Isabella Beecher Hooker and John Hooker papers
Creator: Hooker, Isabella Beecher, 1822-1907
Call Number: D.292
Dates: 1867-1889
Physical Description: 7 box(es)
Language(s): Materials are in English
Repository: Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation

Table of Contents:

Biographical/Historical Note
Scope and Content
Subject(s)
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Access
Use
Citation
Content List
Correspondence, 1869-1877
Correspondence, 1868-1880
Suffrage correspondence
Suffrage petitions, appeals, and resolutions
Hooker family correspondence, 1878-1880
Ephemera
Newspaper clippings, 1866-1887
Collection Overview
Title: Isabella Beecher Hooker and John Hooker papers
Creator: Hooker, Isabella Beecher, 1822-1907
Call Number: D.292
Dates: 1867-1889
Physical Description: 7 box(es)
Language(s): Materials are in English
Repository: Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation

Biographical/Historical Note
Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822–1907) was a profound influence on the suffrage movement through her close work with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA); only recently has her life and contributions to the suffrage movement begun to be examined in depth. Hooker was daughter of the Reverend Lyman Beecher and a half-sister of Henry Ward Beecher, Catharine Beecher, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. She was a leader, lecturer and activist in the American suffragist movement who participated in the founding of the New England Women Suffrage Association and founded the Connecticut Women Association and Society for the Study of Political Science. She was a friend to both Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and helped them found the National Woman Suffrage Association. Her friends and associates also included Olympia Brown, Lucy Stone, Victoria Woodhull and Paulina Wright Davis among many other luminaries in the suffrage movement. Mrs. Hooker, together with her husband, John Hooker, a prominent Connecticut attorney and judge, wrote and presented a bill to the Connecticut General Assembly in 1870 that provided married women with property rights. Although the bill was initially rejected, Hooker reintroduced it every year until it passed in 1877. In 1870, she traveled throughout the mid-west on her first Suffrage speaking tour. This first of many tours was in preparation for the 1871 Washington, D. C. suffrage convention that Mrs. Hooker organized at her own expense, "for the purpose of calling the attention of Congress to the fact that women were already citizens of the United States under the Constitution, interpreted by the Declaration of Independence; [women only] needed recognition from that body to become voters." Hooker spoke at the 1871 congressional hearing in response to the convention, and the National Woman Suffrage Association presented Hooker's constitutional argument as a petition in favor of women's suffrage to Congress at that time. Hooker worked for over thirty years to forward the cause of woman suffrage.

Scope and Content
The collection consists of letters written by and to Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822-1907) and her husband John Hooker (1816-1901). Included are almost daily reports from Isabella Beecher Hooker to her husband written from Washington, DC where, on January 12, 1872, she and Susan B. Anthony testified on behalf of a federal woman suffrage amendment before a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Most of the other letters pertain to the Beecher-Tilton Scandal. The scandal, which was a national sensation, became public in 1872 when Victoria Woodhull accused Isabella's half-brother Henry Ward Beecher of having an adulterous affair with Elizabeth Tilton, one of his parishioners and wife of his friend Theodore Tilton. The letters from Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Olympia Brown and others reveal the impact the scandal had on the women's rights movement and its leaders.

Like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Hooker carefully saved her correspondence and papers related to the suffrage movement, so this archive contains a broad array of opinions and ideas from the early suffragists and provides a look at their interpersonal relationships.

The addition to the collection, which begins in Box 2 includes: over 100 letters written between the years of 1869 and 1880 by suffrage leaders and activists including 27 letters from Susan B. Anthony, 12 letters and notes from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 16 letters from Olympia Brown, 11 letters from Henry Blackwell (many on The Woman's Journal Letterhead), 9 letters from Paulina Wright Davis, 2 letters from Matilda Joslyn Gage, 4 letters from the Reverend Phoebe Hanaford, 1 letter from Mary Livermore, 2 letters from Caroline Severance, and 2 letters from Lucy Stone. This series also contains 16 letters to Mrs. Hooker from less well known suffrage activists; 95 letters from members of her family; 47 letters from friends and acquaintances and a letter from Edwin M. Stanton, who served as President Lincoln's Secretary of War that was used as a pass to a restricted area.

Subject(s):
Women--Suffrage
Women's rights
Correspondence
Hooker, Isabella Beecher, 1822-1907
Hooker, John, 1816-1901
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Box 1 was purchased from Timothy Fagan (10/2/2001, 11/2/2001, 11/15/2002, 10/20/05, 11/5/05, 7/1/2006) on various funds. Boxes 2-4 were purchased from Austin Abbey Rare Books and The Colebrook Book Barn, in 2016.Access
The Isabella Beecher Hooker and John Hooker papers is open for research use. Researchers are advised to contact Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation prior to visiting. Upon arrival, researchers will also be asked to fill out a registration form and provide photo identification.Use
Reproductions are made upon request but can be subject to restrictions. Permission to publish materials from the collection must currently be requested. Please note that some materials may be copyrighted or restricted. It is the researcher's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright or other case restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in the collections. For more information contact rarebks@library.rochester.eduCitation
[Item title, item date], Isabella Beecher Hooker and John Hooker papers, D.292, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of RochesterOther Finding Aid
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Administrative Information
Author: Finding aid prepared by Rare Books and Special Collections staff
Publisher: Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation
Address:
Rush Rhees Library
Second Floor, Room 225
Rochester, NY 14627-0055
rarebks@library.rochester.edu
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Content List