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Caroline Wells Dall ( Healey; June 22, 1822 – December 17, 1912) was an American feminist writer, transcendentalist, and reformer. She was affiliated with the National Women's Rights Convention, the New England Women's Club, and the
American Social Science Association In 1865, at Boston, Massachusetts, a society for the study of social questions was organized and given the name American Social Science Association. The group grew to where its membership totaled about 1,000 persons. About 30 corresponding members ...
. Her associates included
Elizabeth Peabody Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (May 16, 1804January 3, 1894) was an American educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. Long before most educators, Peabody embraced the premise that children's play has intrinsic de ...
and
Margaret Fuller Sarah Margaret Fuller (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850), sometimes referred to as Margaret Fuller Ossoli, was an American journalist, editor, critic, translator, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movemen ...
, as well as members of the Transcendentalist movement in Boston.


Biography


Early life and education

Caroline Wells Healey was born and raised in
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...
,
Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...
, daughter of Mark Healey, a merchant and investor, and his wife, Caroline ( Foster) Healey. She lived there off and on during her life. As a young woman, she received a comprehensive education, encouraged by her father to write novels and essays, and to engage in debates about religion, philosophy and politics. In addition to private tutoring, she attended a private school for girls run by educator Joseph Hale Abbot, until the age of fifteen. In the fall of 1842, Healey taught at Lydia S. English's Female Seminary (later known as the Georgetown Female Seminary). Over Christmas 1842, a Unitarian minister from Baltimore, Charles Henry Appleton Dall, came to fill an open pulpit in Georgetown. Healey initially found Dall unappealing and she was shocked when he proposed to her by letter months later. But after a few weeks of correspondence, she accepted his proposal, reigned her teaching position, and moved to Baltimore. She married Dall in 1844. The two lived in
Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most pop ...
during the early 1850s, and returned to Boston in 1855. Her children included William Healey Dall, in whose Washington D.C. home she lived her later years.


Work for women's rights

Although she continued to write through the early years of her marriage and child-rearing, after her husband moved to Calcutta, India to perform missionary work, Dall became an active participant in the Boston Women's Rights movement. She was soon an active lecturer and writer on the topic, and organized the New England Women's Rights Convention, along with suffragist
Paulina Davis Paulina Wright Davis ( Kellogg; August 7, 1813 – August 24, 1876) was an American abolitionist, suffragist, and educator. She was one of the founders of the New England Woman Suffrage Association. Early life Davis was born in Bloomfield, N ...
."Dall, Caroline Wells Healey." In ''Notable American Women, 1607–1950'', Volume I. Harvard University Press, 1971. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com on Oct 26 2013. Also with Davis, she founded ''Una'', a journal devoted to woman's rights, and the pioneer publication of its kind. After deciding that she did not like working with groups, Dall turned to writing as her principal means of addressing women's equality. her most prominent works from this time included ''Historical Pictures Retouched: a Volume of Miscellanies'' (1861), which highlighted previously ignored women in history, and a collection of lectures entitled ''The College, the Market, and the Court; or Woman's Relation to Education, Labor, and Law'' (1867) in which she argued that the modern woman was no longer content to be in the
domestic sphere The private sphere is the complement or opposite to the public sphere. The private sphere is a certain sector of societal life in which an individual enjoys a degree of authority, unhampered by interventions from governmental or other institutions. ...
and should be allowed to participate in public life. The
New York Evening Post The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a Conservatism in the United States, conservative daily newspaper, daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip ...
called this collection "the most eloquent and forcible statement of the Woman's Question which has been made." Dall was a founder of the Social Science Association (1865). Dall was seen as too conservative by Parker Pillsbury who dismissed her 1860 effort to form a new women's rights faction in Boston with discussion "limited to the subjects of Education, Vocation and Civil Position" rather than more challenging topics such as divorce. Pillsbury said the meeting was "parlor theatricals" and "harmless". Susan B. Anthony wrote, "Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform."


Later life

In the late 1860s, Dall retired from the Women's Rights movement and turned her writing attention to such diverse topics as Egypt (''Egypt's Place in History'' 1868) and the Civil War (''Patty Gray's Journey'', three volumes for children, 1869–70). During this time, she also moved to Washington, D.C., where she became a friend of the current first lady Frances Cleveland. Much of her later work was about the American Renaissance to which she was witness as a young woman. Works from this period include ''Margaret and Her Friends: Ten Conversations with Margaret Fuller'' (1895) and ''Transcendentalism in New England: a Lecture'' (1897), given to the Society of Philosophical Inquiry at the age of 73. During this time, she also gave the occasional sermon in the Unitarian Church, one of the earliest women to do so. In the last years of her life, she suffered greatly from arthritis, though she remained active until her death at the age of 90 on December 17, 1912.


Works

* * *
''The College, the Market, and the Court: or, Woman's Relation to Education, Labor, and Law.''
867 __NOTOC__ Year 867 (Roman numerals, DCCCLXVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * September 23 – Emperor Michael III is murde ...
Boston: Rumford Pres, 1914.
''The Life of Dr. Anandabai Joshee: A Kinswoman of the Pundita Ramabai.''
Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1888. * * ''Selected Journals of Caroline Healey Dall.'' Helen R. Deese (ed.) ** ''Volume 1: 1838–1855.'' Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2006. ** ''Volume 2: 1855–1866.'' Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2013.


References


Further reading

* *


External links

* *
Caroline Wells Healey Dall Papers, 1811-1954
from Bryn Mawr
Caroline Healey Dall's biography of Dr. Anandibai Joshee in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)Papers, 1829-1956.Schlesinger Library
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. {{DEFAULTSORT:Dall, Caroline Wells Healey 1822 births 1912 deaths 19th-century American writers 19th-century American women writers American essayists American feminist writers Writers from Boston Burials at Mount Auburn Cemetery American women essayists Members of the Transcendental Club 19th-century essayists