Civil War Roundtable: Cyders to speak to local history club
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PARKERSBURG - The executive director of the Southeast Ohio History Center in Athens will be the featured speaker at the 7 p.m. March 21 meeting of the Civil War Round Table of the Mid-Ohio Valley at the Blennerhassett Museum of Regional History, 137 Juliana St., Parkersburg.
Jessica Cyders will present "Mid-Ohio Valley Women in the Civil War: Frances Dana Barker Gage and the Revolutionary Ideals of Equality and Education."
Francis Dana Barker Gage, 1808-1884, was the 10th of 11 children born to Col. Joseph Barker and Elizabeth Dana Barker, early settlers in the Northwest Territory. She became an advocate and leading reformer for women's rights, temperance and the abolition of slavery and was one of the first to champion equal rights for all citizens without regard to race or gender.
As a child, Gage often visited her grandmother, Mary Bancroft Dana in Belpre. Dana was an ardent abolitionist and there Gage learned to hate slavery and sympathize with the fugitives whom she frequently met seeking refuge.
Before the Civil War began, Gage lectured and wrote for several newspapers and journals to advocate for women's rights and universal suffrage. When the war started in 1861, her four sons enlisted in the Union Army and she organized and lectured on behalf of support for the common soldiers.
In 1862, Gage and her daughter, Mary, joined other missionaries in Beaufort, S.C., to teach formerly enslaved men, women and children to read and write during the Port Royal Experiment. She was appointed superintendent of the Freedmen School on Parris Island where she befriended Clara Barton, Harriett Tubman and Susan Taylor King.
In the fall of 1863 she returned to the North to tour and lecture on her "experiences with our Freedman." She portrayed the brutality of slavery, its demoralization, the human character of the slave and advocated for suffrage for the newly freed African American women and men in Reconstruction.
After the war she was a prolific lecturer, writer and advocate on behalf of life-long friend Barton, the Missing Soldiers Office and women's rights.
Cyders will discuss Gage's life and writings and insights into her early life on the Ohio frontier and how she lived out the Revolutionary Generation's ideals of equality and education.
Before becoming executive director of the History Center, Cyders was the museum's Curator.
She has a bachelor's of arts in history and political science from Ohio University. Cyders is on the board of trustees of the Athens County Visitors Bureau, was on the board of trustees of the Ohio Museums Association and is a frequent contributor to Civil War Field Day hosted by Campus Martius Museum in Marietta.
Meetings are open to the public and are free, however, small donations will be accepted to cover the costs of the event, made possible through a matching grant from the Ohio Arts Council.
A brief annual business meeting will precede the presentation.
The meeting venue is handicapped accessible. Accommodations for other disabilities will be considered upon request. Email contact cwrtmov@gmail.com or call 740 706 2575 for more information.