Clarina Howard Carpenter Nichols (1810-1885) spent most of her adult life as an orator and lobbyist for women's rights and the abolition of slavery. Born in West Townsend, Vermont, she moved west to Kansas in 1854 and then again in 1871 to Potter Valley, California. Having attended a private college and earning a teaching credential, Clarina was an educated woman for her time. She spent her retirement years in Potter Valley where she lived with her son George. Another son, Aurelius Ornando Carpenter, was father to Grace Hudson. In Potter Valley, she contributed to magazines and newspapers as a spokeswoman for women's rights. Victory for her efforts did not come until the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, 35 years after her death. 

I was prepared to like California, yet I did fear that seeing it would let me down. Other people's spectacles magnify so differently from our own. The whole country is made up after patterns I am not familiar with. I was born among the green mountains of Vermont; explored its gorges and climbed its granite rocks. But these western mountains, though green with trees and shrubs, are all unlike any mountains I have ever seen. These rocks here in California, so heavy with the moss of ages, might be taken for the remote ancestors of New England boulders. 

Hurled by the warring elements into the deep gorges, they are eminently suggestive of an awful power behind the throne. Mountains, rivers, valley gorges are put together in unique and varying relations. The effect is always grandly beautiful. Nothing suggestive of pettiness anywhere meets the eye or oppresses the thought. 

My life has certainly changed since coming to this peaceful valley three months ago in the winter of 1872. I am Clarina Irene Carpenter Nichols. I live here in Potter Valley at my son Relie's home (you may know him as Aurelius Carpenter.) I traveled here from Kansas but that wasn't where I spent the first years of my life. No, I was born and raised in Vermont. I found public speaking much to my liking since, at 18, I gave an original address at my school's graduation. I spoke on the purpose of educating women. 

I married a Baptist preacher in 1830. We had three children: Birsha, Chapin and Aurelius. While raising the children I founded a young ladies seminary and lived with my husband in the state of New York. Living with Justin Carpenter gave me an experience similar to those unfortunate women who endure life with a drunkard husband. The man was unfeeling, had no purpose in life and crushed my affections. I returned to Vermont without him in 1839 and began writing for the newspaper, Windham County Democrat. I found the paper's publisher and printer, George Nichols, though 25 years older than myself, to be a responsible man. So, I divorced Mr. Carpenter and married Mr. Nichols. Before long, I found myself editor of his paper. I did certainly make some changes in that paper. By making it more literary and hospitable to abolitionists, prohibitionists and other reformers, I was able to raise the circulation to 1,000. I was inspired by the thinking of Ernestine Rose and others who had been agitating in New York State for ten years on the subject of legal and property restriction for married women. My role as editor of the Democrat gave me the opportunity to write a series of articles on the subject of women's rights. Until 1850 I had not taken up a position on women's suffrage. My thoughts on the matter were so unclear that I actually considered the idea of a woman voting unwomanly. With time, I realized that men would not freely give women the rights to which they are entitled. Women would have to be able to vote to gain what they deserve! Into this area I moved cautiously. For example, I first petitioned the Vermont legislature to grant women the right to vote in school district meetings. I was invited to speak in front of the Education Committee of the House about my petition. The petition failed, but my speech received a favorable impression and was regarded by those who heard it, a great triumph for women's rights. This experience gave me the courage to speak at the Women's Rights Convention in Massachusetts in 1851. At that convention I argued that the right of women to control property is the root of all women's rights issues. After that speech, and until I left for Kansas three years later, I lectured on the subject of women's legal and political equality. I traveled by train as often as twice a week--up to 26 miles--throughout Vermont, into New Hampshire and Massachusetts, to lecture and debate. My audiences did not always agree with me, but the greater the opposition, the greater the victory. 

This yarn I've been knitting with today has quite a story behind it. I guess I kept it all these years to remind myself of the past. Let me tell you the story behind it: One cold clear morning of January 1852, I found myself at a station on the Vermont side of the Massachusetts state line, on my way to Templeton, Massachusetts, where I was invited to lecture on the subject of women's suffrage. I had scarcely settled myself in the rear car of the train for a restful two hour ride, my knitting in hand (as was my habit) when two men entered. The younger man I recognized as the sheriff of our county. The older man I did not know. They glanced searchingly around and entered the next car. An instant later every person in that car had risen to his feet at the electrified wail of a Rachel mourning for her children. The voice cried, "Oh father! She is my child! She is my child!" 

I rushed to the door which was guarded by the sheriff asking, "What is it? What is going on?" Anxious queries came from all sides. I answered, "It means, my friends, that a woman has not the legal right to her own babies; that the law makers of this Christian country have given the custody of the babies to the father--drunken or sober--and he may send the sheriff, as in this case, to arrest and rob her of her little ones! You have heard sneers of 'women's rights.' This is one of the rights--a mother's right to the care and custody of her helpless little ones!" 

From that excited crowd, all young men and boys (I being the only woman) voices 'rose thick and fast. "They've no business with the woman's babies! Pitch 'em overboard! I'll help." "Good for you! So will I!" The old man, whom I had noticed earlier, turned out to be the young woman's father-in-law. He rushed into the next car with the three-year-old girl in his arms and cried to the conductor, "Hold the train until the sheriff gets the other child." Standing behind the old man, I beckoned the conductor to get the train rolling. In five minutes the train crossed over the state line into Massachusetts. I reentered the car where the sheriff was urging the mother to let go of her other child, a baby. "Hold on to your baby!" I cried. ""He has not the right to take it from you. We are no longer in Vermont. Here in Massachusetts only the father can take the child from its mother; and sheriff, in attempting to do so you have made yourself liable to fine and imprisonment."" Thus the "sheriffality" was extinguished and the mother and baby took a seat beside me. Meanwhile, the conductor had made the old gentleman understand that he, the sheriff and the three-year-old child could get off at the next station, where they might wait some three or four hours for the train back to Vermont. The necessary wait suggested the possibility of rescuing the child. 

The child robbers stepped out of the train. The little girl clutched in her grandfather's arms amid the frantic cries of the mother and the curses of the passengers. Two middle-aged gentlemen boarded the train and I at once met their questioning faces with a hurried statement of facts and the need for some intelligent, humane, gentleman to aid the young mother in the recovery of her little girl. 

The men spoke together and agreed to aid the mother at the next town in obtaining the proper papers to enable a Massachusetts sheriff to give the child back to the mother. I needed to go on to Templeton to give my lecture. In order that the mother might give her full attention to getting her child back, I offered to take the baby with me. She welcomed this offer, so the baby and I continued on my journey. 

Returning two days later, I learned from the mother that the men had spent the night in jail, been brought to trial and then released on giving up the little girl and paying the mother a handsome sum. 

I had scarcely begun my journey again when the men entered the train, like myself, homeward bound. The old man, careworn and anxious, looked straight ahead but the sheriff caught my eye and smiled. In my happiness I could not do otherwise than give smile for smile. 

Arriving home, I found the affair, as reported by one conductor, had created quite an excitement, sympathy being decidedly with the mother. I was credited with being privy to the escapade and the pursuit and having gone purposely to the rescue. Had this been true, I could not have managed it better. Good Providence went with me. Later, I received this memorial bank of yarn with a message from the donors that it would keep me in "knitting while preaching women's rights on the railroad." 

My life in the years after this incident was full and rewarding as I continued the struggle to educate people about women's suffrage. During this time, I met other women who were working for the cause. One of these women, Susan B. Anthony, I met at the Women's Rights Convention in Syracuse, New York in 1852. She was just beginning her life-long work for women's rights and I urged her to become more deeply involved in the fight. She was reluctant, but I knew, and told her so, that though she would at times be anxious for the cause and depressed with a sense of her own inability, next would come success of timid effort creating a hope, and then a faith, and finally, complete devotion. A deep friendship developed between us. I am now too ill to continue traveling and lecturing and I expect I will never see Susan again. I hope, however, that many letters will travel between us in the coming years and that she and her companion, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, will continue the work. 

By 1854 I was feeling discouraged at the conservative sentiments in New England. I suspended the publication of the Windham County Democrat. I felt the frontier was the place to be and made a decision to travel to the Kansas Territory with my sons Relie and Chapin. Here I expected to work for a government of equality, liberty and fraternity. After establishing a home in Lawrence, Kansas, I returned to Vermont for my husband and other son, George. Alas, Mr. Nichols died shortly after our move to Kansas. 

Open warfare occurred in Kansas in 1856 between the forces supporting Kansas as a free state vs. those wanting it to enter the union as a slave state. I found myself lecturing widely in the east on the Kansas troubles and soliciting help among women's groups. Finally, I was able and set up a permanent home in Kansas. I became associate editor of a radical free-state movement journal. My editorials espoused women's rights and the free-state movement. 

In 1858 I was the principal spokesperson for the Kansas Women's Rights Association. I did a lecture tour of the territory and gathered petitions for equal political and civil rights for women, to present at the Legislature's Constitutional Convention. I was invited to attend all sessions, assigned a permanent seat and was the only woman permitted to observe the entire proceedings. Alas, all our equal political rights were not granted. But progress was made as women were given the right to vote in school district elections, given legal property rights and equal guardianship of children. 

I felt strongly about the issue of a woman's right to have legal guardianship of her children. This is a natural right. I found at times I had to take a very strong stand on this issue. Why, in Quindaro, Kansas in December of 1859, I was actually arrested along with my neighbors, among them a clergyman and his wife, the church deacon and his wife, a Notary Public and an ex-probate judge. We were all arrested for kidnapping! 

As a matter of fact, we had aided the mother in recovering her little ones from the clutch of her husband. In the early years of their marriage, they had lived in the east on the earnings of her needle. He had beaten her once to death's door, and later choked her to insensibility, and thrust her out of the house throwing her clothes after her. He sold all her furniture and with the money he moved himself and the children to where I lived in Kansas. He had changed his name and had been living in our midst for two years when the mother came and found her children living on the charity of neighbors in a hovel with their temperate but desperately vile father. 

Providentially, I met her and took her to my home. Learning of her arrival, the husband at once said that if she resorted to the courts for custody he would take the children across the river to Missouri and apply for a writ to have me arrested for "harboring" the wife that he had turned out of doors, and furthermore, he said he would sue her for damages from the loss of personal services she owed him! 

In a private council of male friends I was advised to go with several other women and the mother and take the children by force. These men would go also and protect us from violence. Knowing the temper of the father and the penalties affixed for interfering with the legal rights of fatherhood I declined that offer. However I did agree to appeal to the legislature on behalf of the mother for divorce and custody of the children. After many months, our bill was passed. Nonetheless, all was not safe for the mother. We needed to arrange for her and the children to secretly begin their journey back home to Maine. Although in Kansas with legal custody of the children, the 1,500 mile trip home would take them through eight different states--every one of which the statute and Common Law right of custody would deliver the children to the father in defiance of the natural claim of the mother and her Kansas right of custody. 

The father, hearing the legislature had granted custody of the children to the mother, took to the road with them as he had threatened. But before he could cross the river he was arrested. The children were placed in the care of a neighbor. That gave us the opportunity to go to this neighbor's home where we were politely received. The mother's pathetic cries, "I want my children, please step aside and let me go in" persuaded her to let us enter. 

Less than an hour later we were at my house and the mother and children warmly dressed for the journey home. Quickly, we went down to the river where a farmer, with his boat, awaited the mother and children to convey them the forty miles across the county to begin their journey along the underground railroad. 

Scarcely had we sat down, relieved and happy, when the sheriff and posse came hunting for the children. We were denying our knowledge of their whereabouts when a river boat whistled at the landing. The posse rushed down the street in search of their game. Well, of course they were not on that riverboat. 

For three days they watched our movement thinking we had hidden the children, a delusion,which, as it secured the escape of the mother and little ones, we took reasonable care not to dispel. On the fourth day we were arrested for breaking into the home and kidnapping the children. Three days later, the Grand Jury found no cause for our arrest and we were released. The mother and children did arrive safely at their Maine home. 

Surely life will be calmer here in Potter Valley. My failing health insures that I will no longer travel and speak for the cause. I confided in my dear friend Susan that, all my life, even in the midst of my most active work in the struggle, I have been separated from my peers, only meeting with them at a few conventions and at odd times. How fortunate she is to have Elizabeth Cady Stanton at her side. What will life be like for me now, even more isolated in this rural farm community ? What strength will I find in this aging body to continue the struggle? Certainly my pen and my convictions will endure., and there is still so much to say!