A Legacy of Service: Rediscovering the Howland Family
September 30, 2019, 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
In the first of the Historical Society's fall lectures, Marilyn Post of the Howland Stone Store Museum will share the story of the Howland family, 19th-century reformers from Cayuga County active in anti-slavery and suffrage causes. A participant in the Underground Railroad, Quaker patriarch Slocum Howland helped fugitives from slavery resettle in New York or continue north to Canada. His daughter Emily taught free African Americans in the Washington, D.C. area before and during the Civil War. She established and supported schools in the South throughout her lifetime, as well as the local Sherwood Select School. Emily's sister-in-law, Hannah Letchworth Howland, and niece, Isabel, founded a library and joined Emily in actively supporting women's suffrage. Isabel Howland served as secretary of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association. She saved posters and other ephemera used in advocating for the vote, which are now in the collection of the Howland Stone Store Museum. One hundred years after the passage of women's suffrage, graphic posters tell the story of years of effort.
Marilyn Post is a current board member of the Howland Stone Store Museum, and is actively working on restoring Isabel Howland's home, Opendore, to better preserve and display suffrage materials. She has also been a docent at the Everson Museum in Syracuse for many years.
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