Amy and Isaac Post
Encyclopedia
Elias Hicks
Elias Hicks was an itinerant Quaker preacher from Long Island, New York. He promoted doctrines that embroiled him in controversy that led to the first major schism within the Religious Society of Friends...
from Rochester, New York
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
, involved in the struggles for abolitionism
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
and women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
. Among the first believers in Spiritualism
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
, they helped to associate the young religious movement with the political ideas of the mid-nineteenth-century reform movement
Reform movement
A reform movement is a kind of social movement that aims to make gradual change, or change in certain aspects of society, rather than rapid or fundamental changes...
.
Early life
Amy Post was born Amy Kirby on December 20, 1802, in Jericho, New York, to Joseph Kirby and Mary Seaman Kirby, members of the Society of Friends, also known as Quakers. The importance of humanitarian reform was embedded in Amy's early education and would become the foundation for her later work as both an abolitionist and women’s-rights activist.Isaac Post was born February 26, 1798, of Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, New York, Quaker families. Around 1821, Isaac Post married Amy's elder sister, Hannah Kirby. In 1823 they moved to Cayuga County, New York
Cayuga County, New York
Cayuga County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. It was named for one of the tribes of Indians in the Iroquois Confederation. Its county seat is Auburn.- History :...
, where he established a farm. In 1827 Hannah fell ill, and Amy joined the Posts to help care for her sister’s two children. Hannah soon died, and Amy stayed on with Isaac to continue caring for the children. In 1828 Amy Kirby married Isaac Post, with whom she had four children: Jacob, Joseph, Matilda, and Willet.
That same year, radical Quakers split from the denomination, and Isaac Post and Amy Kirby joined the more radical wing, headed by Elias Hicks
Elias Hicks
Elias Hicks was an itinerant Quaker preacher from Long Island, New York. He promoted doctrines that embroiled him in controversy that led to the first major schism within the Religious Society of Friends...
.
After Isaac and Amy married, they moved to Rochester in 1836, where they lived on North Plymouth Avenue. In 1839, Isaac went into business as a druggist, in the Smith Arcade on Exchange Street.
Abolitionists
The couple quickly became involved in radical causes. Amy Post became an active and visible member of the Genesee Yearly Meeting of Hicksite Friends (GYM). Post, alongside her husband Isaac, dedicated much of her time to a very progressive group of Quakers who sought to give both men and women the same rights during the meetings of the Society of Friends. In 1837, Amy Post went against the desires of the Society of Friends elders, who disapproved of slavery but distrusted radical abolitionism, and signed her first “worldly” petition against slavery. In 1842, Amy and Isaac Post became two of the founders of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society (WNYASS). WNYASS was not an abolitionist group only for Quakers. Among its members were evangelical Protestants and deists as well. As an officer of the society, it was Amy Post’s duty to organize fundraising fairs and group conventions. Despite the fact that the Society of Friends was a firmly anti-slavery group, the elders of the Rochester Monthly Meeting (RMM) accused Post of being too worldly in her efforts of trying to abolish slavery. Post disregarded the RMM’s investigations of her “worldly” efforts and continued to be a Quaker abolitionist. She even continued distributing religious testimonies on the American Anti-Slavery Society’s official letterhead. For the Posts there should be no boundary between the religious beliefs of a Quaker and political activism of an abolitionist.By the early 1840s, radical Quakers began to hold abolitionist meetings in the Post home, where prominent reform lecturers such as William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United...
, Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing...
, Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony
Susan Brownell Anthony was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States. She was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President...
, and Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth was the self-given name, from 1843 onward, of Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son, she...
visited and spoke. Douglass became a close personal friend of the Posts who helped establish him in Rochester where he published his newspaper the "North Star". Douglass and the Posts also collaborated in ferrying fugitive slaves and their home served as a station on the Underground Railroad
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists,...
, holding as many as 20 escaped slaves at a time.
"One Saturday night, after all our household were asleep, there came a tiny tap at the door, and the door was opened to fifteen tired and hungry men and women who were escaping from the land of slavery. They seemed to know that Canada, their home of rest, was near, and they were impatient, but the opportunity to cross the lake compelled their waiting until Monday early in the morning. That being settled, and their hunger satisfied, together with a comfortable and refreshing sleep, they became so elated with their nearness to perfect and lasting freedom that they were forgetful of any danger either to us, or to themselves, so that they were obliged to be constantly watched through the day to keep them from popping their heads out of the windows and otherwise showing themselves." ... "The welcome Monday morning came, and after a hearty breakfast, and a lunch for dinner, they left the house, with all the stillness and quietness possible, and we soon saw them on board a Canada steamer, which was already lying at the dock; with them on board, it immediately shoved out into the middle of the stream, hoisted the British flag, and we knew that all was safe; we breathed more freely, but when we saw them standing on deck with uncovered heads, shouting their good-byes, thanks and ejaculations, we could not restrain our tears of thankfulness for their happy escape, mixed with deep shame that our own boasted land of liberty offered no shelter of safety for them." - Amy Post
In 1848, the Posts also left the GYM due to pressure from elders to end their abolitionist activities as well as to help form the Yearly Meeting of Congregational Friends (YMCF), which differed greatly from the GYM in several ways. They had no ministers or elders as all people were considered equal within the YMCF. The members of YMCF would do whatever they considered necessary to end slavery, and therefore put no limit on “worldly” efforts to abolish slavery. Finally, the YMCF had no tolerance for racial or sexual discrimination. They believed that all people should be considered equal morally, religiously, and politically. The motto of the Congregational Friends was “common natures, common rights, and a common destiny.”
Women's Suffrage
In 1848, Amy began to be involved as an organizer in the women's movement. Acting upon her beliefs in equality for women, Post attended the 1848 Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NYSeneca Falls (village), New York
Seneca Falls is a village in Seneca County, New York, United States. The population was 6,861 at the 2000 census. The village is in the Town of Seneca Falls, east of Geneva, New York. On March 16, 2010, village residents voted to dissolve the village, a move that would take effect at the end of 2011...
. Amy Kirby Post and Mary Post, her stepdaughter, were two of the one hundred women who signed the Declaration of Sentiments
Declaration of Sentiments
The Declaration of Sentiments, also known as the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, is a document signed in 1848 by 68 women and 32 men, 100 out of some 300 attendees at the first women's rights convention, in Seneca Falls, New York, now known as the Seneca Falls Convention...
. At the convention, Post was among the few radical women who advocated for woman to be the head of the Adjourned Convention. Post, her stepdaughter, and two other female abolitionists organized the Rochester Woman’s Rights Convention, held two weeks after, which placed emphasis on women’s economic equality. The Seneca Falls convention was only one of many women’s rights conventions that she attended throughout her life. In 1853, she signed the “The Just and Equal Rights of Women” resolution. Accompanied by Lucy Coleman, Post visited fugitive slave colonies in Canada, and attended conventions all through the North. Post became good friends with Harriet Ann Jacobs
Harriet Ann Jacobs
Harriet Ann Jacobs was an American writer, who escaped from slavery and became an abolitionist speaker and reformer...
, who she encouraged to write Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a book that was published in 1861 by Harriet Jacobs, using the pen name "Linda Brent". While on one level it chronicles the experiences of Harriet Jacobs as a slave, and the various humiliations she had to endure in that unhappy state, it also deals with...
in 1861 (published under the name "Linda Brent").
Amy served the community in practical and tangible ways, such as collecting food, medical supplies, and clothing for freed slaves during the Civil War. After the War, Post became a member of both the Equal Rights Association and the National Woman Suffrage Association. In 1872, Amy Kirby Post successfully registered herself to vote, but unlike Susan B. Anthony, she was turned away at the polls and unable to cast her vote. Undaunted, Post continued her women’s equality work throughout her life, and in 1885 became one of the founding members of the Women’s Political Club. In 1888, Post traveled to Washington D.C. to attend the International Council of Women, the largest women’s convention at that time.
Spiritualism
In 1848, the Posts took into their home the Fox sistersFox sisters
The Fox sisters were three sisters from New York who played an important role in the creation of Spiritualism. The three sisters were Leah Fox , Margaret Fox and Kate Fox . The two younger sisters used "rappings" to convince their much older sister and others that they were communicating with...
, Kate and Margaret, who appeared to have acquired the ability to communicate with spirits through rapping noises. They introduced the girls to their circle of radical friends, and almost all became ardent believers in the emerging religion of Spiritualism
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
. Isaac Post himself became an acknowledged medium. His 1852 book, Voices From the Spirit World, Being Communications From Many Spirits, was presented as the spirit writings of eminent persons such as Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
and George Fox
George Fox
George Fox was an English Dissenter and a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends.The son of a Leicestershire weaver, Fox lived in a time of great social upheaval and war...
.
Family
Isaac's brother, Joseph (30 November 1803 Westbury, New YorkWestbury, New York
Westbury incorporated in 1932 as a village in Nassau County, New York in the United States. The population was 15,146 at the 2010 census.The Village of Westbury is in the Town of North Hempstead....
- 17 January 1888), was also an abolitionist and had early differences with the Quakers, although they finally came around to his point of view. He encouraged Isaac T. Hopper
Isaac Hopper
Isaac Tatem Hopper was an American abolitionist who is known as the father of the underground railroad.-Contributions to African-Americans:...
, Charles Marriot, and James S. Gibbons when they were disowned by the Society of Friends on account of their outspoken opposition to slavery. Joseph spent his whole life in the house where he was born.
Legacy
