Elizabeth Richards Tilton facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Elizabeth Richards Tilton
|
|
|---|---|
Elizabeth Tilton, ca.1870
|
|
| Born |
Elizabeth Monroe Richards
May 28, 1834 |
| Died | April 13, 1897 (aged 62) Brooklyn, New York, US
|
| Occupation | Suffragist |
| Spouse(s) | |
| Children | 7 |
Elizabeth Monroe Richards Tilton (May 28, 1834 – April 13, 1897) was an American suffragist, a founder of the Brooklyn Woman's Club, and a poetry editor of The Revolution, the newspaper of the National Woman Suffrage Association, founded by woman's rights advocates Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Tilton also served on the executive committee of the American Equal Rights Association.
Contents
Early life and education
Elizabeth Monroe Richards was born on May 28, 1834, in Brooklyn, New York, to Johanna Handley and Joseph Richards, a jeweller. Johanna married Nathan Brewster Morse, Sr. After having been a widow for a number of years, Johanna died on July 26, 1889 at her home in Brooklyn after a nine-month illness.
Elizabeth Richards attended the Brooklyn Female Seminary. She tutored her younger brother Joseph H. Richards and his friend Theodore Tilton, who attended Public School No. 1. When Tilton's parents decided to move to New Jersey, Tilton boarded with Elizabeth, Joseph, and their mother. They attended Plymouth Church, where Henry Ward Beecher was an extremely popular preacher. Elizabeth became a Sunday school teacher at Plymouth Church.
Suffrage and women's rights
She was a participant in the women's rights movement. She was a contributor to and the poetry editor of The Revolution, which was the voice of the National Woman Suffrage Association, founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. With them, Elizabeth Tilton was one of a dozen signatories of a petition appealing for protection for voting rights in 1866.
In 1868 and 1869, she served on the executive committee of the American Equal Rights Association. In 1870, she was the corresponding secretary of the Brooklyn Equal Rights Association, and one of three members of a committee to find and set up a house in Brooklyn to serve as its headquarters. She founded the Brooklyn Woman's Club in 1870 with Celia M. Burleigh, Laura Curtis Bullard, and others.
Marriage and children
Elizabeth Richards married Theodore Tilton (1835–1907) on October 2, 1855, in Plymouth Church. He was 20, and she was 21. The ceremony was performed by Henry Ward Beecher. Tilton worked on The Independent, a pro-Abolition magazine. Theodore Tilton began to write for The Independent in 1856, while Beecher became the editor-in-chief in 1861. Tilton was his assistant, and replaced him as editor in 1864. Theodore Tilton was active and respected as a writer, speaker, and lecturer.
Of the seven children born to the Tiltons over 14 years, four of the children survived past infancy. Her daughter Florence was born around 1858. Alice was born in 1859. A child named Mattie died in infancy. Her son Carroll was born in 1864. An infant son, Paul, died in August 1868. Her last surviving child, Ralph, was born June 21, 1869. For the first five years of their marriage, and again from 1860 to 1863, the Tiltons lived in a boardinghouse run by Elizabeth's mother, on Harrison Avenue in the Sixth Ward. By 1866, the upwardly mobile Theodore Tilton aspired to a brownstone in the more fashionable area of Brooklyn Heights.
He increasingly disparaged his wife's family, and sought to separate her from them. Although he was reported to have said that "Elizabeth was undervalued in her intellectual character ... she was the finest critic he had ever had", Theodore Tilton also felt embarrassed in his new social circle by Elizabeth's dress, deportment, speech and demeanor. Elizabeth described occasions when her husband indicated that she was "so insignificant that he was ashamed of [her]", and another when he held a gathering of "woman's rights people" at their home, and "particularly requested me not to come near him that night".
Later years and death
Towards the end of her life, Elizabeth Tilton lived with a widowed daughter, Florence Pelton, and Florence's daughter, the artist Agnes Pelton, on Pacific Street, Brooklyn. She became blind, but remained active, using a cane to navigate streets and trolley cars until surgery a year before her death restored her sight. She died on April 13, 1897, after two paralytic strokes about a month apart. Her two sons and two daughters were present at her death. Her private funeral service was conducted by a preacher from the Plymouth Brethren, Malachi Taylor. She was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, near where her deceased infant children were buried. Her gravestone was marked only "Grandmother".
Theodore Tilton moved to France. He died in Paris, May 29, 1907 and was buried in the Cimetiere de Chailly en Biere, Chailly-en-Bière, France.
