Meet the Wattle Family - Fighters for Freedom in Kansas

Wattle Family of Kansas - Page 2

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Esther Whinery Wattles (1819-1908) - Supporting temperance, antislavery, and women's rights, Wattles helped her husband, John Otis Wattles, to establish the town of Moneka, Kansas and founded the Moneka Women's Rights Association. Born near Salem, Ohio, on March 27, 1819, Esther Whinery was raised on a frontier farm with twelve siblings by their Quaker parents, Thomas and Lydia. In 1832, the family moved to Clinton County, Ohio, near present-day Wilmington, where Esther taught in a local primary school. She married John O. Wattles on May 3, 1844, and the couple would have three daughters over the next few years. The pair first settled on a communal farm with 100 other people in Clermont County, Ohio. They later moved to another commune, near Cincinnati, where John taught high-school level subjects to African-American boys. From Cincinnati the search for the perfect home took them to Excelsior, Ohio; Lake Zurich, Ohio; Lafayette and Grand Prairie, Indiana; and for eight years to West Point, Indiana, where they finally purchased a home.

In 1855, her brother-in-law, Augustus, had moved his family to Kansas, where the struggle was beginning between abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates, fighting over whether Kansas would become a Free-State or a Slave-State.. Two years later, Esther and her husband John, also moved to Kansas. Esther's husband, John Otis, along with brother-in-law, Augustus, would become two of the original founders of the Free-State town of Moneka, Kansas, situated in Linn County. By this time, Douglas County, where Augustus and his family had been living, was mostly in the hands of the Free-Staters and the pro-slavery element had given up the fight. However, in southeast Kansas, this was not the case.

In February, 1858, Esther, and other members of her family were instrumental in forming the Moneka Women’s Rights Association. Both women and men in this fledgling progressive community wanted the women to have same rights as men, including voting, owning property, and acting as guardians for their own children. Esther became the group's first president. For the next two years, the group would address not only women's rights, but also issues of anti-slavery, sending letters to territorial constitutional conventions and to the Kansas Legislature. From the community of about 200 people, 42 joined the Moneka Woman’s Rights Association; about half of which were men.

Though tiny Moneka struggled to make a Free-State presence, many of the residents were run off by pro-slavery men, and after the town peaked in 1858 at 200 inhabitants, the town began to dwindle. Unfortunately, the very next year, Esther's husband, John, suddenly died, leaving Esther a widow with three young daughters - aged six, eight, and ten. She remained in Kansas for another six years, but, then returned to Ohio in 1854, settling in Oberlin with her children and a niece, Mary Ann Wattles to give them greater educational opportunities.

At the end of her life, Esther moved to Coconut Grove, Florida, to live with her daughter, Harmonia Wattles Woodford. She died on April 12, 1908.

John Otis Wattles (1809-1859) - An abolitionist, spiritualist, educator, and women's rights activist, Wattles helped to found the town of Moneka, in Linn County, Kansas. The son of Erastus and Sarah Thomas Wattles, John was born in Goshen, Connecticut on July 22, 1809. He was brought up under strict, orthodox, evangelical parents and attended Goshen Academy. By 1833, he was teaching school in Tioga County, Pennsylvania; but, had determined he wanted a career as a missionary. In June, he enrolled in the Oneida Institute in Whitestown, New York, where his older brother, Augustus, was a student. At that time, the institute was headed by a man named Beriah Green, an open advocate of abolition. That same year, his brother Augustus moved to Mercer County, Ohio, where he helped to create schools for African-Americans, freed Southern blacks, and assisted them in establishing themselves on their own land. After, attending the Oneida Institute for 2 ½ years, John joined his brother in Ohio. On May 3, 1844, John married Esther Whinery and the couple would have three daughters in the next several years. While in Ohio, John was actively involved in his spiritualist activities as well as anti-slavery activities, including the Underground Railroad. In 1855, his older brother, Augustus, moved his family to Kansas, where the struggle was beginning between abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates. Two years later, John, his wife, Esther, and family followed.

One of the various projects of which J. O. Wattles was a promoter, and for which he worked with
great enthusiasm, was a railroad from Jefferson City to Emporia by way of Moneka. This railroad
was to make the city one of the great emporiums of the West. He held meetings along the whole
route, organized a company, obtained a charter, with directors in both Missouri and Kansas. He
besieged Congress one winter to grant the right of way and make an appropriation of public
lands. He had the preliminary surveys made and did divers other things, among which was the
breaking of ground for the proposed road at the state line, which ceremony was attended by many
citizens of both Kansas and Missouri. Congress granted the right of way, but the death of Mr.
Wattles and the breaking out of the Civil War stopped all further proceedings.

He was involved in promoting a railroad that would run from Jefferson City, Missouri, to Emporia, Kansas Territory.

The family moved west to Moneka, Kansas, where John lectured on topics such as temperance, antislavery, and women's rights. He also helped organize a local railroad. Esther helped in a Civil War hospital, and both assisted John Brown, as did other abolitionists connected with Oberlin.

John died in Moneka in Linn County in 1857 in 1859.

Lucretia Celestia Wattles (1849-1933)

Harmonia Wattles Woodford (1851-1924)

Theano Wattles (1853-1949) (Mrs. Franklin Everett Case)

John died suddenly in 1859 leaving his widow and daughters, Esther stayed in Kansas for another six years, but then relocated to Oberlin in 1865 with her children and a niece, Mary Ann Wattles (Mrs. Sylvanus Carroll Faunce) to give them the educational privileges available there.

Susan E. Lowe Wattles

remained active in the soman sufferage movement in Kansas.

Augustus Wattles and Susan Lowe:
Marriage: June 24, 1836, Cincinnati, Hamilton, OH

Children of Susan Lowe and Augustus Wattles are:
Sarah Grimke Wattles, born December 07, 1837 in Mercer County, OH.
Theodore Wattles, born May 25, 1840 in Ohio.
Emma Wattles, born July 15, 1842 in Mercer County, OH.
Mary Ann Wattles, born October 10, 1845.

While antislavery politics assumed center stage in the lives of all Kansans, the Wattleses simultaneously worked on behalf of women's rights. John served as a catalyst in this direction, but Susan and her daughters provided the organizational backbone. Shortly after settling in Moncka, the Wattles established a woman's rights organization. The effort began on February 3, 1858, when John gave an address in Moneka on women's rights. The women and men in his audience decided to form the Moneka Women's Rights Association, the object of which was "to secure to woman her natural rights and to advance her educational interests." Esther Wattles was elected vice president, and Sarah Grimké Wattles, Augustus' oldest daughter, was chosen secretary. Susan Wattles was made corresponding secretary. Also signing the organizational charter were Susan Wattles' daughter Emma, as well as Emma's future husband, O. E. Morse.74

One of the first people that Susan Wattles contacted on behalf of the new society was Clarina I. H. Nichols. Nichols had already established herself as a forceful advocate of women's rights before she migrated to Kansas in 1854. She had published a newspaper in Brattleboro, Vermont, in which she promoted women's rights, abolitionism, prohibition, and Fourierism.75 Having divorced an abusive husband and experienced the struggles of single motherhood, Nichols focused on issues relating to the legal and property rights of married women. She had endorsed women's suffrage in 1849, defending it in the language of domestic feminism.76 After moving to Kansas, Nichols settled in Wyandotte County and edited a Free-State newspaper, the Quindaro Chindowan.

Nichols provided experienced counsel to the Moneka group, but she found in Susan Wattles a collaborator who displayed the expertise gained through years of laboring in antislavery organizations. Susan kept Clarina informed of the group's continuing discussions but also wrote letters to Wendell Phillips, Susan B. Anthony, and other Eastern sources for funds to aid Nichols' campaign to include women's suffrage in the new Kansas constitution.77 Like the Wattleses, Nichols saw the creation of a new state in Kansas as an opportunity to realize the goal of women's rights. She believed

In 1894 eighty-four-year-old Susan E. Wattles voted for the first time in her life in Mound City, Kansas. She proudly announced the fact to her daughter, Mary Ann: "Emma and I have been to the poles [sic] and voted under the municipal suffrage law."88 Dr. Mary Ann Wattles Faunce, then living in Boston, would have to move to Colorado before she could cast her first ballot.

Three previous constitutions had been defeated – one proslavery and two free state. The Moneka organization turned its focus to the fourth constitutional convention in Wyandotte in 1859. Moneka members enlisted the help of Clarina I. H. Nichols, a newspaper woman and a leader in the women’s rights movement in Wyandotte County. They asked Nichols to present the 250 petitions the organization had distributed to the constitutional convention on their behalf.

Nichols was one of three women to attend the Wyandotte Convention. Although she could not vote, Nichols spent every opportunity presenting her message to the 52 delegates at the convention. Nichols persuaded the delegates to allow her to present the Moneka petitions at a special evening session. Through her impassioned plea, Nichols convinced delegates to increase the rights of women in Kansas.

Delegates passed the Wyandotte Constitution, which prohibited slavery in the state. Approved by voters and eventually adopted by Congress, the new constitution made Kansas a free state. Although women were not given full rights, they did receive more than in other states: rights for child custody and certain kinds of property and the right to vote in school board elections.

The effort to secure additions rights for women continued beyond the work of the Moneka Woman's Rights Association at the Wyandotte Consitutional Convention. Supporters succeeded in changing Kansas laws. In 1887 the Kansas constitution was amended, giving women the right to vote in municipal elections. That year Susanna Salter of Argonia became the first female in the nation to be elected mayor. Several Kansas communities elected female city council members in the next few years. In 1912 the Kansas Legislature gave women full voting rights.

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