Sarah Atwater Denman: An Enduring Legacy

Sarah Atwater Denman left an
indelible social, educational and financial legacy to the Quincy community. She
was committed to further education for women, sought social justice for those
in need, and believed everyone should have free public access to books and
medical care.

Sarah Denman’s drive to enhance the
intellectual and spiritual development of local women friends led to the
formation of a study group, Friends in Council that was formalized by charter
in 1869. Their first meeting was in November of 1866 when she invited 11 ladies
to her home at 903 Broadway to prepare a study plan that would allow each
member to develop a philosophical point of view for herself. Sarah was the guiding force for the study of
classic works primarily in history and philosophy. In her own words Denman regarded it as the
club’s “duty to emancipate ourselves from party-spirit, prejudice and passion,
cultivate a love of truth, tolerance and patience.” Her belief was to awaken the “full power of
woman” as a force in the world and gain a broader outlook on life. The group intensely studied Plato for two
years before moving onto other areas of interest and enlarging its
membership.

Friends in Council remains of
historic interest not only in Quincy but across the country as the oldest
continuous women’s literary club in America and the only one to have a meeting
house of its own, a gift from Sarah in 1878. Formerly the land office of Mr.
Denman the small house was moved to the grounds of the John Wood Mansion in
1915.

Seeking further Platonic studies
Sarah along with Samuel H. Emery, Jr., the son of the First Congregational
Church minister, organized a Plato Club for both men and women. The Plato Club maintained long-term
connections with a similar club in Jacksonville, Illinois and a Hegelian
philosophy group in St. Louis.

Sarah’s personal intellectual
pursuits and travels east with visits to Concord, Massachusetts and later to
the Concord School of Philosophy, established by A. Bronson Alcott in 1879, led
her to close friendships with Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist and lecturer, and
philosopher A. Bronson Alcott, writer and father of Louisa May Alcott. Both visited Quincy on several occasions,
conversed with the study club, corresponded warmly and held Sarah in high
regard. It was reported that Alcott and
Emerson both stayed at the Denman home.

In 1869 Sarah also worked to get a
national women’s suffrage convention in Quincy.
According to Paul R. Anderson in

Platonism
in the Midwest,

the women’s clubs were considered part of the early
feminist movement serving to provide organizational support for women. Through
this work Sarah gained friendships with significant leaders of the national
suffrage movement such as Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others who
stayed in her home when they traveled to the West.

Sarah and her husband spearheaded a
petition drive at the time of the Illinois Constitutional Convention in 1870
when an ardent push to pass an amendment granting women the right to vote was
in motion. The Denman’s circulated a petition garnering the names of 250
citizens (170 of which were women) who supported the right of women to
vote. Mathias Denman’s name headed the
9-foot-long petition presented in February at the Constitutional Convention in
Springfield.

Intertwined in Sarah’s middle-aged
years were a variety of passions centered on the welfare of individuals. After the Civil War she worked for the
indigent including former slaves and raised money to provide food and shelter
to those in need. Through work of the
Relief Association Sarah learned of the desperate need for medical care for
poor people. In time money and land was
given in the Denman name to organize a hospital for their care. What came to be Blessing Hospital, for a time
named the Sarah Denman Hospital, was opened in 1875. In 1878 the hospital was
run by a board of women managers with Mrs. Denman as president.

Numerous civic needs received Sarah
Denman’s attention. In 1879 through her
efforts the first permanent endowment was given to the Quincy Free Public
Library. Of the total endowment of
$20,000, Sarah gave $5,000. It was one
of her last gifts to the city that she so benevolently influenced.

Sarah Atwater and Mathias Denman
had met at a gala ball held in honor of Marquis
de

Lafayette in Philadelphia in 1825. Sarah was young when she met Mathias, an
already wealthy nineteen-year-old man. The married in 1826.

Sarah and Mathias enjoyed an
elegant lifestyle in Philadelphia for a time.
However, when the financial crisis peaked in the later 1830s the Denman
family and thousands of others lost everything. Sarah’s father, Charles Atwater, sent the
couple to Quincy to manage the deeds to the Illinois Military Tract land that
Atwater had recently purchased. After 16
years of marriage they left behind their families and cultured surroundings and
began life in a village of 2,686 people in 1842.

Their move west was
life-changing. They were unaccustomed to
isolation and frontier physical inconveniencies. Sarah was unable to have
children and, instead, nurtured her nieces and nephews and those who needed
assistance.

Journeys back to New England nearly
every summer kept her in touch with family and in touch with the latest
publications. Coming from a family that
had helped found Yale College in New Haven, Sarah, an independent thinker and
devoted reader, sought to keep abreast of the newest books and journals.

Mathias eventually attained great
wealth through land, real estate management, and a lumber business. After 50 years of marriage Sarah lost her
husband in August of 1876 while visiting family in Connecticut. Six years later when Sarah died in 1882
Quincy mourned that it had lost “an invaluable friend.” Her character and her charity, private and
public, were gratefully acknowledged in the

Quincy
Daily Whig

that recognized the “debt the city owes to her wise public
liberality.”

Sources:

“A Friend of the City,”

Quincy Whig,

May 18, 1882.

Anderson, Paul R.

Platonism
in the Midwest

. Philadelphia: Temple University Publications, 1963.

Anderson, Paul Russell. “Quincy, An Outpost of Philosophy,”

Journal of the Illinois State Historical

Society,

34, 1941.

“Col. M.B. Denman,”

Quincy
Whig,

August 31, 1876.

Conover, Janet, “Women of the Club,” HSQAC File “Denman,
Sarah Atwater, MS 920 Den.

Denman, Sarah.

Outline of the History of Friends in
Council, 1866-1916:

Tillson, General John.

History of the City of Quincy

. In Collins, William H. and Cicero F. Perry,

Past and

Present of the City of Quincy
and Adams County, Illinois.

Chicago: S.J. Clarke, 1905.