A Civil Life in an Uncivil Time

Author Talk & Book Signing

A Civil Life in An Uncivil Time

January 25, 2018

In Fall 1862 Julia Wilbur left Rochester, New York for Washington DC. As an ardent abolitionist, the 47-year-old left a sad but stable life heading toward the chaos of the Civil War. Wilbur spent most of the next several years devising ways to aid
recently escaped slaves and hospitalized Union soldiers.

Join us with Connecticut author Paula Tarnapol Whitacre who shaped Wilbur’s diaries and other primary sources into a narrative of a woman who remade herself at midlife during a period of massive social upheaval and change.

About the author

Location Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

Doors Open 5 PM

Program 5:30-7 PM

Apr 24

Literary Activism Locked Up

Salons at Stowe

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School Group Interest Form

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Adult Group Interest Form

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Isabella Beecher Hooker

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)
An ardent member of the woman’s suffrage movement, Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker joined in the cause along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Isabella was the first child of Lyman Beecher and his second wife, Harriet Porter Beecher.

Isabella began her education at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary and lived with her sister Mary Perkins. In 1841 she married John Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. John Hooker was a lawyer and an abolitionist.

In the early 1860s Isabella got involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. Isabella joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as a member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She was a founding member of the Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association. Isabella’s ideas of equality were influenced by John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty and the Subjection of Women.

In 1871, Isabella organized the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Washington D.C. and presented her argument before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. Her husband, John Hooker, believed in his wife and supported her activities. He helped Isabella draft a bill to the Connecticut Legislature giving married women the same property rights as their husbands. The bill passed in 1877. Isabella annually submitted a bill granting women the right to vote, but it did not pass in her lifetime.