Representative women of New England/Alice Stone Blackwell
ALICE STONE BLACK WELL was born in Orange, N. J., September 14,. 1857, the daughter of Henry B. Blackwell and his wife, Lucy Stone. In 1869 her parents moved to Massachusetts. She was fitted for college at Chauncy Hall School in Boston, where she took the Thayer prize for English composition and a special prize for knowledge of Shakespeare. She graduated from the College of Liberal Arts of Boston University with honors in 1881, and began in the same year to help her parents edit the Woman's Journal. For the last sixteen years she has also edited a small fortnightly paper called the Woman's Column, devoted to equal suffrage. She was largely instrumental in persuading the two branches of the Woman's Suffrage Association, which had split twenty years before, to reunite in 1889; and she has since been recording secretary of the united society, the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She is also chairman of the Executive Committee of the New England Woman Suffrage Association and chairman of the Literature Committee of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. She has been much interested in the Armenian question, has for many years been in the habit of befriending Armenian immigrants, and is the author of "Armenian Poems," a small volume of verse translated from the Armenian. She is also the compiler, with the Rev. Anna H. Shaw and Miss Lucy E. Anthony, of a book of equal rights recitations, "The Yellow Ribbon Speaker." She was for some years Associate National Superintendent of Franchise for the W. C. T. U. She lectures occasionally, and is interested in a number of reforms.
Miss Blackwell inherits much of her mother's tenacity and singleness of purpose. Endowed with a ready wit and retentive memory, in legislative hearings for and against suffrage she retains a vivid recollection of all that is said in opposition, and is usually able to turn the weapons of her antagonists against them- selves. Among the younger advocates of suffrage she is distinguished for her valuable and acceptable service.
first part of her married life was spent in Boston. At present the family make their home during the winter season with Mrs. Fitz's father, David Slade, of Chelsea. Th(>y have an attractive summer residence at Wakefield, Mass. Three sturdy boys furnisli inspiration for the mother's best effort.
Mr. David Slade's paternal grandfather, John Slade, the founder of this branch of the Slade family in New England, camp from Devonshire in the latter part of th(> eighteenth century. On the 4th of August, 1776, he, "John Slade of Boston," married "Hannah Torrey of Scituate." The Probate Records of Suffolk County show that on the 11th October, 1791, Hannah Slade, widow, w:is appointed "administratrix of the estate of John Slade, late of Chelsea, deceased." It is said that at some period of his residence in Massachusetts John Slade owned a number of slaves.
Through Mrs. Hannah Torrey Slade," her great-grandmother, Mrs. Fitz is descended from Lieutenant James Torrey, who was an inhabitant of Scituate before 1640; ami through her paternal grandmother, Sally Danforth, wife of Henry Slade, Mrs. Fitz is a descendant in the ninth generation of Nicholas Danforth, the immigrant progenitor of the Middlesex County colonial family of this name. Nicholas Danforth came to New England in 1634. The records of Cambridge, Mass., show that he became a landowner in 1635, was a Deputy, or Representative, to General Court in the same year, and on the 20th of November, 1637, was one of the important conunittee selected " to take orders for college at Newtown" (Cambridge). He died in April, 1638. The line of descent to Mrs. Sally Danforth Slade, who was of the seventh generation, was through his third and youngest son. Captain Jonathan Danforth, an early settler of Billerica, Mass.
Joshua Danforth, father of Sally and great-grandfather of Mrs. Fitz, was a Revolutionary soldier and in his old age a United States pensioner.
Mrs. Fitz's mother was a native of England, coming to this country when but a few months old. She was a loyal American, and taught her children to love her adopted country. It is not strange, with these records, that Mrs. Fitz stands to-day as a representative New England woman.