LETTERS: Correspondence of the first ordained woman minister in America.
Blackwell Family Correspondence:
Extraordinary Trove of Letters from Elizabeth, Anna, Henry and Samuel
preivously unknown
1837-1852
Blackwell, Elizabeth. Anna, Henry Browne, and Samuel. Family correspondence. 1837-1852. (#4656137)
29 letters, 101 pages.
Together with:
Blackwell, Antoinette Brown. Family Correspondence. 1825-1921. (#4655712)
An historically significant archive of correspondence – unpublished and heretofore untapped by scholars – by Elizabeth Blackwell, her sister Anna (poet and journalist, the eldest of the Blackwell siblings), and their brother Henry Browne Blackwell (social reformer, editor, and entrepreneur, and future husband of Lucy Stone), along with a couple of family friends. Nearly all the letters are to their brother Samuel Blackwell – future husband of Antoinette Brown (the first American woman to be ordained a Protestant minister) – with occasional letters to each other and to their parents.
The twenty-nine letters total, filling 101 manuscript pages, break down as follows (all to Samuel unless otherwise noted):
Elizabeth, 12 ALS to Samuel.
Of Mr. and Dr. Dickson:
“He thinks my desire of obtaining a thorough scientific education quite feasible, that the plan of teaching hard all summer with preparatory reading, and studying hard all winter, a good one, as I’ve no money, will mark out a course of reading, lend me books, and do everything in his power to aid – asked me where I would practice? I told him in Cincinnati or Boston. He said that was right, it must not be in a city where everything was stereotyped such as Charleston or Philadelphia, and Boston he thinks the centre of civilization of the whole world, where he would have been long ago, if it were not for the climate. // When we finished the conversation, my head burned with pleasure, I felt it to be the first step gained, and an all important one, for his medical library is a remarkably fine one, his knowledge and experience great, his reputation high and he can give me valuable introductions in Boston, and I believe in Paris.
Now my way is plain. He must respect me as a promising student, as well as an intelligent young lady, and then I know all his influence will be most kindly used for me.”
Of her studies:
“I am impatient to begin my studies in real earnest. Sometimes a medical fit seizes me, and then the slow process of teaching seems intolerable to me, but two or three thousand dollars I must and will get before I begin”
“I was deeply engaged in studying the formation of teeth from Papillary Pulp, when your pleasant letter arrived, and it effectually drove away my studiousness for the afternoon and carried me home on a visit to our busy hills.”
“I am studying slowly and steadily according to my capacity, and begin to take a deeper interest in the subject than I thought possible. I have always hitherto glanced at the material world with slight superficial regard, and passing it by, as without interest to me, have turned to the spiritual world as alone worthy of deep study. I now begin to see the short sightedness of such a view, and realize that there are wonders enclosed in this visible world, peculiarly fitted to the engrossing objects of study to us, while we remain connected with it. It seems to me that there is nothing dead in this great universe, that the Mighty Power that is connected with the soul, enters equally into everything, wh we only trace the relationship. I want to find out the soul of matter, & I trace out the wonderful nervous fibres of the body, with the same interest that I once sought for the links that united the finite with the infinite. I have had visions of curious theories already twinkling at me from the darkness of my ignorance, and I am eager to advance with more rapid steps, in the boundless fields, that open before me. Teaching seems a sad waste of time, but there is no help for it.”
“Though I think to live in a Quaker family in Philadelphia, wo
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