Lillie Devereux Blake

In 1855, she married Frank Geoffrey Quay Umsted, a Philadelphia lawyer. With him she made her home in St. Louis, Missouri, and New York City.[1] Her first daughter. Elizabeth, was born in 1857; her second daughter, Katherine, was born the following year. Mr. Umsted died in 1859 (after he apparently committed suicide) leaving her with two children to support. She had already begun to write for the press, one of her first stories, "A Lonely House," having appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. She had also published Southwold (1859), a novel, which achieved a decided success. The handsome fortune she had inherited was largely impaired, and the young widow began to work in real earnest, writing stories, sketches and letters for several leading periodicals. She made her home most of the time with her mother in Stratford, Connecticut. but spent some winters in Washington D.C. and New York. In 1862, she published a second novel, called Rockford, and subsequently wrote several romances.[6] What generated the most money and fame for Blake, however, was her job as a correspondent in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War.[7] She was contracted as a correspondent for several publications, including the New York Evening Post, New York World, Philadelphia Press, and Forney's War Press.[8]

Blake's early fiction modeled itself on the popular sentimental fiction of the time, but became subversive. Her stories for popular magazines, published under her own name and various pen names, depicted strong female protagonists in standard sentimental plots which reflected her own resistance to the roles that she was expected to fill in her own life. Her later fiction included the realism that she gained from her journalism experience. It also showed a more explicit consciousness of women's issues. Her most famous novel Fettered for Life, or, Lord and Master: A Story of To-Day is an attempt to draw attention to the myriad of complex issues facing women. When the Civil War broke out, she worked as a correspondent for several newspapers, including the New York Evening Post, the New York World, Philadelphia Prost, and the War Press. Blake's detailed and riveting accounts of the unfolding events brought her acclaim and fame. Visiting the White House, she met with President Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson and General Ulysses S. Grant.

Blake was the author of the law providing for matrons in the police stations, passed in 1891. She was an avid writer and her writings also included: Fettered for Life (1872), a novel dealing with the woman's suffrage question; Woman's Place To-day (1883), a series of lectures in reply to Dr. Morgan Dix's lenten sermons on the "Calling of a Christian Woman";[9] and A Daring Experiment (1894).[10]

Blake writing for The Knickerbocker magazine in 1858 told a fictional story of a woman, Melissa, who murdered her tutor who did not return her love, by abandoning him in the cave without a lamp. According to the story, Melissa goes back to the cave fifteen years later to end her misery. Researcher Joe Nickell writing for Skeptical Inquirer magazine explains that this gives "Credulous believers in ghosts... confirmation of their superstitious beliefs" who tell of hearing Melissa weeping and calling out for her murdered tutor. Nickell states that it is common to hear sounds in caves which "the brain interprets (as words and weeping)... it's called pareidolia". Nickell does not think that Blake tried to create a ghost story, but the 1858 story was embellished over the years adding that Melissa had died of tuberculosis explaining why they heard coughing in the cave. There have been several versions of the tale. Melissa is pure fiction, but Blake did visit Mammoth Cave with her husband Frank Umsted, "traveling by train, steamer, and stagecoach".[11]

Like other women writers of her time she was expected to show interest in feminine pursuits by demonstrating culinary competence or publishing her own recipes, which she did in The Women Suffrage Cookbook, including one for "Last Century Blackberry Pudding".[12]

In 1866, she married Grinfill Blake, a wealthy New York merchant, and since that time, made her home in that city.[1]

Blake testified before the New York Constitutional Commission of 1873 in support for women's suffrage. Along with Matilda Joslyn Gage, she signed the 1876 Centennial Women's Rights Declaration. She was president of the New York State Woman's Suffrage Association from 1879 to 1890 and of the New York City Woman's Suffrage League from 1886 to 1900. Blake was also the chair of the National American Women's Suffrage Association's Committee on legislative Advice from 1895, when it was founded, until 1899, when it was effectively dissolved by Susan B. Anthony.[13]

Lillie Devereux Blake (1894)

Lillie Devereux Blake (1895)

Finally, Blake completely broke ties with the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1900 when Susan B. Anthony, who was retiring as the leader of the organization, selected Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard to succeed her. Blake had withdrawn her candidacy in the interests of harmony. Indeed, Blake and Anthony had for years disagreed on the basic purpose of the women's movement. Anthony wanted to focus solely on suffrage; Blake wanted to pursue a broader course of reform. This split in strategy was caused by a deeper theoretical divide. Blake developed a theory of gender that was radical for her time. She argued that gender roles are learned behaviors, and that women and men shared a common nature. Therefore, women should have the same rights as men in all areas. Anthony and her followers instead emphasized the unique nature of women, their separate sphere, and innate moral authority as justification for their right to suffrage. This conflict, among others that Blake took part in, helps to explain the way she is remembered, or not remembered, in the context of the woman's movement.[7]

Blake went on to create the National Legislative League. She worked on improving immigration laws for women and furthering equality in society. In addition, Blake helped establish pensions for Civil War nurses and also worked on granting mothers joint custody of their children. She wanted to have women involved in civic affairs and encouraged them to study law in school.[14]

She was one of the active promoters of the movement that resulted in the founding of Barnard College. In 1869, she visited the Women's Bureau in New York and soon after, began speaking all over the United States in support of female enfranchisement. She earned a reputation as a freethinker and gained fame when she attacked the well known lectures of Morgan Dix, a clergyman who asserted that woman's inferiority was supported by the Bible. Her lectures, published as Woman's Place To-Day rejected this idea, asserting in one instance that if Eve was inferior to Adam because she was created after him, then by the same logic Adam was inferior to the fishes.

P.S. 6 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan is named after her.[15]

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Blake, Lillie Devereaux" . New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life (Public domain ed.). Moulton. p. 95.