SENECA FALLS - On the steps of a revolutionary's home, a choir of girls sang an old suffragettes' tune: “A Woman's Cause is Right.”
Chet Susslin / The Citizen
Dr. Malinda Grube, a professor of history at Cayuga Community College, leads the march dressed as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, from the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House to the First Presbyterian Church of Seneca Falls on Saturday morning. The march and subsequent choir concert and keynote speaker were part of the Convention Days 2009 celebrating women's rights.
Dr. Malinda Grube, a professor of history at Cayuga Community College, leads the march dressed as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, from the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House to the First Presbyterian Church of Seneca Falls on Saturday morning. The march and subsequent choir concert and keynote speaker were part of the Convention Days 2009 celebrating women's rights.
It was the cause of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and other forward-thinking, equality-demanding women and the rights they fought for on behalf of all women that brought the girls to stand before Stanton's home Saturday.
Seneca Falls celebrated the 161st anniversary of the women's rights convention, which took place there, by honoring the historical women for whom the village is known and the women who have since continued the suffragettes' tradition of paving the untraveled path.
In July of 1848, 300 people crammed into the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls to watch as 100 signatures were added to the Declaration of Sentiments, written by Stanton to demand the rights due to women as American citizens.
Decades later, Marilyn Foster became the first woman minister of the village where Stanton once said that women had a right “to do and dare anything.”
Foster, who has been the pastor of the Fist United Methodist Church of Seneca Falls for 17 years, was honored at the weekend-long festival for her contribution to the community with a service award.
She began work for the clergy in 1977, but was not ordained until 10 years later, when she was 44. “I felt that it was an impossible dream,” said Foster, who felt drawn to a life of service at age 15. “I grew up in an era when women were not encouraged to go to school.”
Few other women were in the clergy when she began her work, Foster said. But since she arrived in Seneca Falls, three other ordained women have joined the community.
“I've always had a feeling that I'm walking in the footsteps of some very persistent and determined women,” Foster said.
It is not difficult to feel the presence of the suffragists in Seneca Falls - they are memorialized throughout the village at the Women's Rights National Historical Park, the National Women's Hall of Fame, and Stanton's home on Washington Street. A conversation between Stanton, Anthony and Amelia Bloomer is suspended in air by three bronze statues of the women on a patch of grass along East Baynard Street.
The Lexington Girlz Choir, of Lexington, Mass., paused to sing to the women on their procession from Stanton's home, to the First Presbyterian Church, where they performed with the Mynderse Academy Young Women's Chorale.
“If it wasn't for them, none of us women would be able to be here today,” said Bailey Cohen, 11, of Lexington, Mass.
Lydia Swan, of Lexington, was pleased that her 11-year-old daughter, Rachel Lloyd, was learning about women who fought for their dreams. “It's wonderful to be here and be steeped in this history,” said Swan. She was accompanied by her mother, Barbara Bools, with whom she wrote a book about women and power in the corporate world.
Though women writers date back to before the suffrage movement, Swan recalled what Nellie Bly, an early woman journalist, was told by her father that a woman's name should be in the paper only three times in her life: when she is born, when she marries, and when she dies.
The sense of female empowerment that Swan works to instill in Rachel and her older daughter, Alexis, was passed on to her from her mother.
Bools was fired from her job at a manufacturing plant in California when her employer discovered she was pregnant. But as the family breadwinner while her husband finished school, Bools returned to work two weeks after her daughter was born, this time at Disney Land. The first question asked of her was if she planned to have children. “That's just the way it was,” she said as she walked toward the First Presbyterian Church to hear her granddaughter sing.
After the concert, Judith L. Pipher, an astronomer and professor emeritus of the University of Rochester, addressed the girls and their families about her experience in a male-dominated profession and the importance of encouraging young women to pursue science. Pipher, a 2007 inductee of the women's hall of fame, based her speech on a Chinese proverb - women hold up half the sky. But, she said, gender stereotypes are so deeply ingrained in American culture that still today women make up less than 30 percent of the science fields.
“Before women can truly hold up half the sky, there are many barriers that must first be overcome,” she said. “And it is these girls who are going to have to do the overcoming.”
Staff writer Sarah Gantz can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 237 or sarah.gantz@lee.net
Seneca Falls celebrated the 161st anniversary of the women's rights convention, which took place there, by honoring the historical women for whom the village is known and the women who have since continued the suffragettes' tradition of paving the untraveled path.
In July of 1848, 300 people crammed into the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls to watch as 100 signatures were added to the Declaration of Sentiments, written by Stanton to demand the rights due to women as American citizens.
Decades later, Marilyn Foster became the first woman minister of the village where Stanton once said that women had a right “to do and dare anything.”
Foster, who has been the pastor of the Fist United Methodist Church of Seneca Falls for 17 years, was honored at the weekend-long festival for her contribution to the community with a service award.
She began work for the clergy in 1977, but was not ordained until 10 years later, when she was 44. “I felt that it was an impossible dream,” said Foster, who felt drawn to a life of service at age 15. “I grew up in an era when women were not encouraged to go to school.”
Few other women were in the clergy when she began her work, Foster said. But since she arrived in Seneca Falls, three other ordained women have joined the community.
“I've always had a feeling that I'm walking in the footsteps of some very persistent and determined women,” Foster said.
It is not difficult to feel the presence of the suffragists in Seneca Falls - they are memorialized throughout the village at the Women's Rights National Historical Park, the National Women's Hall of Fame, and Stanton's home on Washington Street. A conversation between Stanton, Anthony and Amelia Bloomer is suspended in air by three bronze statues of the women on a patch of grass along East Baynard Street.
The Lexington Girlz Choir, of Lexington, Mass., paused to sing to the women on their procession from Stanton's home, to the First Presbyterian Church, where they performed with the Mynderse Academy Young Women's Chorale.
“If it wasn't for them, none of us women would be able to be here today,” said Bailey Cohen, 11, of Lexington, Mass.
Lydia Swan, of Lexington, was pleased that her 11-year-old daughter, Rachel Lloyd, was learning about women who fought for their dreams. “It's wonderful to be here and be steeped in this history,” said Swan. She was accompanied by her mother, Barbara Bools, with whom she wrote a book about women and power in the corporate world.
Though women writers date back to before the suffrage movement, Swan recalled what Nellie Bly, an early woman journalist, was told by her father that a woman's name should be in the paper only three times in her life: when she is born, when she marries, and when she dies.
The sense of female empowerment that Swan works to instill in Rachel and her older daughter, Alexis, was passed on to her from her mother.
Bools was fired from her job at a manufacturing plant in California when her employer discovered she was pregnant. But as the family breadwinner while her husband finished school, Bools returned to work two weeks after her daughter was born, this time at Disney Land. The first question asked of her was if she planned to have children. “That's just the way it was,” she said as she walked toward the First Presbyterian Church to hear her granddaughter sing.
After the concert, Judith L. Pipher, an astronomer and professor emeritus of the University of Rochester, addressed the girls and their families about her experience in a male-dominated profession and the importance of encouraging young women to pursue science. Pipher, a 2007 inductee of the women's hall of fame, based her speech on a Chinese proverb - women hold up half the sky. But, she said, gender stereotypes are so deeply ingrained in American culture that still today women make up less than 30 percent of the science fields.
“Before women can truly hold up half the sky, there are many barriers that must first be overcome,” she said. “And it is these girls who are going to have to do the overcoming.”
Staff writer Sarah Gantz can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 237 or sarah.gantz@lee.net
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