The parlor of the Ticknor home on Route 45 in Austinburg is neither museum nor shrine to the late Betsey Mix Cowles. It is history sustained at the moment of death, the best effort of successive generations to fulfill a nebulous request in Betsey’s will that the “furnishings” of her childhood home be left “intact.” And so it is that the desk that was her father’s, the chair that came north with a fugitive slave and the one surviving china plate of the six that Betsey purchased with her school teacher earnings are preserved where they were when Betsey passed from this world of sorrow and toil in 1876.
Her remains, along with those of Cowles ancestors and siblings, whose images hang on these aged parlor walls, rest in the cemetery across the street.
Betsey, born in Connecticut, was but an infant when her parents and seven siblings made the journey to Austin’s Camp, as Austinburg Township was originally know. She was thus a product of the hardships and opportunities of the new land as well as the old Puritanical beliefs that underpinned the values held by her family.
The Cowles family had already made its mark in New England when the Rev. Giles Cowles followed the lead of the Holy Spirit to the Western Reserve.
He was the first settled minister of Austinburg and Morgan townships, building upon the missionary work performed by the Rev. Joseph Badger. He, his wife Sally (White) and their eight children left Bristol, Conn., on May 21, 1811.
Their furniture and the Rev. Cowles’ library were loaded onto two wagons; the pastor, his wife and their two smaller children (Betsey was just 1 year old), rode in a carriage. The family thus traveled in this caravan through forest and unsettled territory for weeks before reaching Austinburg that summer. A commodious log dwelling was soon erected for the family near the site of the present Ticknor home, built four years later.
The story of Cowles’ recruitment is noteworthy. The wife of Judge Eliphalet Austin, who settled the namesake township, decided in the spring of 1810 that the community needed a “settled minister” as the “field was ripe for a bountiful harvest.” Mrs. Austin, thus convicted, rode alone for 30 days on horseback to the Austin’s native Connecticut.
She began her recruitment effort by convincing Sally Cowles of the opportunity and need in the Western Reserve. “She saw in the then far distant Western Reserve rich and cheap land, and a chance for her boys to fight successfully their way through life. The matter was broached to her husband, and he was easily persuaded to take a trip to New Connecticut, and make a prospective examination in the field which he had been invited to cultivate,” states the “Williams Brothers 1878 History.”
A year after arriving at “Austin’s Camp,” Rev. Cowles inspired the congregation to raise a fine meeting house, one that was not occupied until 1815 and took another five years to complete. We are told he was a “venerable man” devoted to much study of the Word and faithful to his flock. His wife was described as a “woman of beauty, superior education and ... finished character.”
The Rev. Cowles also championed education and was a member of the Grand River Presbytery that established the first Western Reserve college. Cowles also assisted in the work of founding Grand River Institute and is one of the original incorporators.
Teaching career
The teaching profession was one of the few jobs on the Western Reserve that offered a woman the means of self support, and at the age of 17, Rev. Cowles volunteered Betsey for the task because of her quality of “discretion.”
It was a disaster. Betsey served just five days and resigned; her older sister, Cornelia, completed the summer term.
Nevertheless, the following year Betsey took another teaching assignment, this time in Warren, Trumbull County. She continued the task of teaching and furthering her own education for several years, until she was introduced to the infant-school plan that was sweeping England.
Infant-schools served youngsters ages 4 to 7, an age group that resonated with Cowles. “... her infant schools were the wonder and delight of the surrounding country,” wrote a biographer.
Revival swept through the Austinburg community in 1831, watering the spiritual seeds planted in Betsey’s heart by her articulate, persuasive pastor/father. Her interests shifted from the temporal to the eternal as Betsey became a follower of Christ.
Four years later, with the death of their father, Betsey and her sisters became eligible for “support” from the estate Giles left behind. Betsey rejected that offer and felt it necessary to provide her own way in this world. She moved to Oberlin and enrolled in the college’s ladies course to further prepare herself for the task of teaching.
She was a member of the college’s third graduating class for women. After graduation Betsey taught three years at Portsmouth, Ohio, then returned to Austinburg, where she took charge of the “female department” of the Grand River Institute.
Abolitionist
It was during this time that Betsey became friends with anti-slavery people from Stark County. Austinburg also had its abolitionists — Eliphalet’s home served as a stop on the Underground Railroad, and the fugitives’ stories of mistreatment and the horrors of slavery inspired Betsey to call for immediate emancipation.
“Women, telling the story of their wrongs, and bearing the marks of the whip upon their backs, were arguments which set soul and brain on fire; and the strong sense of right and justice, which had ever been her birthright, fired up, regardless of expediency, all time-serving, all political relations, and, bearing directly to the heart of the question, cried out, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’” wrote the author of Cowles’ biography in the “Williams Brothers History.”
Betsey Cowles served as the secretary of the Ashtabula Female Antislavery Society, which had 400 members and was one of the largest such groups in Ohio. She also became a disciple of William Lloyd Garrison, prominent American abolitionist and one of the founders of the American Antislavery Society. A book of poetry by Garrison and in the Ticknor collection is inscribed to Betsey as a “friend.”
Garrison, upon Betsey’s invitation, visited Ashtabula County and presented his case for immediate emancipation. There were other great abolitionists of the day who visited the county as a result of Betsey’s prominence and eloquence — Stephen S. Foster, Henry C. Wright, Parker Pillsbury, Oliver Johnson, Lucretia Mott and Abby Kelley.
Betsey traveled throughout Ohio, attending and speaking at anti-slavery fairs, and also attended these fairs and meetings in Boston.
In the eyes of many conservative Ashtabula County Christians, however, Betsey Cowles had walked away from her “first love” to Christ and replaced it with an agenda of social reform. Further, Betsey’s public speaking ran counter to the Apostle Paul’s instructions in I Corinthians 14, that women ought to “keep silence” in the assemblies. Her boldness thus subjected her to criticism from those in her own faith camp, as well as those apathetic to the slavery issue.
Betsey’s rebuttal can be found in her 1845 address to the anti-slavery association in Orwell, where she eloquently entreated her audience “by the pure principles of the religion of Jesus Christ... to unite with us in doing all that we can to overthrow a system so vile, so demoralizing, so subversive in the interests and rights of man and of the government of God.”
Cornelia, an older sister and twin of Lysander Cowles, was often at Betsey’s side in these meetings. The sisters used their musical talents to impart lyrical voice to their plea. Betsey, an alto, and Cornelia, a soprano, would share the laments of slavery with the mournful lyrics of anti-slavery songs.
Suffragist
Betsey, who supported herself as a teacher during the 1840s and 1850s, also adopted the suffrage cause. In 1850, a women’s rights convention was held in Salem, Columbiana County. The convention was held in anticipation of a constitutional convention, which was to be convened later that year. The attendees elected Betsey as president to preside at the Salem convention, the purpose of which was to provide input regarding women’s rights issues that would be included in the new Ohio Constitution.
The following year, she attended the Akron Woman’s Rights Convention and reported on labor and wages. And in 1852 she was named a member of the executive committee of the Ohio Woman’s Rights Association.
Betsey left Ashtabula County in 1856 to become supervisor of practice teachers and the model school at the McNeely Normal School in Hopedale, Ohio. She briefly worked as instructor at the Illinois State Normal University at Bloomington, then took the job of superintendent of schools in Painesville. Her final teaching job was in Delhi, N.Y., where she taught until 1862.
Plagued by eye trouble, Betsey sought a surgical solution, which resulted in complete loss of sight in one eye. On the day Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, Betsey Cowles said “The two great tasks of my life are ended together — my teaching is done, and the slaves are free.”
She returned to Austinburg and her childhood home around the time the Civil War was ending.
It is recorded that the faith that set a fire in Betsey’s heart during the revival of 1831 was rekindled in her latter years. She turned her attention to the task of building a new Congregational church in Austinburg, and it was mainly through her efforts that the brick structure that stands there today was erected.
Betsey Mix Cowles died July 25, 1876. Her funeral service was the first public event to be held inside the unfinished building.
