Abstract
The death of Henry Grafton Chapman in 1842 not only brought sorrow to a close family, but enabled his widow for the first time to give undivided attention to the anti-slavery cause. Their children were minors and Maria’s first concern was for their education, but she put much energy into editing the Liberty Bell Organization of the Boston fair fell to Anne Warren Weston, for Maria disliked ‘the annual murder at Faneuil Hall’, and two leading patrons, Mrs Ellis Loring and Maria Child, disliked Maria Chapman. However the Liberty Bell appeared at Christmas to be sold at the fair, so the two events were linked.
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Notes
Douglas Stange, British Unitarians against American Slavery (Associated University Presses, 1984), ch. 2.
Edward Strutt Abdy visited the United States in the 1830s, writing a Journal of a Residence and Tour in the United States of North America from April 1834 to October 1838 3 vols. (London, 1835). He debated the slavery issue with Revd W.E. Channing, and became a close friends of Maria Weston Chapman, to whom he left a legacy of £500: Weston Papers, 20, nos. 29–30, 31. The sisters disputed whether the money should be used in America or for the Liberty Bell. A.W. Weston to ?, 1848, 24, no. 47, & 1849, no. 67. S.H. Gay wrote Wendell Phillips in 1849 that the Abdy legacy would be paid when Mrs Chapman went before the American consul in Paris, adding ‘I take it this goes to the relief of the American [Anti-Slavery] Society’: Gay Papers, no. 593; but Lizzie Chapman wrote to Phillips in 1849 that they were to get money from Abdy ‘which is at last our own again’: Phillips Papers, bms. Am. 1952, no. 797. Anne Weston referred to Abdy as their ‘sponsor’ in 1854: Gay Papers. no. 593.
Stange, op. cit. Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, vol. 3, passim; R. Blackett, Building an Anti-Slavery Wall. Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement 1830–1860 (Baton Rouge, 1983).
A. Stoddart, Elizabeth Pease Nichol (London 1899); M.W. Kirkby, Men of Business and Politics. The Rise and Fall of the Quaker Pease Dynasty, 1790–1943 (London, 1934); L. Billington, ‘Some Connections between British and American Reform Movements’ (MA, Bristol, 1966); and L.R. Billington, ‘A Burning Zeal for Righteousness’, in J. Rendall ed. Equal or Different (London, 1987); Midgley, Women Against Slavery (London, 1992). Garrison referred to Elizabeth Pease as ‘the Mrs Chapman of the movement’, Letters 2, 327.
N. Sunderland, A History of Darlington (Darlington, 1967). The Pease family founded Middlesbrough: W. Lillie, The History of Middlesbrough. An Illustration of the Evolution of English Industry in the North East (London, 1968); R.W. Sturgess, The Great Age of Industry in the North East (Durham Country Local History Society, 1981).
A. Raistrick, Quakers in Science and Industry (London, 1950); ‘The Pease Family’, Darlington Reference Library, Local History Guides, no. 10 (Darlington, 1981); Sir A. Pease ed., Diaries of Edward Pease, Father of the Railways (London, 1907); H. Backhouse, Extracts from the Letters and Journals of Hannah Chapman Backhouse (Privately printed, 1898). Records of the Family of Pease of Darlington, Durham County Record Office; Backhouse Papers, Durham University, Dept. of Paelography and Diplomatic; Minutes of the Society of Friends, Darlington, vols. 2, 3, 4.
E.L. Fox, The American Colonization Society (Baltimore, 1919).
J.H. Bell, British Folk and British India (London, 1891). Letters in 1839–40 from E. Pease, M.W. Chapman, E. Davis of Philadelphia and Professor W. Adam of Harvard favoured British support of Indian, not American, cotton to curb the slave power: Taylor, 86–91.
Stoddart; Midgley, op. cit. For the founding of the Darlington Ladies Auxiliary Society see E. Pease to her cousin, Thomas Pease, 1838, Friends House, Darlington, D/XO/5/263. George Thompson, who had founded this and other ladies’ societies, kept Elizabeth in touch with women’s societies in Edinburgh and Glasgow: George Thompson Correspondence, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Elizabeth Pease corresponded also with abolitionists in Boston and Philadelphia after 1837.
F.R. Tolles, Slavery and the Woman Question (Haverford, Pa., 1951); D. Maynard, ‘The World’s Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840’ Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLVII, 1960 (452–71): D. Kennon, ‘An Apple of Discord’ Slavery and Abolition, no. 3 (Dec. 1984); I. Bartlett, Wendell and Ann Phillips (New York, 1970).
C.D. Rice, The Scots Abolitionists (Baton Rouge, 1981), and ‘Controversies over Slavery in 18th and 19th Century Scotland’ in Perry and Fellman, Anti-Slavery Reconsidered, 149–67. Anon, A Brief Memorial of Eliza Wigham, n.d. E. Wigham, The Anti-Slavety Cause in America and its Martyrs (1863); H.M. Wigham, A Christian Philanthropist of Dublin, Richard Allen (London, 1860).
J. Smeal to E. Pease, 1836, Taylor, 54–5.
E. Pease to A.W. Weston, 1841, Taylor, 154–5.
E. Pease to A.W. Weston, 1841, Taylor, 158–60. See also her letter to W. and A. Phillips, 1842, Taylor, 179–81.
Elizabeth Pease mentions a meeting in 1851 with Maria Chapman: E. Pease to M.W. Chapman, 1851, Weston Papers, 16, no. 70; E. Pease to A.W. Weston, 1852, 26, no. 9.
L. Perry, Childhood, Marriage and Reform, Henry Clarke Wright, 1779–1870 (Chicago, 1980), and L. Billington, op. cit.
Garrison, who liked information about health, said Elizabeth had an enlarged heart and suffered from epilepsy as a child: see G.H. Barnes and D.L. Dumond, Letters of Theodore Weld, vol. 2, 327.
Elizabeth Pease’s marriage led to her being disfellowshipped in 1853: Kirby, Men of Business and Politics 48–9; A. Pease ed. The Diaries of Edward Pease, passim. Minutes, Darlington Friends Meeting House, vol. 4, pp. 198, 203, 209, 242. She was invited to rejoin in 1887 but refused: vol. 11, pp. 418, 424. Later Webb censured Wright: R.D. Webb to S. May, 1863, Taylor, 506–7.
M.W. Chapman to S. Gay, 1849, Gay Papers. Elizabeth Chapman’s letters are in the Phillips Papers, no. 797. For conditions in Paris in 1848 see A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848–1918 (Oxford, 1965); H.L. Peacock, A History of Modern Europe (London, 1980); R. Magraw, France 1815–1914. The Bourgeois Century (London, 1986).
Mary Chapman to A.T.G. Phillips, Phillips Papers, bms. Am, no. 1407, Sept. 1848. M. Chapman to W. Phillips, ibid., no. 797, Nov. 1848. M. Chapman to W. Phillips, ibid., no. 395, May 1849.
M.W. Chapman to A.W. Weston, Weston Papers, vol. 21, p. 59, Jan. 1849. M.W. Chapman to? Phillips Papers, bms. Am. 394, ?1852.
M.W. Chapman to E. Pease, ibid., vol. 18, p. 41, Nov. 1848.
Ibid. vol. 6, p. 36b, Paris 1853.
A. Laugel to J.J. Chapman, 1912, Phillips Papers, no. 957–9.
Auguste Laugel, The United States during the Civil War, ed. Allan Nevins (Bloomington, Ind., 1961).
P.A.M. Taylor ed., More than Common Powers of Perception. The Diary of Elizabeth Rogers Mason Cabot (Boston, 1991).
See Maria’s open letter to Garrison, Liberator 18 May 1849, XIX, 20. She was careful to uphold constitutional rights of citizens, or the prior claims of children upon their mothers. Anne Warren Weston was more outspoken over women’s rights, and Harriet Martineau campaigned for feminist causes like the Contagious Diseases Act in the 1860s.
Liberator 22 July 1853, vol. XXIII, no. 4.
Quincy-Webb Correspondence, MS. 960, vol. 1, Jan. 1853. Ibid., Nov. 1857.
Ibid., Aug. 1854.
Correspondence of William James, 2 vols. (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 1994).
A. Weston to A.T.G. Phillips, Phillips Papers, bms. Am. 1953, no. 1482, 1854.
C.W. McInnes and W.F. Whittard, Bristol and Its Adjoining Counties (Bristol, 1955): B. Little, The City and County of Bristol (London, 1967); B.J. Atkinson, ‘An Early Example of the Decline of the Industrial Spirit? Bristol Enterprise in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century’, Southern History 9, (1987) 71–89.
M.G. Jones, Hannah More (Cambridge, 1952).
P. Marshall, Bristol and the Abolition of Slavery. The Politics of Emancipation (Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, 1975).
Estlin had written to Maria Chapman since 1846 urging support only from the middle and upper classes: Taylor, 256–7; 241; 290–2.
R. Henderson, A Memoir of the late Rev. George Armstrong (London 1859); R.L. Carpenter, Memoirs (Bristol, 1842); Jo Manton, Mary Carpenter (London, 1976); R.V. Holt, The Unitarian Contribution to Social Progress in England (London, 1938); D. Stange, British Unitarians against American Slavery.
For the Estlins and Bishops see Dictionary of National Biography; W. James, ‘Memoir of John Bishop Estlin’, Christian Reformer (London, 1855) 16pp. G. Amstrong, ‘Sermon on the Death of John Bishop Estlin’ delivered at Lewin’s Mead Chapel, Bristol, 17 June 1855; M. Carpenter, The Last Days in England of the Rajah Rammohun Roy (London, 1886).
For May’s visit see Stange, British Unitarians, ch. 2. For the visit by Garrison and Douglass see R. Blackett, op. cit. Mary Carpenter noted how discreet Douglass was with women: Jo Manton, Mary Carpenter, 77.
J. Estlin to M.W. Chapman, 1846, Taylor, 256–7.
J. Estlin to S. May, 1846, Taylor, 290–1; Estlin to Garrison, 1846, Taylor, 292–3. His views may have displeased Maria; Charles Stuart offended Elizabeth Pease in 1840 with similar views: Barker, Captain Charles Stuart, ch. 9.
The leadership of the Luptons from Leeds was crucial to the Garrisonian cause: see Clare Midgley, Women Against Slavery, 168–81.
Midgley, 148–9; E. Pugh, ‘Women and Slavery: Julia Gardiner Tyler and the Duchess of Sutherland’, Virginia Magazine of History and Bibliography 2, (1980) 187–202.
Maria Weston Chapman complained to Estlin in 1847 about fickle popular views of Garrison and Phillips: Taylor, 307; but R.D. Webb and Mary Estlin preferred Wendell Phillips, Taylor, 392–3, 410, 440, 448.
By 1845 Maria Chapman was idolised by Englishwomen, including Ann Cropper, Mary Estlin, Isabel Jennings, Mary Webb, Mary Ireland, Catherine Clarkson, Mary Carpenter, Frances Armstrong, Susan Hilditch, Catherine Paton, Lucy Browne, Mary Howitt, Jane Wigham, Jane Carr and Eliza Nicholson: Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 235–324 passim. After 1846 few letters from British women survive in the Weston Papers, perhaps because Maria took their advice and went to Europe in 1848. She was lionised there too, but was high-handed and alienated some friends: Webb to May, 1858, Taylor, 429–32; Stange, British Unitarians.
Midgley, 161–76; Memorial of Sarah Pugh, A Tribute of Respect from her Cousins (Philadelphia, 1888); Obituary of Mary Estlin, The Englishwoman’s Review 15, April 1902, 131–2. S. Pugh to M. Estlin, 1853, Estlin Papers; M. Estlin to R. Moore, 1868, Estlin Papers, recounts Mary Estlin’s visit to America to Sarah Pugh and the Westons.
F.J. Klingberg. ‘Harriet Beecher Stowe and Social Reform in England’, American Historical Review XLIII, (1937–8) 542–52; G. Shepperson, ‘Harriet Beecher Stowe and Scotland’, Scottish History Review, XXXII, 1953, 40–6; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (London, 1854).
Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography was published in three volumes in 1877, a year after her death; the first two contain her completed text, the third memorials by Maria Weston Chapman.
M.W. Chapman to E.P. Nichol, 1854, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. See F.W. Chesson’s Obituary in the Aborigines Friend, March 1889, 513–23; Amelia Chesson’s obituary is in the Englishwoman’s Review, 15 April 1902, 131–2.
Howard Temperley, British Anti-Slavery, op. cit.
Amelia Chesson’s Notebooks in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, contain the Minutes of the London Emanciaption Society. A later Ladies Committee issued at least two annual Reports, the second dated London, 1865.
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© 1995 Clare Taylor
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Taylor, C. (1995). Maria Weston Chapman and her Anti-Slavery Mission to Europe. In: Women of the Anti-Slavery Movement. Studies in Gender History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23766-1_5
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