Early Life and Influences
Lucy Stone was born on August 13, 1818 on her family's farm at Coy's Hill in West Brookfield, Massachusetts. She was the eighth of nine children of Hannah Matthews Stone (born Hannah Bowman Matthews) and Francis Stone. Her father drank too much hard cider, had a raging temper, and ruled the household as master. The family lived close to the land; to augment the food supply, the boys fished, and hunted squirrels, woodchucks, deer, and birds. To supplement the family income, the girls wove fabric, canned fruits, and sewed piecework for the local shoe factory. All the children tended the family's cows. Despite a steady but modest income from selling cheeses and shoes, Hannah Stone had to beg her husband for money to buy clothing and other necessities for the family. Hannah sometimes stole coins from his purse, and she sold an occasional cheese out of his sight. Lucy was unhappy seeing the subterfuge required of her mother to maintain a simple household.
When the Bible was quoted to her, defending the subordinate position of women to men, Stone declared that when she grew up, she'd learn Greek and Hebrew so she could correct the mistranslation that she was confident lay behind such verses.
Read more about this topic: Lucy Stone
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or influences:
“As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels’ food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology, fate . . . until we can actually live in a society where mothers and children genuinely matter, ours is an essentially powerless responsibility. Mothers carry out most of the work orders, but most of the rules governing our lives are shaped by outside influences.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)