Henry Brown Blackwell (1825-1909)
Courtesy of the Library of Congress “votes for Women” website.
An early advocate of woman suffrage and abolition, Henry Blackwell joined Lucy Stone in devoting their lives to these causes.
In 1867 he wrote a message to Southern legislature proposing the extension of woman suffrage to counterbalance negro suffrage.
Two years later he devoted most of his time and money to help his wife in organize the American Woman Suffrage Association.
In 1870 Stone founded The Woman’s Journal in Boston, MA. When funding was scarce, he edited the paper without salary until his death. Their daughter, Alice worked with him to continue her mother’s legacy.
- Born May 4, 1825 in Bristol, England; The Blackwell family moved to New York City in 1832 and six years later moved to Cincinnati, Ohio.
- Died September 7, 1909 in Dorchester, MA
- Education: Primarily by reading except for one year at Kemper College in St. Louis, MO
- Married Lucy Stone (1818-1893) on May 1, 1855 and published a joint protest against the inequalities in the marriage law.
- Children: Alice Stone Blackwell (September 14, 1857-March 15, 1950)
- Blackwell earned a living selling books, sugar refining, and real estate.
- Later in life, he worked against deportation of political refugees, the Armenian massacres of 1895, and supported economic reciprocity with Canada.
Sources
- Library of Congress. “Votes for Women”.
- Malone, Dumas, Ed. Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964.
- Sklar Kathryn Kish and Dublin, Thomas. Women and Social Movements, 1600-2000. “Document 17: Henry B. Blackwell, "The Case of Maria Barberi," Woman's Journal, 10 (August 1895), p. 252.
- UCLA Social Sciences Computing “Henry B. Blackwell, Address to NAWSA Convention, Atlanta, Georgia, January 31-February 5, 1895”.
- “Marriage Protest-1855”. About Women’s History.