Women in the 19C United States of America: Born a Slave

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Born a Slave - Clara Brown (1800-1885) Colorado

Clara Brown was born a slave in Virginia in 1800. At 9, she & her mother were sold into Kentucky. By 18, she married & then gave birth to 4 children. At 35, she was sold at auction & separated from her husband & children. Freed by her 3rd owner in 1859, she traveled to Denver by working as a cook on a wagon train in exchange for her transportation. Brown is said to be the first black woman to cross the plains during the Gold Rush.

In Central City, Colorado, she set up shop as a laundress, worked hard, & saved money. After Emancipation, she returned to Kentucky to search for her lost children in 1866 with no luck. On this trip, she helped ex-slaves relocate to Colorado & later took in needy ex-slaves. In 1879, when she was nearly 80, she traveled to Kansas to help poor freedmen "exodusters" relocated on Kansas farms from the South. In 1882, she finally found her daugher Eliza Jane, who had been sold into slavery as a girl & helped her relocate to Iowa with her grandaughter Cindy. She died in 1885.

About this blog

In colonial America, men were considered superior to woman in all ways. In a strict patriarchal hierarchy, men controlled not only wealth & political power but also how their children were raised, religious questions, & all matters of right & wrong.

In the early part of the 19Cy, however, many Americans experienced a revolution in gender. The doctrine of “separate spheres” maintained that woman’s sphere was the world of privacy, family, & morality while man’s sphere was the public world -– economic striving, political maneuvering, & social competition. But women were interested in equality.

In 1848, New York passed the Married Woman’s Property Act. Now a woman wasn’t automatically liable for her husband’s debts; she could enter contracts on her own; she could collect rents or receive an inheritance in her own right; she could file a lawsuit on her own behalf. She became for economic purposes, an individual. By 1900, every state has passed legislation modeled after this, granting married women some control over their property and earnings.

In 1870 after the Civi War, the 15th Amendment was ratified, saying, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” African-Americans could vote, but women could not.

But it was not until 1920, that the 19th Amendment was ratified granting women the right to vote. “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”