LETTER: Autograph letter signed, "Josephine Shaw Lowell (Mrs. C. R. Lowell)," to her publisher, "My dear Mr. Holt," November 24, 1903, 120 East 30th St.
ALS, "Josephine Shaw Lowell (Mrs. C. R. Lowell)," to her publisher, "My dear Mr. Holt," November 24, 1903, 120 East 30th St.
8vo., one leaf, two pages.
Lowell writes in the hope that Mr. Holt will allow her to use his name "as one of the Vice Presidents of a public meeting to be held on Dec. 3rd," adding in a postscript that "the object is to obtain for the meeting the presence and support of American citizens who do not agree with Mr. [ ] views."
Josephine Shaw Lowell (1843-1905) might have turned out more like her sister Anna had her husband not been killed in battle during the Civil War. Her mother considered her "the genius" of her family. While studying abroad she acquired several languages, and in her liberal and educated home was influenced by the constant intellectual discourse. Her early years were spent studying, but she showed an inclination to help others by the time she was thirteen, when she assisted a poor settlement of Irish families in her neighborhood by offering treats at her home. She eagerly joined with her mother working with the Woman's Central Relief Association in NYC, packing up clothing and useful items to soldiers. The diary she kept before her marriage reveals an avid interest in affairs of state, especially military maneuvers.
She married Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., in 1863 in the same little church on Staten Island that her sister had been married in. Lowell graduated from Harvard in 1854 at the head of his class. He was self-supporting in business, but when the war began he demanded a commission as his patriotic duty. Josephine joined him in Virginia where she cared for the sick and wounded. He died a hero in battle, "a perfection of man and soldier." Unfortunately he never lived to see his daughter, born one month after his death. Josephine and baby Carlotta returned to Staten Island to live with her parents. She mourned her husband and her brother and initiated a correspondence with her brother's widow, Annie. After a respectable interval, 21 year old Josephine renewed her efforts to help others. One of her first missions was with the Freedman's Association. She and a friend traveled to Virginia with schools for African Americans in the South. This was just the beginning of her commitment to be a force for social change. In 1874 she moved to Manhattan, where she hoped here would receive a superior education. She was already knee deep in charity work, visiting poorhouses and reporting on abuses.
A life-long Unitarian, she preferred their liberal falth and humanist beliefs. Josephine became a career woman in the growing fields of organized philanthropy and government of organized philanthropy and government service. In 1876 was appointed by Governor Tilden of New York State to be the first woman commissioner of the New York State Board of Charities. She served in this position until 1889, using her post to speak out, lobby, legislate, and advocate for the oppressed and underprivileged.
Her list of affiliations and accomplishments is lengthy. The highlights of the causes for which she fought during her lifetime are as follows: improved care for the insane, benefits for dependent children and widows, improved reformatories, police matrons for women prisoners, the emancipation of labor, advocacy of settlement houses, civil service reform, consumer's rights, and anti-imperialism. In a letter to her sister-in-law in 1883 she writes, "Common charity, that is, feeding and clothing people, I am beginning to look upon as wicked! Not in its intention, of course, but in its carelessness and its results, which certainly are to destroy people's character and make them poorer and poorer. If it could only be drummed into the rich that what the poor want is fair wages and not little doles of food, we should not have all this suffering and misery and vice."
Later in life she spoke out on more political matters and in a speech advocating her support for William Jennings Bryan for president she argued, "When the people of the United States consent to deprive another people of its rights and liberties, they strike a terrific blow at the foundations upon which stand their own rights and liberties." Josephine was opposed to both the Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars: "We paid a bitter price to free ourselves from the sin of slavery, and the nation will again pay a bitter price to free itself from the sin of empire, if, driven by fear of financial distress or lured by hope of wealth, it now deserts its ancient ideals."
Hundreds of people attended her memorial service and at least 50 delivered eulogies. She was remembered in the Outlook as one who "devoted herself to public affairs without sacrificing her womanliness." There is a permanent memorial to her in Bryant Park in Manhattan.
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