Our Founders: The Founding 13

1894 is a curious and volatile time in this country.   Grover Cleveland is President. Returning to the office after he lost the previous election, he is the first Democrat to be elected to that office since the Civil War.

The Civil War, only thirty years in the past, still rankles on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. The financial crisis of 1893, ripples through the social and financial worlds as confidence in the economy falters. Workers lose their jobs. Banks experience major runs on their funds. Labor conflicts and workers rights are front and center. Coxey’s army of 500 unemployed workers march from Ohio to Washington, arriving on the first of May . Known as “the petition in boots”, their goal was to lobby for a federally funded jobs program to build roads that will put the unemployed back to work. Clearly these are tenuous times.

In August of 1892, a group of thirteen women gathered, probably in one of their homes in Providence, with the purpose of establishing a Rhode Island chapter of the National Society of the Colonial Dames. They are bound together by some combination of blood, marriage, geographic proximity and social class. They share lineage that dates back to before the American Revolution.

Politically, these women are moderate to conservative. However, they see themselves as having a civic, social, and moral responsibility to the people and communities in which they live and to the nation as a whole. “To whom much is given, much is expected” is an apt description of their world view. Members of this group of thirteen founded an array of civic and charitable organizations including benevolent societies, society for organized charities, the Sanitary and Relief Society during the Spanish American War, school for the deaf, school for handicrafts, to name just a few. Clearly they had work to do as well as the means and the will to do it .

They are adventurous and talented women and often ahead of their time which only enhances their accomplishments and makes them more interesting. Edith Mason invented a flannel abdominal bandage called the Mason band that was routinely used during the Spanish American War. Julia Lippitt Mauran was a skilled woodworker and the first woman in the state to get her drivers license and drove her 1910 Ford until she died. Jeannie Lippitt Weeden, lost her hearing as a child but, thanks to her mother, learned to read lips. She drove her car from Maine to California, learned French and loved to dance. Jeannie was on stage with Alexander Graham Bell to lip read the first phone call. Florence Jenckes Bridgham is described in a Washington D.C. newspaper April, 1896 as “one of the brightest women and cleverest parliamentarians among the members.”

The legacy of these thirteen women is the National Society Society of the Colonial Dames of Rhode Island. Past and present members have much in common with the founders. We are still a community of dedicated, smart women who steward the past. We believe it illuminates and informs our future. Our ranks include writers, artists, film makers, scholars, journalists and business women but we too are bound by a commitment to preservation, education and patriotic service. It is also safe to say that there are many among us who are ahead of their time.