The Smiths of Glastonbury
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| HANNAH HADASSAH HICKOK SMITH 1767-1850 Mother of the five famous sisters, she was a well-educated woman, reading French and Latin. She taught herself Italian so she could translate the classics. She was the force behind her family's commitment to the abolition movement. With a last name as commonplace as Smith, she and her clergyman husband, Zethania, decided to give their daughters fanciful first names. Like their father, the girls were theological non-conformists as well as abolitionists and suffragists. They lived by a rigorous code of ethics. HANCY ZEPHINA SMITH 1787-1871 Named for her mother and father, she chose to be called Zephina. Hancy was educated at Norwich Academy , Sarah Pierce's School in Litchfield, and by private tutors. She was considered musical and, for her, a piano was purchased in the early 1820's. During the abolition movement, she worked tirelessly to collect signatures on petitions calling for the end of slavery. CYRINTHIA SACRETIA SMITH 1788-1864 A dedicated horticulturist, Cyrinthia patiently kept notes on plants she was growing and experimented with fruit grafts. She attended Sarah Pierce's School and furthered her education with private tutors and extensive reading. LAURILLA ALEROYLA SMITH 1789-1837 Laurilla Smith was the family artist, and taught both art and French at Emma Willard's School in Troy , New York , and, apparently on commission; she completed many pen and ink sketches of houses. A friend of the family recalled that Laurilla "possessed great powers of imitation and a wonderful memory which enabled her to repeat lectures or addresses verbatim and in every way imitate the speaker so exactly that, unless you saw the speaker, you might easily be deceived." JULIA EVELINA SMITH 1792-1886 Considered the most intellectual of the sisters, Julia could read French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. She taught French and Euclidean Geometry at Emma Willard's School for a brief period in the 1820's. In order to refute the predictions made by William Miller that the world would end, Julia translated the Bible five times to discover where Miller had made an error in his calculations. She later published her version of the Bible to prove that women were intellectually capable of voting. She and her sister Abby, challenged the Town of Glastonbury , refusing to pay taxes on the premise that it was taxation without representation. ABBY HADASSAH SMITH 1797-1878 It fell to the youngest sister to be the family spokesperson for suffrage. When she was in her 70's, she began to give hard-hitting speeches on women's rights. Perhaps her most famous was delivered from a wagon drawn up outside the Glastonbury Town Hall . Denied the right to speak inside, she stalwartly mounted the wagon and addressed the milling crowd. When the town seized the sisters' cows for back taxes, and later seized land, it was Abby, along with Julia, who took the town to court. Her efforts won her nation-wide praise from suffragists. | |||||||||||
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