LEOMINSTER — Local historian Mark Bodanza is thrilled to welcome the community this coming Saturday, as he leads tours of the historic Drake House, the Franklin Street home that was on the front lines of fighting against slavery and the women’s suffrage movement.
This event, which is being held from 10 a.m.-noon on Feb. 17, is free of charge and is sponsored by the Leominster Historical Society.
After moving from Boston in 1839, Frances and Jonathan Drake eventually built the Drake House in 1848 and the couple lived in the house for about 50 years.
Bodanza will discuss the Underground Railroad and Frances Drake’s role, particularly in the Minkins rescue. He will also discuss the role of Frances Drake and other brave Leominster women in the women’s suffrage movement.
“The history connected to the Drake House is compelling,” Bodanza said.
“During the early morning hours of Sunday, February 16, 1851, Jonathan and Frances Drake welcomed fugitive slave Shadrach Minkins to their Leominster home, a stop on the Underground
Railroad,” explained Bodanza. “Minkins was fleeing slave catcher John Caphart (ironically the man Harriet Beecher Stowe used to form the character of the slave catcher in her society-changing book, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”) and Federal authorities.”
Minkins was to be the first fugitive tried under the Compromise of 1850’s new fugitive slave law. The new law was supposed to save the Union – to appease the southern slave owners and the northern mills, freight companies, banks and insurers who were in happy concert with them. The architects of the new law – powerful senators, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and Henry Clay of Kentucky, along with President Millard Fillmore were incensed. The activities of the Drakes and others who helped Minkins to freedom in Canada drew an official rebuke from the president.
“In the end, the new law didn’t stop the Underground Railroad but only encouraged other northerners to join in the fight for abolition – the Drakes were heartened,” said Bodanza. “Their courage for the poor slave put the nation on a course to effect the only remedy that was going to end human bondage – the Civil War. There is little doubt the Drakes were on the front lines of a very pivotal moment in our nation’s history.”
Not only was Frances Drake an abolitionist but she also fought for a cause more radical than freeing slaves in the 1850’s — Women’s Rights.
Of the 140 abolitionists in Leominster by an 1841 count, only six were willing to support the cause of the woman. Frances Drake was heaped with abuse for her position, but she fought for women’s rights until her last breath in September of 1900.
“She is a real hero,” Bodanza said proudly.. “She is a shining example of love for her fellow human beings (she fully embraced racial equality as well – something most abolitionists did not!). And that is why the city of Leominster purchased and preserved her homestead and changed the name of Southeast School to the Frances Drake Elementary School.”
Lying on a shelf in the Leominster Historical Society is an autographed portrait of Susan B. Anthony, one of America’s best-known suffragettes. The portrait was Anthony’s gift to Juliette Yeaw who served as the president of The Women’s Suffrage League of Leominster for 20 years beginning in 1889.
“Yeaw was just one of many Leominster women who fought for decades to obtain the right to vote,” said Bodanza. “Leominster abolitionist Frances Drake championed gender equality and women’s suffrage her entire adult life. When she started in the early 1840’s, the notion of women voting was more radical than freeing slaves.”
The Rev. Yeaw was a teacher in Leominster and Lancaster schools from 1847 until 1853, she later was the pastor of the Independent Liberal Church of Greenwich, from 1885 until 1900.
When Frances Drake died, the Rev. Yeaw became president of the Leominster Woman Suffrage League. She issued a series of resolutions on behalf of the Suffrage League to honor her cousin.
One read, “Resolved, That we of the Leominster Woman Suffrage League are honored by the untiring labor of our beloved and revered co-worker for the extension of the suffrage to women, and by her sympathy with every movement for the promotion of the intellectual growth and spiritual elevation of her sex.”
Also consider the case of Kate Pope, another Leominster woman and suffragette. In 1874, Massachusetts gave women the right to serve on their town’s school committee; the right of women to vote for school committee members was not permitted in Massachusetts until 1881.
Ella M. Wilder was Leominster’s first female school committee member; she served from 1876 until 1879. In 1906, Pope was given a Leominster ballot reserved for men by mistake. That ballot included all the town offices, not just the school committee. Pope voted the entire ballot which was counted along with the other “full” ballots. As a result, Pope became the first woman in Massachusetts history to cast a full regular ballot, according to a contemporary newspaper account. Not until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, five years after Leominster became a city, did women finally win the right to vote.
“Leominster’s tradition in the fight for women’s rights is a rich one,” Bodanza added. “We should all reflect on the tireless efforts of these brave ladies, who worked for more than seven decades to win a right that has become all too unimportant to many each time there is a call to the polls.”