california history - California Historical Society

After emancipation, she helped to open the Bostonoffice of the Freedmen’s Bureau, a federalcommission that supported liberated AfricanAmericans in their efforts to establish new lives. 27Having observed through her volunteer work atthe Sanitary Commission the great things thatcould be accomplished when women pulledtogether, Caroline began meeting with prominentfemale Bostonians to discuss a novel idea thatshe had first conceived in Cleveland. She wantedto organize a women’s club, envisioning “a centerof thought and action . . . a larger home forthose who love and labor for the greater humanfamily.” Opposition “from all sides” did not deterher or fellow women’s rights advocates LucyStone and Julia Ward Howe from incorporatingthe New England Women’s Club on March 10,1868. Also in 1868, New York journalist JaneCunningham Croly organized Sorosis, a professionalwomen’s association. 28Launching a club movement that is recognizedtoday as critical to the struggle of women to wintheir civil and political rights, these two organizationsserved as the models for thousands of otherwomen’s groups devoted to civic reform andself-improvement. The New England Women’sClub immediately proved its effectiveness, raisingmonies to support a tuition-free kindergarten forpoor children and the first hospital in Boston runby and for women, providing young women withcollege scholarships, lobbying for the installationof police matrons in women’s jails and asylums,and helping to elect women to Boston’s SchoolCommittee. The latter initiative allowed womento “have a voice and a vote in city governmentbefore they attained state or federal suffrage.”Caroline, who served as president of the organizationfrom 1868 to 1871, when she was succeededby Julia Ward Howe, would go on to win a uniqueplace in history as the “mother of clubs.” 29A Last Chance at WealthBy the early 1870s, T.C. was looking for a freshstart. Little more than twenty years earlier, in1850, California had entered the Union, andnow T.C. was pining to move to the nation’sthirty-first state.Ever since the discovery in 1848 of shiny bits ofmetal in a millrace in northern California hadprompted three hundred thousand people fromaround the world to take leave of their sensesand head straight for the foothills of the SierraNevada to pan for gold, California had occupiedan exalted place in the American imagination.Not only was the state part of the country’s lastfrontier, it was reputed to have perfect weather,an astoundingly beautiful topography (whosetreacherousness had yet to be fully appreciated),and an elastic social structure. Young peoplelooking for opportunity and adventure and thosein need of a second chance in life all believedthat they could make good there.The Severances’ California dream centered onthe purchase of a ranch in partnership with theirtwo eldest children. Thirty-two-year-old JamesSeymour Severance and his twenty-eight-year-oldbrother, Mark, had preceded their parents to theformer Mexican territory, which had passed intoU.S. hands (along with most of the lands thatbecame the American Southwest) at the end ofthe Mexican-American War in 1848. The youngmen ended up in Santa Barbara, a former Spanishmission town of four or five thousand, wherefamily friends from Cleveland owned a ranch. 30The brothers had assured their parents thatan investment in ranch land would, in time,dramatically increase in value. James Seymourpointed to the example of “young Blossom,” whohad come to southern California two monthsafter James’s arrival in 1872. Blossom had purchasedtwo five-acre “blocks” in Santa Barbara,one for $1,500 and the other for $1,000, and soldthe latter parcel for $2,500 within three months.9