesterday was the first session of my Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLI) course on remarkable women of the past. First order of business would be to determine what makes a woman remarkable. A woman remarked upon, such as, a murderess, provocateur, spy, or a working girl? Or only women who made a positive contribution—a nurse or teacher or trail blazers for women’s right? Let’s learn about a couple and see what we think.
Crazy Sue Dunham lived in the late 18th century. Catharine Sedgwick wrote about her; George Williams painted her; it is claimed the 1818 Staffordshire plate commemorating Pittsfield depicted her; and many quoted her. Who was she? Sue was probably our first “bag lady”; a homeless, rootless, bootless woman who wandered Berkshire County alone. Why wasn’t Sue also nameless and faceless as other homeless are? Good question.
Sue was born in 1767, into that 18th-century world where an adult female was either a wife or a nuisance. There is no record that she ever married. Did that drive her mad? According to Catharine Sedgwick, it did. In “New England Tales,” Sedgwick wrote that “Crazy Bet”—her name for Sue—was driven to distraction by unrequited love. There is no record of it.
At the end of her life, when reason returned, Sue said her suffering was caused by “a little politics and a little religion.” There is some scant evidence of a tent revival near her father’s home and some anecdotal reports that she was knocked off her rocker by the lurid tales of hell fire and brimstone. The tent revival may have been the “little religion.” The “little politics” may have been a fight between her father and the man she loved.
Sue came of age during the Revolutionary War. Her father, it is said, was a strident supporter of the Constitution; her lover was not. Her father forbade the banns; so perhaps Sedgwick was right.
Whatever the cause, Sue wandered. She wandered for over 50 years until her death in Pittsfield in 1852. Her life spanned American history from the Revolutionary War almost to the Civil War—85 years. She walked from Cheshire to Lee, from Dalton to Lenox, and was known wherever she went. It is remarkable that she was tolerated in a time when beggars and the insane were not. It is remarkable that she lived free and unencumbered as a spinster in a time when a spinster was closeted and controlled. It is remarkable that she begged and stole to live and there is no record that she was ever prosecuted. It is remarkable that people remembered, saved, and repeated her witty sayings and tales of her resourcefulness. It is remarkable.
As the 19th century approached, America was an intimate world. It was horse drawn, candle lit, and sylvan. The population of the country was about 5 million with only six percent living in cities. The country appeared the perfect rural backdrop for romance. Courtship, however, was not an uninhibited romp in the woodland but a sober stroll in the Puritan woods.
In Stockbridge, in 1775, Lavinia Deane was a widow with small children. She was by all accounts a good woman, amiable and pretty, with a good large house on a farm. To stretch resources, she proposed to take in a boarder.
John Fisk came to the village as a teacher and keeper of the District Schools. Teachers were not wealthy but were paid a respectable 11 pounds and 30 cents per month. More important, they were highly regarded members of the community. The town fathers warned, “The utmost caution should be observed to do or say nothing in a manner likely to come to the ears of children as to injure the reputation of their teacher.”
Mrs. Deane rented a room to Mr. Fisk.
Time passed, and both villagers and the widow became better acquainted with Mr. Fisk. Lavinia liked him more; the village liked him less. At the moment when opinions were most sharply divided, Mr. Fisk proposed marriage. It was rumored Lavinia was prepared to accept.
The deacons of the church met on January 20, 1777, and decided, “It is not consistent with the rules of our holy profession to tolerate any of our members joining in marriage with profane immoral persons. And there is reason to fear that Lavinia Deane a sister of this church is about to join such a one. We admonish Mrs. Deane to desist from marrying Mr. Fisk.”
What would the widow do? It may seem simple to our 21st-century sensibility, but for the widow in the 18th century, the choice was between the living hell of poverty and solitude and the eternal damnation of the excommunicated. If high drama is measured by the severity of consequences facing the main characters, this was high drama indeed. To ignore the admonition of the church meant excommunication, and excommunication meant damnation for her and her children. Moreover, excommunication meant social isolation.
To be called good and amiable meant the Widow Deane had conformed to the teachings and admonitions of the church. If she ignored the church now, she would lose social standing on Earth and redemption in the afterlife. Yet, of what had the church accused Mr. Fisk? The immorality with which Mr. Fisk was charged was limited to profanity. He had committed no sinful deeds, only uttered sinful words. Yet if Mrs. Deane accepted Fisk, who had been heard to say “I swear” and “Damn it” and, most unfortunately, “Damn it to hell,” she would put her soul and the souls of her children at risk. If she did not marry him, Fisk would be made to leave her house and she would be alone in her struggle to nourish and protect herself and her children.
She stood by her man. That she was pregnant was probably persuasive. The church took her children saying she was unfit. John and Lavinia and their newborn walked out of Stockbridge into a new life.
I searched for more than a year to find where they went and what happened to them. I finally did—with a little help from my friends. The good news is they had a lovely family with many children and loved on another. The good news is John was a responsible man, respected, with a statue to him in the town square. The bad news? He died saving others from drowning when a ship went down, and, once again, Lavinia was the Widow Fisk. Possibly, the other good news is she was a trail blazer for a woman’s right to choose—in this case, her own husband.
