By JoAnn Levy

Eliza Farnham is a stranger's name. It rings no bells. If she were important, the public reasons, surely we would have heard. But many remarkable lives escape telling, remain unknown, unsung. That few today know of Eliza Farnham-once famed as a prison matron, phrenologist, author, lecturer, spiritualist, and philanthropist-provides the proof to that pudding.

In her time, the public knew her. Eliza Farnham's name first appeared in newspapers in 1840. It stayed there twenty-five years. Her public lectures on phrenology, spiritualism, prison reform, and the superiority of women attracted audiences and admiration: "The entire people present seemed determined not to lose a sentence. They were right. There was not one word but deserved attention; not a weak, worthless paragraph in the whole of it. The impression left predominant was that the entire lecture was all of thought….the production of an earnest, philosophical, enlightened mind…imbued with clear perceptions and pure aspirations."

Her every move made good copy. Following her controversial administration at Sing Sing Prison, Mrs. Farnham attempted to take 130 marriageable women to gold rush California, captivating editors on both coasts. Magazines knew her name, too. In Brother Jonathan she debated the editor, John Neal, on woman's rights; in the Knickerbocker she humorously described an Illinois camp meeting; in The Prisoner's Friend she revealed how famed deaf-mute Laura Bridgman, her student at Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe's Massachusetts Institute for the Blind, learned to communicate in a trail-blazing technique famously practiced years afterward with Helen Keller.

Trail-blazing in the literal sense attached to the Farnham name, too. Eliza's husband, attorney Thomas Jefferson Farnham, crossed the plains from Illinois to Oregon in 1839, visited the Whitman Mission there, then sailed for the Sandwich Islands where King Kamehameha III authorized him to represent, in U.S. and foreign courts, the Islands' fight for independence. From Honolulu, Farnham went to California, where he obtained the release of Americans and Englishmen jailed by the Mexican government. A few years later Farnham returned to California, and his death there in 1848 induced his wife's journey west. There-after reuniting with her two young sons, and suing the ship's captain for abandoning her in Valparaiso and sailing off with her children-she built, at Santa Cruz, a house with her own hands, farmed, taught school, and wrote the first book on California by a woman.

In California, Eliza Farnham married and divorced an abusive husband, then returned east. In New York, during the financial panic of 1857, she founded the Women's Protective Emigration Society, escorted several hundred unemployed women to jobs in Illinois and Indiana, and inspired more public praise: "Few ladies…have labored with more true zeal…to ameliorate the condition of the laboring class of women, and those who, by reason of misfortune, need aid, than Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham. Truly can she be classed among our noblest female philanthropists…. God speed her in her noble mission."

At Susan Anthony's invitation, Mrs. Farnham addressed the 1859 Woman's Rights convention on the superiority of women, then returned to California to serve as matron of the state's first insane asylum. When she recommenced her lecture tours, newspapers covered her every appearance, including her address to the California State Legislature on the inadequacies of their new state prison at San Quentin. In 1863 she was again in the East, this time at Gettysburg, serving with Dorothea Dix as a volunteer nurse.

An autodidact of prodigious intellectual achievement and only two years of schooling, Eliza Farnham published five books: Life in Prairie Land-a pioneer chronicle of her residence in Illinois in the 1830s; California In-Doors and Out-a first-person account of California during the gold rush; My Early Years-an autobiography of triumph over an abusive childhood; The Ideal Attained-a novel advancing her philosophy on male-female relationships; and Woman and Her Era-a two-volume scientific argument for woman's superiority. Reviewing this book, the Atlantic Monthly observed: "In the three and a half centuries since Cornelius Agrippa, no one has attempted with so much ability as Mrs. Farnham to transfer the theory of woman's superiority from the domain of poetry to that of science."

Eliza Farnham's extraordinary life-an inspiration in courage, accomplishment, adventure, and ideas-ended at age forty-nine, from tuberculosis contracted at Gettysburg. Her death occasioned a noteworthy funeral: "Anyone in attendance at Dodworth Hall, yesterday, could not but feel that the occasion was no ordinary one. The Hall, although very large, proved much too small to accommodate the crowd; hundreds going away unable to obtain standing room. The exercises were opened by singing, and were followed by a short address from the Rev. Mr. Frothingham, upon the character of the deceased… whom he considered to be one of the leading women of the age, and whose intellect he considered to be of an order quite beyond the appreciation of mediocre minds."

The following is a passage from JoAnn Levy's Unsettling the West: Eliza Farnham and Georgiana Bruce Kirby in Frontier California (Heyday Books, 2004) recounting Eliza Farnham's lecture tour of the Sierra Nevada region in 1856.

Used by permission of the Author.

The Sacramento Daily Union noted that a large audience listened "with marked attention, pleasure, and we hope profit" to Mrs. Farnham's discourse on the "cultivation of human character." The reporter was definitely impressed: "Mrs. Farnham is unquestionably a woman of true genius, and none who have a just appreciation of literary statements will deny that she possesses them in a degree seldom seen in any representative of her sex."

The Sacramento Democratic State Journal also approved: "Her manner was mild and expressive, and her voice clear and of sufficient scope to fill the house. The most fastidious could scarcely find fault. She is the only female lecturer we now have in California, and the most pleasing, by far, we ever heard."

After delivering her third lecture in Sacramento, on "the characteristics of our present civilization," Mrs. Farnham moved on to Oroville, where an observer noted:
I had the opportunity of listening…to…Mrs. Farnham, at Oroville….Her subject was, the improvement of man by the observance of the organic laws. The lecture was highly interesting, and largely attended. She informed me that it was her intention to visit all the principal towns of California, for the purpose of lecturing upon the above and similar topics. Mrs. Farnham is a lady of superior talent, and very correct literary taste.

The next principal town on her itinerary was Auburn, where the Placer Herald concisely summarized her visit: "MRS. FARNHAM.-This lady lectured in Auburn on Thursday and Friday evenings of last week. Her lecture was carefully written, well delivered, and favorably received."

Next stop: Nevada City.

Eliza followed in the footsteps of another female lecturer, the peripatetic temperance speaker Sarah Pellet. The Nevada Journal had opinions about them:
FEMALE LECTURERS.-Lately was chronicled by the press with more or less unction, according to the gallantry of editors, or their want of the same courteous quality, the exodus of a strong minded woman from our shores.

It is whispered, she was more provident in her apostolic peregrinations, than the twelve of old. Rumor has it that she provided her purse with the necessary against a rainy day, to the tune of $25,000. This can hardly be true, yet such has been the scarcity of women in certain parts of the mining region that Miss Pellet could not fail to accumulate something of a pile by merely exhibiting herself in woman's array at two bits a sight. Simple curiosity to see a woman would have emptied hundreds of gulches of their crop of old bachelors. But when it was announced that she would spout cold water to the miners, there was a charm of novelty about the thing that could not be resisted. Open mouthed listeners faced a column of oracular Merrimack, heard their much loved beverage unmercifully berated and paid for the abuse with the same liberal spirit, and from the same motive that they would pay to witness the antics of a wooden-headed punch.

Miss Pellet suffered more wear and tear of body than of mind, in her ejaculating circuits among the hills. No one who ever heard her went away with a feeling of sorrow that an over-taxed intellect was wearing itself out. Water was her element, but she dabbled in it where it was shallow. The stream that flowed from her lips was "one weak, washy, everlasting flood"; muddy and tasteless. In a word, Miss Pellet was a humbug. Whatever praise may have been courteously bestowed upon her we challenge pretended admirers to produce a single sentence of hers that exhibits a mark of individuality, or proves talent in the least above mediocrity. But she has gone, and in her stead has come another lecturer of her sex, and of a different order. The one was a type of the age of bronze, the other of the age of gold.

Mrs. Farnham is a woman of mind, of culture, and of large observation and experience. Men will listen to her lectures for the wealth of thought and beauty of language which characterize them. She fills a house, and keeps the audience interested in her subject which she handles in masterly style. Every sentence that drops from her lips, bears with it a burthen of thought. There is nothing trivial or common-place in her discourses, no blue stocking affectation, or ranting of a moral reform exhorter. Her address is made to the understanding, the taste, the intellect.

We understand Mrs. Farnham will visit this city next week, when our citizens will have an opportunity of hearing subjects well treated in the strongest, yet finest language by a woman.

We are not particularly well disposed towards female lecturers, but as even cold water papers say, "if you will drink go to friend Teal's and get the genuine article," so we say, if you will hear female lecturers, go and get the worth of your time and money, in listening to Mrs. Farnham.

Eliza did not disappoint her admirer: "Mrs. Farnham delivered two lectures in this city this week. The matter and manner were worthy the reputation enjoyed by the lecturer."
After Nevada City, Mrs. Farnham delivered two lectures at Marysville, where she received what must have been a most gratifying letter signed by fourteen gentlemen in San Francisco:

Dear Madam: -As very many persons were prevented hearing your third lecture "On the Characteristics of our present Civilization," in consequence of the inclemency of the weather at the time, we should feel gratified if you would favor us with its repetition on your return to this city.
We remain, Dear Madam, yours very respectfully,

Mrs. Farnham promptly replied:

Gentlemen: I have the pleasure to acknowledge the receipt, on my arrival at this place last evening, of your kind and complimentary note of the 21st ult. requesting the repetition, on my return to San Francisco, of my Lecture "On the Characteristics of our Present Civilization." It is my intention to be in this city on Friday next, and if the time be agreeable to yourselves it will afford me pleasure to comply with your request on Sunday evening, 9th inst.

While Eliza was traveling in the interior, she likely read the Sacramento Daily Union's reprinted article from the San Francisco Herald:

THE SPIRITUAL MANIA IN SAN FRANCISCO.-It is a startling assertion, but one that can be well substantiated, that there are in this city hundreds of victims of the spiritual delusion. But even more startling is the fact that many who profess to believe in spiritual manifestations are also professed believers in the doctrine of Divine truth. In many respectable families the subject of spiritualism forms a topic of interesting conversation, and in several of the large hotels "spiritual circles," so called, meet regularly to waste the precious hours in silly (if not blasphemous) invocation, of "the spirits."... The miserable fanatics who accept the theory of spiritual manifestations as truth are deserving of commiseration; while those who, although unbelievers, yet permit the practice of spiritual tricks within their own house, thus exerting a pernicious influence upon weaker minds, are deserving of more than condemnation.

Eliza Farnham believed unquestionably and unquestioningly that the dead communicated with the living. And she wasn't shy about saying so:
I accept the alleged phenomena, so far as I am acquainted with them, as altogether in harmony with what I believe of human capacity and spiritual power. But if I rightly apprehend their bearing, the most they can do for me, is to confirm and clear foregone conclusions.

…Here is no dogma which conflicts with one you have before received. Here is no arbitrary assertion, contradicting another arbitrary assertion which you have before trusted. It is philosophy and religion wedded, which have before been blindly and bitterly divorced. It is love translated by wisdom-light falling from higher and purer eyes than ours, upon the clouded fields of life-bloom and radiance descending into dark and rugged vales of fruitless belief, faith stealing noiselessly into the infidel soul.

When Mrs. Farnham returned to San Francisco to repeat her original lecture series, as promised, as well as to speak on Spiritualism, the daily papers took note:
Alta California, April 21, 1856: MRS. FARNHAM'S LECTURE.-The lecture of Mrs. Farnham at Musical Hall last evening, on Spiritualism, was quite largely and respectably attended. The address was characterized by the same intellectual merit which all her previous lectures are entitled to, and evinced a well-read and cultivated mind; but there was very little in her remarks calculated to advance the science or doctrine of modern table-tipping, or spiritual rapping. The lecture embraced copious extracts from able writers, interspersed with the sentiments and opinions of the speaker; and, aside from its spiritual feature, may be considered a very able and interesting address.

It was rendered apparently with a greater volume of voice and with greater distinctness than her lectures on former occasions.

San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, April 28, 1856: MRS. FARNHAM'S LECTURE.-This lady's lecture at Musical Hall last night we are told was very successful. She proposes to lecture again on Friday night when she will speak on the subject of "The Women of the Pacific States."

San Francisco Daily California Chronicle, April 30, 1856: MRS. FARNHAM'S NEXT LECTURE.-A lady of taste desires us to call attention to the fact that Mrs. Farnham will lecture at Music[al] Hall, on Friday evening. Her subject, we understand, is "Heroism of Women"; our California women being to a considerable extent the theme of the lecture. Our informant assures us that the lecture, which she has heard or read, is the best ever written by the able author. Very high praise, and worthy the attention and approbation of the ladies particularly.

In her "Women of the Pacific States" lecture, Mrs. Farnham claimed that "the true rights and duties of men and women could never conflict with each other, that they might play their complete parts in their respective spheres harmoniously." In so doing, she reaffirmed her long-held position against such women's rights objectives as "political privileges" for women. While the movement campaigned for suffrage and access to the professions, Mrs. Farnham averred that woman's sphere was essentially maternal and "consisted in doing the uncorrupted, unrestrained promptings of her nature."

 

Photo Credit: Eliza Farnham 1. jpg from Burhans Geneaology
JoAnn Levy 2. jpg = Jo Ann Levy
Levy, book cover. Jpg = Cover of Levy, Unsettling the West