Chronology
In a nutshell…
Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s life spanned every decade of the nineteenth century (1806-1893).
Born and married near Portland Maine, she spent the majority of her life in the New York area, working as a professional writer, editor and lecturer. Apprenticed in the offices of her husbands’ newspapers in the 1830s, her reputation eclipsed his in the 1840s, and in the 1850s, she became the first woman to lecture nationally on the Lyceum Circuit. At the height of her career, she worked and socialized with the likes of Edgar Allan Poe and Margaret Fuller in New York, and corresponded with Gerrit Smith, Wendell Phillips, Lucretia Mott and other activists. In about 1850, she shifted her focus from literary to political work, publishing her major feminist treatise, Woman and Her Needs, serially in the New York Tribune, reaching well over 100,000 readers. Though she was not in attendance at the first woman’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848, she attended and spoke at National Woman’s Rights Conventions from 1850 well into the late 1870s, and with Paulina Wright Davis, inaugurated the first woman’s rights journal. Her leadership and prominence as a public figure led to her nomination as President of the National Woman’s Rights Convention at Syracuse in 1852, though conservatives balked, questioning the propriety of her appearance—an incident representative of a trend she had contemplated that same year in a treatise on women’s dress its social relations.
Oakes Smith’s lucrative lecture career was cut short by exhaustion in 1857, and soon after, her son Appleton’s indictment for equipping a slaveship made her an easy target for those threatgened by her radical positions on social justice for women, minorities, and the working class. She continued to contribute to popular journals both during and after the Civil War, publishing chapters of her autobiography beginning in 1861. Though she never regained the reputation that led journals to place her name near the top of every advertisement in the mid-40s, she stayed active well into her eighth decade, serving as minister for the year 1877 at a church in Canestota NY, drafting historical novels and speculative fiction into the late 1880s. The majority of her autobiography seems to have been written between 1885 and 1887. Students and scholars should be careful to weigh this account in light of its distance from the events narrated, and the frustrated—even depressed—state of a woman who outlived nearly all her immediate family and her literary generation.
1806 - 1822
Born August 12, 1806, near North Yarmouth, Maine. Father dies at sea, on March 26, 1809. Her family lives alternately with her maternal and paternal grandparents until her mother marries Captain Lemuel Sawyer and the family moves to Cape Elizabeth, then Portland. At age twelve begins to teach in Sunday School for black children. Plans to become a teacher, but her mother demurs. Married, instead, on March 6, 1823, to Seba Smith, editor of a Portland weekly, The Eastern Argus.
1823 - 1838
Manages Smith household (possibly a house at the north end of Tukey's Bridge, North Deering), which includes both the family and apprentices and printers of The Argus, who board. Bears six sons, Benjamin (1824), Rolvin (1825-1832), Appleton (1828-1887), Sidney (1830-1869), Alvin (1832-1902), and Edward (1836-1865). Contributes poems, sketches, and stories, to journals edited by her husband, the Daily Courier and Family Reader, either anonymously or over the signature "E," and acts as editor when her husband travels to Boston in 1833 to supervise the publication of The Life and Writings of Major Jack Downing. In an unpublished autobiography claims during this period to have read and studied the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Blackstone, Mill, and others after the rest of the family had retired to bed.
As Seba Smith loses his fortune speculating in the volatile market for land preceding the Panic of 1837, attempting to recover his losses by backing an invention designed to clean Sea Grass Cotton, Oakes Smith writes and later publishes Riches Without Wings, a moralist novel which targets the victims of the Panic. Fall of 1838, travels with her husband to Charleston, South Carolina, where the invention proves unsaleable, and where she is exposed for the first time to the reality of slavery.
1839 - 1845
Arrives in New York, January 1839, boarding with cousins of the Princes, Dr. Cyrus and Maria Child Weeks. Oakes Smith publishes stories in the Godey's Lady's Book, the Snowden's Ladies' Companion, and other journals, over the signature "Mrs. Seba Smith," or a pseudonym, "Ernest Helfenstein." First wide literary notice with "The Sinless Child," published serially in the Southern Literary Messenger Jan-Feb 1842. Summer of 1842, moves with her family to Brooklyn. First edition of her poems, The Sinless Child and Other Poems, was published by John Keese in July 1843, with introductions by Keese, John Neal, and H.T. Tuckerman. Continues writing poetry and fiction for other popular magazines and gift books throughout the decade. Her second novel, The Western Captive, appears as two "supplements" (nos 25-28) in Park Benjamin's New World in 1842. Contributes short stories, poems, and probably editorial to The Rover, edited by her husband from 1843-45. Poems reprinted as The Complete Poetical Writings of Elizabeth Oakes Smith, by Rufus Griswold in 1845.
1846 - 1849
Edits the gift book The Mayflower for two numbers, 1847 and 1848. Publishes three volumes of children's stories (The True Child, The Moss Cup, and The Dandelion), all subtitled "stories not for good children, or bad children, but real children." In late 1847, she is invited to contribute a "romance of the revolution" to Neal's Saturday Museum, which is published as The Remapo Pass: A Story of the Revolution in January 1848, later revised for Beadle's dime novel series as The Bald Eagle (1867). Putnam publishes her third novel in book form, The Salamander (later reprinted as Mary and Hugo), with illustrations by F. O. Darley. Acknowledges the "death" of her pseudonym "Helfenstein" in the preface to The Salamander, yet publishes occasionally under the name in later years as "by the late Ernest Helfenstein." In this period also begins writing plays. Old New York, or Democracy in 1689, perhaps her first, is advertised to producers by a fellow member of the New York Literati, William Cullen Bryant. Negotiations in 1853 for Anna Cora Mowatt to star as Elizabeth in the play end with Mowatt’s illness that year. The Roman Tribute, or Attila the Hun, published in book form in 1849, is produced at the Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia in November 1850. On a summer trip home to Maine in August 1849, joins her friend Nancy Mosman, along with James M. Haines and Mosman's husband, climbing Mt. Katahdin, reaching Pamola, its lowest peak. Her account of the feat is printed in local papers and reported in New York.
1850 - 1852
Attends Women's Rights Convention of October 1850 in Worcester, MA, and begins a series of ten articles for Horace Greeley's Tribune entitled "Woman and Her Needs" (Nov 1850--June 1851), published in pamphlet form by Fowler and Wells in late 1851. Begins lecturing in New York in June 1851, and by fall has several engagements in New England. Lecture tours in spring and summer of 1852 bring her west to Buffalo, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago. Continues writing--publishes Hints on Dress and Beauty and Shadowland; or, The Seer, projects a woman's magazine, The Egeria, soliciting $500 in support and fifty subscribers. At the Women's Rights Convention at Syracuse, September 1852, her nomination as President of the Convention is rejected by Susan B. Anthony when she arrives in a dress exposing her neck and arms, but plans for The Egeria, with Oakes Smith appearing as editor, are widely circulated at the convention. Writes another play in a classical backdrop entitled Destiny: A Tragedy.
1853 - 1859
Plans for Oakes Smith’s involvement in The Egeria suddenly curtailed in December 1852; Paulina Wright Davis begins The Una in February, to which Oakes Smith contributes. Continues lecture tours through New England, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio, and attends yearly Woman's Rights Conventions. In New York, helps to edit The Weekly Budget with Seba Smith (1853-54). Publishes two new novels, Bertha and Lily; or the Parsonage at Beech Glen (Derby and Jackson, 1854) and The Newsboy (Derby and Jackson, 1854). Spring of 1855, moves back to New York City with her family. Contributes articles to New York Tribune on marriage and divorce, and capital punishment for women.
In 1856 becomes co-editor, again with her husband, of Emerson's United States Magazine, reprinting earlier stories and poems, including a reprint of The Bald Eagle. Writes voluminous editorial matter, unsigned. In November 1858, her family buys the magazine, which continues as The Great Republic, published by Oaksmith and Co. for one year. In 1859, the Smiths purchase a large home and property in Patchogue, Long Island, and name it "The Willows."
1860 - 1868
Lives a more retired life in Patchogue. Lectures occasionally on woman's rights, temperance, and other reforms. Addresses Union troops at a small pageant near her home in October 1861, and contributes cloaks and mittens to the soldiers. Son Appleton is captured and indicted for equipping a slave ship, in December 1861. With Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, he is quickly jailed, but soon escapes or is mysteriously released. Visiting friends in New York, Smith is caught in a draft riot in July 1863, and later records the experience in her diary. Visits Appleton, exiled in England, returns to find Appleton's estranged wife has left "The Willows" deserted. Begins publishing "Autobiographic Notes" in Beadle's Monthly, and continues to seek aid from Gerrit Smith, Thurlow Weed, and other political figures to have Appleton pardoned. Seba Smith dies on July 29, 1868.
1869 - 1879
Living in dire financial straits--perhaps with her son Alvin's family in nearby Blue Point, Long Island--Smith donates a selection of books to the Bowdoin Library and the Portland Historical Society but is forced to sell much of her library. Son Sidney dies in a shipwreck on the way to Cuba in 1869. "The Willows" is sold in 1870. In 1874, sails for Beaufort, North Carolina, where Appleton has settled and loses almost all her possessions in a shipwreck. Continues to publish poetry and articles in both popular and religious journals. Serves as pastor of The Independent Church in Canestota, NY, 1877, and continues to attend conventions on Women's Suffrage. In January 1879, delivers "Biology and Woman's Rights" at the 11th Woman's Suffrage Convention, in Washington D.C. Internal evidence suggests that two unpublished novel manuscripts--one untitled, on the place of women in Massachusetts in the late 17th century, the other entitled The Queen of Tramps, By One of Them--were written in the late 1870s or early 80s.
1880 - 1893
Spends summers in Blue Point, Long Island, winters in Beaufort. Writes much of her autobiography, "A Human Life," between 1881-85. Lectures on "Emerson and his Circle." Finds herself forgotten by most, her friends dead. Burns large quantities of correspondence. Appleton dies in New York City, in 1887. Although editors at The Home Journal advertise her autobiography as near completion, it is never published. Writes in her journal that she is ashamed to see so much of this writing reflect not her life but "the promise of her childhood." Dies after a short illness in Beaufort, N.C., on November 15, 1893, buried next to her husband in Patchogue.
