Emily Howland Exhibit, audio files

Later in life, when she was about sixty, Emily Howland wrote letters about her early life to Pandita Ramabai, a friend in India. All of the following audio files except the one on the Friends Meeting are segments from these letters.

FAMILY

1.     Slocum Howland 1794 – 1881. Father, successful merchant and entrepreneur, ardent abolitionist, Underground Railroad station master, and member of the North Street Meeting (Quaker).

2.     Joseph Tallcot (1768 – 1853). Maternal grandfather, taught Emily to read using the Bible. He was a farmer, devout Quaker and writer of religious education tracts.

TEACHERS

3.    Susannah Marriott (1769 – 1857). Renowned English Quaker teacher, Emily’s teacher from ages 9 – 12. Marriott was an abolitionist and influential member of the North Street Friends Meeting (Orthodox).

4.    The Slave’s Friend, Children’s abolitionist paper, published 1834-1837. Abolitionist papers served as reading primers for Emily during her childhood.

 THE FRIENDS MEETING

5.     This is a letter from 1906, when Emily was 78, about the North St. Meeting House, which she attended from an early age. She wrote to a long-time friend Carrie Putnam, a fellow abolitionist and life-long educator of African Americans in the South.

 THE CALL

6.     We return now to words that Emily wrote to Pandita Ramabai. She remembers her call to teach at the Normal School for Colored Girls in Washington, D.C., a courageous and pioneering school in a city where slavery was still legal, and schools beyond primary were non-existent for African Americans.

 THE MISSION

7.     Emily describes her teaching experiences at the Miner School in Washington, D. C. just before the Civil War.