MARY BROWNE CARPENTERCarpenter, Mary Browne

Mary Browne Carpenter (c. 1824–98) was the wife of the prominent Unitarian minister Russell Lant Carpenter (1819–92). They were married in Bridgwater, Somersetshire, in 1853. She was one of four daughters born to William Browne, a wealthy Unitarian merchant, and his wife, Mary. William Browne served as mayor of Bridgwater in 1854. In addition to her support of the antislavery effort, Mary Browne Carpenter was also deeply involved in the woman suffrage movement, belonging to one of the more radical suffrage societies in Bridport. She also supported the animal rights and temperance movements. 1841 England Census, Gloucestershire, Bristol, 22; “England and Wales, Christening Records, 1530–1906,” FamilySearch.org; “England and Wales, Death Index, 1837–1915,” FamilySearch.org; “England and Wales, Marriage Index, 1837–1915,” FamilySearch. org; “England and Wales, Non-Conformist Records Indexes, 1588–1977,” FamilySearch.org; Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey (New York, 2006), 161, 169.She has not been identified by name. ¹Mary Browne Carpenter (c. 1824–98) was the wife of the prominent Unitarian minister Russell Lant Carpenter (1819–92). They were married in Bridgwater, Somersetshire, in 1853. She was one of four daughters born to William Browne, a wealthy Unitarian merchant, and his wife, Mary. William Browne served as mayor of Bridgwater in 1854. In addition to her support of the antislavery effort, Mary Browne Carpenter was also deeply involved in the woman suffrage movement, belonging to one of the more radical suffrage societies in Bridport. She also supported the animal rights and temperance movements. 1841 England Census, Gloucestershire, Bristol, 22; “England and Wales, Christening Records, 1530–1906,” FamilySearch.org; “England and Wales, Death Index, 1837–1915,” FamilySearch.org; “England and Wales, Marriage Index, 1837–1915,” FamilySearch. org; “England and Wales, Non-Conformist Records Indexes, 1588–1977,” FamilySearch.org; Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey (New York, 2006), 161, 169. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Bridport, [Eng.] 22 April [1867].

MY DEAR SIR DOUGLASS

I really cannot remember when I last wrote to you. I know it was an
<age> ago, & that you have often been in our thoughts since. I doubt whether I have heard from you since June 1866, when, on our return from Italy I found one of your delightful & ever welcome letters²This letter has not been located. waiting for me at my sister Lucy’sThomas, Lucy Browne

The third daughter of Mary and William Browne, Lucy Browne (1825–1909) married Charles Thomas of Bristol in May 1850. 1851, 1871, 1901 England Census, Gloucestershire, Bristol, FamilySearch.org; “England and Wales, Death Index, 1837–1915”; London Christian Reformer, 6: 452 (July 1850). ,³The third daughter of Mary and William Browne, Lucy Browne (1825–1909) married Charles Thomas of Bristol in May 1850. 1851, 1871, 1901 England Census, Gloucestershire, Bristol, FamilySearch.org; “England and Wales, Death Index, 1837–1915”; London Christian Reformer, 6: 452 (July 1850). at Woodcote near Bristol.—I dont think I have been so ungrateful as not to have thanked you for that letter, for I am sure it gave me great pleasure to receive it,—that it was not at all pleasant to hear of the terrible danger from which you narrowly escaped at Baltimore a short time before.⁴Douglass began visiting Baltimore again in 1864, usually speaking at black churches in the community. There is no reported incidence of violence against Douglass at these appearances. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4: xix–xxi. Our friend Miss Amé-Draz⁵A Swiss national, Rosine Ami-Draz (c. 1816–?) first arrived in England on 11 July 1838, listing her profession as teacher. In 1841 she was teaching and living in the parish of Egg Buckland, Devonshire. After spending an undetermined length of time back in Switzerland, she returned to England in July 1848, this time listing her profession as governess. According to the 1861 English Census (where she was recorded as “Rosine Ann Davy,” a native of Neufchatel, Switzerland), she was staying in the home of Mrs. Elizabeth Read of Ecclesfield, Yorkshire. By 1871 she was serving as governess to the children of George S. Kemp, a wealthy Lancashire manufacturer. 1841 England Census, Devonshire, Egg Buckland, 11; 1861 England Census, Yorkshire, Ecclesfield, 56; 1871 England Census, Lancashire, Castleton, 1; “England, Alien Arrivals, 1810–1811, 1826–1869,” Ancestry.com. is spending two or three days with us—you will not be far wrong if you conclude that we are often talking of you, & wondering when we shall see you in England again.—We think that you ought to come to the Anti-Slavery Congress at Paris in Aug.⁶The Anti-Slavery Conference, held in Paris on 26–27 August 1867, was organized by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, the Comité Français d’Émancipation, and the Sociedad Abolicionista Española. The chair was taken by the secretaries of each national society, and the meeting passed resolutions calling for the immediate abolition of the slave trade and slavery in countries such as Brazil and Cuba. Many transatlantic abolitionists attended the conference, including J. Sella Martin, William Allen, William Lloyd Garrison, Levi Coffin, and the Reverend James William Massie. Garrison lectured as a representative of the American Freedman’s Union Commission, and Martin followed as a representative of the American Missionary Association. Douglass did not attend. Special Report of the Anti-Slavery Conference, Held in Paris (London, 1868). Cant you make your people (ie friends white or colored) understand

that “the Cause,”— to say nothing of your own health,—would benefit by your coming over, and “looking up” those whose zeal has cooled, & inspiring new people with zeal & knowledge on the Condition & needs of the colored people in America? I am sure that you have been working very hard for many years, and that you have well earned a holiday and to take one—now will not this Paris Congress give you a motive for coming at a certain fixed time? When people are so fully occupied as you always are, & seem so necessary to many important objects, it is always difficult to break away, & take a rest; & I am afraid you will never do it unless you can persuade yourself that your absence for a time will really serve the great object of your life at home. But surely the overstrained mind & body must relax their tension & enjoy occasional repose, if only to enable them to labor again & more abundantly. Our sister Miss CarpenterCarpenter, Mary

Mary Carpenter (1807-77) was the daughter of British reformer and Unitarian minister Lant Carpenter, and with her brother Philip Lant Carpenter, was a social justice activist. She began operating a girls' school in Bristol in 1829 with the help of her mother, Anna Penn Carpenter. Finding the care of poor children her life's calling, in 1835 Mary formed the Working and Visiting Society and in 1852 opened her own reformatory for boys. In the 1850s and 1860s she lobbied for industrial schooling in Britain and opened two schools of her own. In her later years she traveled widely and lectured in Britain and India on education and penal reform. She was inspired to visit India as a result of her father’s friendship with Rammohun Roy, a Bengalese teacher and religious educator who established the Brahmo Samaj, a brotherhood made up of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus. Roy visited Mary’s father, Lant Carpenter, at the Lewis Mead Unitarian Church in Bristol, but died shortly afterward from meningitis in 1833. Mary visited India four times, where she established a school for Hindu girls and became active in social reform. Jo Manton, Mary Carpenter and the Children of the Streets (London, 1976), 18-30; Jennifer S. Uglow, ed., The International Dictionary of Womens Biography (New York, 1982), 94; Mary Carpenter, Six Months in India (London, 1868).ACAB, 1:531-32; DNB, 3:1068-70, 1071-72; DAB, 1:561. ⁷Mary Carpenter (1807–77), Russell Lant Carpenter’s sister, was inspired to visit India as a result of her father’s friendship with Rammohun Roy, a Bengalese teacher and religious educator who established the Brahmo Samaj, a brotherhood made up of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus. Roy visited Mary’s father, Lant Carpenter, at the Lewis Mead Unitarian Church in Bristol, but died shortly afterward from meningitis in 1833. Mary visited India four times, where she established a school for Hindu girls and became active in social reform. Mary Carpenter, Six Months in India (London, 1868). of Bristol felt a complete change to be very needful to her, at the same time she did not care to go any where simply for her own pleasure, for example to Italy or Switzerland so, as perhaps you have heard, she went to India about six months ago.—She has <long> taken great interest in the Hindoos, particularly their women, who are so sadly neglected— & ignorant, & one of her chief objects has been to stimulate the government and people to establish Normal Schools for training female Teachers—we hope that good will result from her visit. As all events—I trust that she has herself [illegible] been fit, for she has just returned in excellent health & spirits having thoroughly enjoyed the expedition[.] She has only been in England for a week or ten days, so we have not yet seen her, but are glad to hear such famous accounts of her. I hope that you will do as she has done, tear yourself away from home engagements for a time, & come to England to see all your old friends.—We shall so rejoice to welcome you to Bridport—I am sure you would like the country round us, for it is really pretty; without any grandeur (excepting a fine sea <(sea not tea!)> which is the grandest thing in [illegible] I think) the neighbourhood is charming in fine weather, & there are some lovely walks that I should like
to introduce you to.

I dont know whether I told you that Mr Carpenter⁸The Reverend Russell Lant Carpenter (1816–92), a Unitarian minister, spent his childhood in Bristol, England. He attended Bristol College in preparation for a life of ministry, continued his studies at Manchester and York Colleges, and in 1840 became one of the first to graduate from London University. Carpenter became intensely involved in the temperance movement and subsequently quit his pastorate at Bridgwater, England, since part of the church’s endowment came from taverns. In August 1849 he journeyed to the United States, where he spent a full year preaching in an area stretching from Montreal to St. Louis to Boston. His father, Dr. Lant Carpenter, was a well-known teacher whose Unitarian writings were recognized by the antislavery men of the day. Thus, Carpenter became acquainted with Garrison, Douglass, and others. On his return to England, he married in 1853 and continued his ministerial work there until his death. His works include Memoirs of Lant Carpenter (1842), Discourses and Devotional Services (1849), A Monotessaron (1851), and a biography of his brother, Philip, Memoirs of the Life and Work of Philip Pearsall Carpenter (1880). Carpenter also contributed frequently to the Inquirer and other periodicals. London Inquirer, 30 January 1892. has decided to engage an assistant, as since his illness he has not been able without undue fatigue to preach twice on a Sunday.—A gentleman is now come to settle at Bridport who takes half of the pulpit duty—& this is a great relief to my husband, & with this relief I am thankful to say that he keeps very tolerably well. You will see the grand Exhibition at Paris⁹The Exposition Universelle (world’s fair) opened in April 1867 and closed in November, the second such fair held in Paris. In 1864, Napoleon III had issued a decree that an international fair should be held to display Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s renovation of Paris. The exposition occupied the Champ de Mars, a military parade ground. The main building was a vast domed pavilion, and exhibitions were held in around one hundred smaller buildings as well. Of the 50,226 exhibitors, around 15,000 came from France and its imperial territories; over 700 came from the United States. By the end of October, nearly 9 million people from around the world had visited the exposition. Pauline de Tholozany, “The Expositions Universelles in Nineteenth Century Paris,” Brown University (2011) (online). if you come to the

Congress—which most people now are running over to look at Monday April 23rd. When Mr Carpenter returned from the service last July he and Miss Amé-DrazAmé-Draz, Rosine

A Swiss national, Rosine Amé-Draz (c. 1816–?) first arrived in England on 11 July 1838, listing her profession as teacher. In 1841 she was teaching and living in the parish of Egg Buckland, Devonshire. After spending an undetermined length of time back in Switzerland, she returned to England in July 1848, this time listing her profession as governess. According to the 1861 English Census (where she was recorded as “Rosine Ann Davy,” a native of Neufchatel, Switzerland), she was staying in the home of Mrs. Elizabeth Read of Ecclesfield, Yorkshire. By 1871 she was serving as governess to the children of George S. Kemp, a wealthy Lancashire manufacturer. 1841 England Census, Devonshire, Egg Buckland, 11; 1861 England Census, Yorkshire, Ecclesfield, 56; 1871 England Census, Lancashire, Castleton, 1; “England, Alien Arrivals, 1810–1811, 1826–1869,” Ancestry.com. got into an interesting talk about various matters, certain difficult chapters in St Paul’s Epistles,¹⁰The Pauline epistles of the New Testament offer ethical suggestions on household roles and duties, including those of the father or husband, advising Christian husbands to love their wives as they love themselves and for husbands to avoid provoking their children to anger. Eph. 5: 23–33; Col. 3: 19–21; 1 Cor. 7: 3. & so forth, & I found that I could not write & listen at the same time so my letter was put aside. Two of Mr C’s nephews, grown up sons of Dr Carpenter of London,¹¹Joseph Estlin Carpenter (1844–1927) was an English Unitarian minister, grandson of Lant Carpenter, and son of William Benjamin Carpenter. Estlin studied moral philosophy at University College, London, and then moved to Manchester for training in the Unitarian ministry at New College. Beginning in 1866, he was the minister of the Oakfield Road Unitarian Church in Clifton, Bristol, for three years, and then preached at Mill Hill Chapel in Leeds from 1869 to 1875. Carpenter was forced to change his career from preaching to academia after he developed a speech defect. After an extended trip to Switzerland, Egypt, and Palestine did not improve his impairment, he became professor of ecclesiastical history at Manchester College in Oxford and studied Sanskrit, Pali, and Hebrew. A prolific author, he wrote a book about his aunt Mary Carpenter in 1879 and numerous religious works, including Life in Palestine When Jesus Lived (1884), The First Three Gospels (1890), James Martineau, Theologian and Teacher: A Study of His Life and Thought (1905), The Historical Jesus and the Theological Christ (1911), and Theism in Medieval India (1921). ODNB (online). will be with us for a few days this week;—the younger of the two, Lorhis, has just arrived,—he has a situation as clerk at the [illegible], & is generally obliged to keep closely to business at which he works very steadily.—The other brother, EstlinCarpenter, Joseph Estlin

Joseph Estlin Carpenter (1844–1927) was an English Unitarian minister, grandson of Lant Carpenter, and son of William Benjamin Carpenter. Estlin studied moral philosophy at University College, London, and then moved to Manchester for training in the Unitarian ministry at New College. Beginning in 1866, he was the minister of the Oakfield Road Unitarian Church in Clifton, Bristol, for three years, and then preached at Mill Hill Chapel in Leeds from 1869 to 1875. Carpenter was forced to change his career from preaching to academia after he developed a speech defect. After an extended trip to Switzerland, Egypt, and Palestine did not improve his impairment, he became professor of ecclesiastical history at Manchester College in Oxford and studied Sanskrit, Pali, and Hebrew. A prolific author, he wrote a book about his aunt Mary Carpenter in 1879 and numerous religious works, including Life in Palestine When Jesus Lived (1884), The First Three Gospels (1890), James Martineau, Theologian and Teacher: A Study of His Life and Thought (1905), The Historical Jesus and the Theological Christ (1911), and Theism in Medieval India (1921). ODNB (online). , will come from Bristol this July—he is the minister of a new & beautiful church lately built by the Unitarians at Clifton.¹²Carpenter refers to a Unitarian church built in Oakfield Road, Clifton, in 1864. Designed in an Anglican style by the local Bristol architects Pope and Bindon, the church could hold four hundred people. The overall cost for the building was £6,000; it was erected for the wealthier Unitarians of Clifton. Its grand opening was on 10 November 1864, and the Reverend James Martineau, from London, preached. According to a local newspaper report, the “church consists of nave, aisle, chancel, organ chamber, and singers’ gallery, and minister’s and deacons’ vestries . . . [T]he style is that of the 14th century, and the materials used are native stone from the Pembroke-road with freestone dressings.” Bristol Western Daily Press, 11 November 1864; Bristol Times and Mirror, 12 November 1864.

I wonder whether you know a Dr. Massie,¹³This reference is to the Reverend James William Massie (1799–1869), an Independent minister, missionary, abolitionist, and ardent supporter of the Union cause. Ordained in 1822, he worked as a missionary for the London Missionary Society in India, living in Madras (1823–25) and Bangalore (1825–27). He preached in Dublin, Ireland, and Perth, Scotland, before moving to Salford in the late 1840s. Massie became secretary of the London-based Home Missionary Society and was a member of several Union and emancipation societies on both sides of the Atlantic. He published numerous pamphlets and sermons, including those related to his travels in India and his views on American slavery. Massie spoke alongside Douglass at meetings of the Anti-Slavery League in London in 1846 and attended the Evangelical Alliance in the summer of that year. He traveled to America several times. In 1863 he presented an address to American ministers, signed by over 4,000 religious men from England and France, against American slavery. Entitled “An Address to Ministers and Pastors of all Christian Denominations throughout the States of America,” the address was adopted by the Anti-Slavery Conference of Ministers of Religion at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, on 3 June 1863. He gave several lectures in the North, traveling as far as Portland, Maine, and as far west as St. Louis and Louisville. While in Washington, he was introduced to President Lincoln by Secretary of State William H. Seward. On his return to England, Massie spoke with the black abolitionist J. Sella Martin in London to champion the Union cause. New York Times, 28 September 1863; Edinburgh Caledonian Mercury, 14 December 1863; Evangelical Alliance, Report of the Proceedings of the Conference Held at Freemasons’ Hall (1847); ODNB (online). an Independent Minister & a most earnest anti-slavery man; he has lately spent a few weeks at Bridport, during which he gave two lectures on his visits to America. He was there while the war was going on, & had an interesting interview with President Lincoln.¹⁴Abraham Lincoln (1809–65), a Whig turned Republican from Illinois, was sworn in as the sixteenth president of the United States on 4 March 1861. Douglass met Lincoln at the White House in 1863 and was charmed by the president’s earnest political considerations of emancipation. A year later, Lincoln granted Douglass’s request that his son Charles be discharged from the army because of illness. In a private meeting on 19 August 1864, Douglass and Lincoln discussed stepping up efforts to recruit slaves to the Union’s cause. Lincoln was elected to a second term in November 1864, and Douglass attended his inauguration festivities. James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (New York, 1990), 109, 134–35, 139; Phillip Shaw Paludan, The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (Lawrence, Kan., 1994), 4–5, 15–16, 183, 285–87; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 229–35.

[I] have not heard from Mrs CroftsCrofts, Julia Griffiths

A native of London, Julia Griffiths (1811–95) was the oldest of seven children born to Thomas Griffiths, a onetime stationer turned publisher and bookseller, and his wife Charlotte Powis. She first met Douglass during the latter half of 1846 when he lectured in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where she was visiting with friends. Her mother had been a friend of William Wilberforce, who had advocated for the abolition of slavery in England, and she herself was active in the British antislavery movement. Charmed by the American, Griffiths followed Douglass back to the United States with her younger sister, Eliza, in 1848. In 1850, Eliza married John Dick, one of Douglass’s printers for the North Star, and the couple moved to Toronto. Julia became a constant companion and partner to Douglass and a leading antislavery organizer in Rochester for the next five years. She contributed to the North Star as copy editor and journalist, and saved the paper from financial ruin by organizing its books and by aggressively pursuing subscribers and donations. She helped found the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, acting as its secretary, and organized the Rochester Anti-Slavery Fair. Initially, she lived with the Douglass family, which led to tension in the household and to unsubstantiated rumors that Douglass and Griffiths shared more than a business relationship. In 1853, the vicious attacks upon her in abolitionist newspapers drove her from the Douglass home and finally forced her to return to England in 1855, ostensibly to raise funds for the North Star. In 1859 she married a Methodist minister from Halifax, Henry O. Crofts (1814–80), who acted as an agent for Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Through the Civil War, she continued to organize and revitalize ladies’ antislavery societies and to lecture against slavery. After the war and her husband’s death, she ran a boarding school and worked as a governess. Her friendship with Douglass continued in frequent correspondence, and she welcomed him and his second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, when they visited England in 1886. British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, new ser., 5:82 (1 April 1857); 1871 England Census, Durham County, Gateshead, 41; London, England: Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538–1812, Ancestry.com; Maria Diedrich, Love Across Color Lines: Ottilie Assing and Frederick Douglass (New York, 1999), 179–84; Waldo E. Martin, Jr., The Mind of Frederick Douglass (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984), 40–41; Janet Douglas, “A Cherished Friendship: Julia Griffiths Crofts and Frederick Douglass,” Slavery and Abolition, 33:265–74 (June 2012); Erwin Palmer, “A Partnership in the Abolition Movement,” University of Rochester Library Bulletin, 26:1–17 (Autumn/Winter 1970–71). for more than three months, but hope that I shall soon, she seemed full of energy as ever,—but had been a good deal tried by illness in her family.

Miss Amé-Draz has told me a little of your daughter Rosetta, or rather I should say Mrs Sprague, which I have liked very much to hear, you have now two little grandchildren,¹⁵Annie Rosine Sprague and Harriet “Hattie” Bailey Sprague.—& I am sure they must be a source of pleasure & interest to you,—it is pleasant both for you & for her that your daughter has settled near you. I dare say you often find time to have a game of play with the little ones, inspite of all your pressing engagements, & that must refresh your spirit. I hope that they are healthy children & do not cause their mother much anxiety.

I am sorry to send you so dull a letter—but it shall go—for I want you to know that you are often in our thoughts. When I proposed to Mr Carpenter that he s[hou]ld write a few lines to go with this he said “Oh, no, Douglass knows that I am steadfast to him without my writing”—so you must excuse his idleness & believe in his affection all the same!

I am sorry to say that we have done nothing for a long time for the freed-people—if you want us to do any thing you must write & remind us of our duty & stimulate us to do it!—& write so that I might by means of your letter stir up other people & get a little help out of our rich friends.—We have some here who are kindness itself whenever they the duty of giving help, but they have never entered much into American affairs, or the subject of slavery, so they do not move spontaneously in that direction. You

will be quite tired of deciphering my scrawl—so goodbye—with Mr Carpenter’s kindest remembrances I remain sincerely & affectionately[.]

Your friend

MARY CARPENTER

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 637–40, FD Papers, LC.