The Rev. Mary A. Safford, A Women’s Rights Advocate

 Following the Robbins’s, Peter Felt and family immigrated to Illinois. The Felts left New Ipswich in May 1830. Thirteen-year-old Jeremiah recalled the journey. “They first traveled to Troy, New York, thence by the Erie Canal to Buffalo, overland to the Ohio River and then by boat to Quincy,” arriving in June 1830. 

 In 1833, Lydia Safford, Maria Robbins’ stepmother, journeyed with Maria’s stepbrother, Stephen, and stepsisters, Hannah and Elizabeth, from New Ipswich to Quincy.

 Homer Brown, a Massachusetts native, came to New Ipswich to further his education. Here he met Hannah Safford. Both graduated from the New Ipswich Academy. In 1834, Homer followed Hannah to Quincy where they married in 1836.

 Peter Felt was active in the affairs of New Ipswich. He served on the New Ipswich Academy Board of Trustees. From 1824-1829, he was a selectman in the town council. During three sessions, he represented New Ipswich in the state legislature. And for seventeen years he was a partner in a cotton mill.

 On December 4, 1830, Peter and Mary Felt along with Maria Robbins gathered with twelve others at the Felt’s home to organize Quincy’s first church. 

 Peter Felt joined several Quincy and Mendon men in signing a petition calling for a convention of those who held that “the system of American slavery was sinful and ought to be immediately abandoned. . ..” All were declared abolitionist, and seventeen of the signees attended the Illinois anti-slavery convention at Alton in October 1837.

 Some, like Stephen F. Safford, would later be identified as “prominent conductors” with the local Underground Railroad. In a Hancock County history, it is recorded that Safford “was early interested in the cause of the colored race, and more than once imperiled his life by his protection of fugitive slaves.”

In 1836, Stephen Safford returned to New Hampshire and married Louisa Hunt on May 17, 1836. Immediately, the couple left for Illinois. For several years Stephen operated a private school in Quincy, but he eventually turned to farming. Homer Brown too found agriculture more lucrative than painting signs and portraits. 

 More than once, Stephen Safford had defended himself before the church board for his outspoken stance on biblical fallibility, abolition, and the Darwin theory. Stephen’s devotion to Christianity was not questioned. It was accepted that he “was an independent thinker and spoke his convictions with freedom and decision.”

In the fall of 1855, the family moved to Hamilton, Illinois where Stephen’s sister Hannah and Homer Brown resided.  

Mary Augusta was born on December 24, 1851. She was the fifth of Stephen and Louisa Safford’s six children. Mary was a precocious child who entertained the family by preaching from a tree-stump pulpit.

At fifty years and six months, Stephen F. Safford died on January 7, 1860. Widowed with six children, three under age twelve, Louisa Safford managed the farm while doing her household duties. Shrewd with money, Louisa soon erased the family debt and set an early example for Mary that a woman could do a man’s work.

Mary attended public school, with her education supplemented by her father’s homeschooling. With Stephen’s death Mary discovered and explored the books and journals in his library. Her religious beliefs took a liberal, some would say radical, turn. Mary’s mother’s Presbyterian upbringing clearly defined a woman’s roll in life. When it came to the church, women worked in the kitchen and prayed from the pews.

Seventeen-year-old Mary entered the State University of Iowa. After a year, ill health prevented her return. She took up teaching, and simultaneously set upon a course of self-education through selected reading.

Mary’s neighbor and childhood friend, Eleanor Gordon, also saw her college education end after a year due to family circumstances. Eleanor too began teaching. Undeterred Eleanor and Mary, while sitting at their regular meeting spot, under an apple tree, pledged “that they would spend their lives together serving the world as a team.”  

In 1871, Mary and Eleanor founded the Hawthorne Literary Society. One of the society’s favorite speakers was Oscar Clute, Keokuk, Iowa’s Unitarian minister. With Clute’s encouragement the women organized Hamilton’s Unitarian Church in 1878. Mary stepped to pulpit and achieved her lifelong ambition. 

Her flair for public speaking and organizational skill led the Iowa Unitarian Association to ordain Mary in 1880. The Humbolt, Iowa church immediately asked her to be its minister.

With a shortage of professional men, the West welcomed women doctors, dentists, and lawyers. With few ministers willing to serve the Great Plains, the Unitarian church opened the ministry to liberal minded women. Over the next 30 years the Rev. Mary Safford would serve Unitarian congregations in Sioux City and Des Moines, Iowa. As the Unitarian Field Secretary, Mary would recruit 20 more women to the ministry with Eleanor Gordon being ordained in 1889. The female ministers were known as the Sisterhood.

The Rev. Mary Safford was an outspoken women’s rights activist. In an article entitled “Women’s Progress” dated May 9, 1893, the Quincy Daily Journal said the notable women speaking at the Chicago World’s Fair Women’s Congress were Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances E. Willard, Rev. Mary A. Safford, Susan B. Anthony, and Julia Ward Howe.

Rev. Mary Safford was also active in the women’s suffrage movement, serving as president of both the Iowa and Florida Woman Suffrage Associations and was on the board of directors of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She would often allude to her mother, Louisa Safford, who manages her farm, pays taxes, but had no vote on how the funds are spent. 

Stephen and Louis Safford’s pioneer spirit gave Mary the will and drive to lead a life much different than most women of her time. The Rev. Mary A. Safford retired to Orlando, Florida in 1910. She died October 25, 1927, and is buried in Hamilton, Illinois. 

SOURCES

“Churches and Pastors.” Quincy Daily Journal, May 16, 1895, p. 7.

“Death of John P. Robbins.” Quincy Whig, February 15, 1873, p. 4.

“Death Removes Old Resident.” Quincy Journal, February 28, 1906.

DeRoche, Celeste. “Mary Augusta Safford,” Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography. Posted February 14, 2000.

Deters, Ruth. The Underground Railroad Ran Through My House. Quincy, Illinois: Eleven Oaks Publishing, 2008.

Gregg, Thomas. History of Hancock County, Illinois. Chicago, Illinois, 1880.

“Hamilton Hears Sad News of Death of Mary A. Safford.” Hamilton Press, October 27, 1927, p. 1.

“Hamilton Loses Friend.” Carthage Republican, November 2, 1927.

“Miss Mary Safford Dead.” Carthage Gazette, October 28, 1927, p. 1.

“The Murder of E. P. Lovejoy, First Anti-Slavery Convention in Illinois.” Quincy Whig, October 6, 1897, p. 8.

Oelberg, Sarah (Contributor). “Mary Augusta Safford (December 23, 1851-October 25, 1927,” The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa. The University of Iowa Press Digital Editions.

Oelberg, Sarah. Standing Before Us: Unitarian Universalist Women and Social Reform, edited by Dorothy May Emerson (Boston: Skinner House books, 2000.) Harvard Square Library Posted on February 17, 2014, by Susan Ritichie. 

Tucker, Cynthia Grant. Prophetic Sisterhood: Liberal Women of the Frontier, 1880-1930. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994.

Van Hosen, Antoinette. “A Woman Preacher, Rev. Mary A. Safford, Pastor of Sioux City Church,” Quincy Daily Whig, November 9, 1890.

“The Women’s Council of the United States Begins a Week’s Session at Washington.” Quincy Daily Journal, February 21, 1891, p. 1.

“Women’s Progress, The Subject for the First of the Series of World’s Fair Congresses.” Quincy Daily Journal, May 9, 1893, p. 2.