Actually, not having the distraction of the questionably useful internet, I was able to catch up on some reading materials that had been patiently waiting on my desk.
It is a long twisted story that even I do not remember how it all brought me to researching Virginia Claypool Meredith this last week. I THINK it involved: Purdue Home Extension materials, 4-H, and other agriculture resources in Cambridge City Indiana.
Little did I know that my limited access to the internet would allow me the brief foray into the world of "The Queen of American Agriculture." It was just enough to wet my appetite for a good story of the type local girl makes good.
I was not even thinking of Women's History Month in March.
Yes, sometimes I am that oblivious, er... dedicated to my research!
I have to admit that when a program on Women in History is announced I immediately have visions of suffragettes with banners stretched across their bosoms marching forever in the streets from the 19th and early 20th century along with the bra burning feminists of the 1960's and 1970's and it all just starts to make my eyes glaze over. I am sick to death of the extreme view that media and our collective memory paints on women's history.
http://coreycr0910.wikispaces.com/Wyoming
http://mediamythalert.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/meaning-what-all-the-bra-burning/
For every one of those women screaming at the top of their lungs and waving their hands there were uncountable ones working within their own communities to raise themselves and others up above what was status quo or what came before. QUIETLY. With love and care.
We like to think, here in our modern era, that excitement and extreme action are the only things that will make change.
Do not get me wrong - there is a time and place for all of that. Just not always in my FACE!
A repeatedly clanging cymbal causes more harm than good in the orchestra.
Many people have shown us time and time again that if we behave better, we will BE better. If we think higher, we will BE higher. If we act nobler we will LIVE nobler. That is a grand way of saying there is an enormous amount of very hard work that goes into actually making change.
I think many have heard me go on and on before about how everything is tied to dialog and relationship.
One of the hardest things ever - even now- is for the opposite sexes to get to a point that they can converse and so foundationally get to know the other and therefore better understand their perspectives.
How is that done?
Well, I turn to histories, personal ones, and national ones, for an insightful answer.
We have to be very careful to NOT idolize characters in history. No human is perfect. NO ONE. Not in history, not now.
We have to weigh their actions, attitudes, and fruits of labor in light of their circumstances and limitations.
Each one of us is made fearfully different. Our personal, educational, financial, physical, AND FAMILIAL circumstances always come into play.
One thing I have always been fascinated with is how in the later half of the 19th century folks SEEMED to have a more intense sense of duty. There was a push to be and act and think better. More improved living. REVOLUTION. UPHEAVAL. Always with an (at least) outward face of action for the betterment of mankind.
Somewhere that all changed.
Virginia Claypool Meredith was a woman that lived through all of this and started to see the decline before she passed away.
I think I would have like Jenny, as she was called by her family and friends.
http://www.mrlinfo.org/history/biography/meredithvc.htm
She liked to play and work like the men farmers did in her time (1848 -1936) She wanted to do many different things in her life, not just one profession and one passion. She loved to write and she loved to speak publicly - after a time.
She loved farming. It was in her blood and soul.
She loved the Whitewater Valley and was loathed to leave it each time work called her.
She loved being active in her communities and doing things that produced real action, real change, real help.
She had many struggles in her life despite coming from more than modest means. My means have always been modest, but the struggles I identify with.
She used her mind, her lovely speech, her kindness, her money - when appropriate- to affect positive changes for personal circumstances, but more for her community.
Her desires for improving women's lives, she maintained, were also desires for improving men's lives.
{"We seek to emphasize what we truly believe, that the farm and its home offer an opportunity for the investment of all that manhood is or may be - for the investment of all that womanhood is or may be."
- Virginia Meredith, from a speech given at the Annual Conference of Farmer's Institute Workers, West Lafayette, Ind., October 1910.-}
The above quote is from the book "The Queen of American Agriculture" by Whitford, Martin, and Mattheis, a part of the Founders Series of Purdue University Press.
Another of my favorite quotes form the book is:
"Indeed, a very modern definition of education is that it consists of the development of intelligence, a training of skill, and the learning of how to live agreeably with our fellowmen.." - Virginia Meredith, The Purdue Agriculturist, March 1924.
I realize that maybe folks that were involved with Purdue University may be very familiar with the legacy of Mrs. Meredith. However, not being connected with 4-H, FFA, or Purdue University, I had not heard of Mrs. Meredith except that she was the wife of Mr. Meredith, daughter-in-law of Civil War General Solomon Meredith.
She grew up on the Maplewood Farm of her father Austin Claypool, in Connersville, Indiana. (By the way- today is Connersville's 200th birthday celebration at the Fayette County Public Library. On April 13, 1909 Virginia spoke at the dedication of FCPL's predecessor, the Connersville Public Library.) I grew up in the Connersville area.
As the Meredith family farm is just mere blocks from my home here in Cambridge City, Indiana, I know what she looked out on every day. I know the area that inspired her. I know of the culture and times she lived and what influenced and inspired her from an early age.
I feel I have very much in common with this woman that lived until a mere month before my mother was born.
I have thought of that often. My mother's mother was an educated woman, taking great pains to stay up on what was new, and current, and educational, and progressive. As my grandmother was born in 1904, she surely must have had Mrs. Meredith as one of her inspirations of her childhood. My grandmother was born and raised in Shelby County Indiana, daughter of farmers for generations and was a teacher, and later a welfare field agent in the 1930s- 1940s. So much of her upbringing was like Mrs. Meredith.
Did grandma know of her? Surely. Did she pass on what she thought of her? Not to me.
I have spent my whole life looking to others that have gone before me to inspire me to be a better person, to look to them on how to make life better for me and others.
Virginia Claypool Meredith is one of those people who, even after nearly 80 years since her death, is still inspiring people with just her life as a testimony of how to be better.
-Suzanna
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