WALLENPAUPACK HISTORICAL SOCIETY

V o l u m e 1 1 , I s s u e 1

Wal lenpaupack Histor ical Society ’s Upcoming Events

FEBRUARY 2017 NEWSLETTER

WALLENPAUPACK HISTORICAL SOCIETY

“ K e e p i n g t h e h i s t o r y o f L a k e W a l l e n p a u p a c k a l i v e a n d a c c e s s i b l e f o r p r e s e n t a n d f u t u r e g e n e r a t i o n s ”

The annual bus iness meet ing inc luded approval o f board of f icer s, board members, and the 2017 budget . Board of f icer s remain the same: Robert Essex, Pres ident , p ic tured bot tom r ight ; Kri s ten Brown, Vice Pres ident ; Donna Stucc io, Treasurer ; Jon Tandy, Secretary. Board membership now inc ludes Doug Hayes, in addi t ion to Andy Anderson, Robert Ammon, Richard Br iden, Nancy Gumble, Rol f Moel ler, Gertrude Schle iker, Bruce Taylor and Ann Wiedenman. The meet ing a l so inc luded a DVD presentat ion, produced by Carbondale His tor ica l Socie ty, on the h i s tory of the Gravi ty Rai l road and the D&H Canal o f Wayne County.

Annual Business Meet ingJanuar y 18 , 1 :00 p.m. at the ELC

Wallenpaupack His tor ica l Socie ty wi l l present on the cul ture and events o f the early twent ie th century by resourc ing newspaper ar t ic les f rom 1917, presented by Jon Tandy.

Newspaper Reading, This Week in 1917Febr uar y 15 , 1 :00 p.m. at the ELC

The March program wi l l feature a ser ies o f narrator s who wi l l read Helen Cooke’s Trad i t i on s o f Wal l enpaupack , the epic poem about the f ic t ional Pr incess Nemanie and Chief Paupackan, f i r s t publ i shed in 1914. The poem al so conta ins h i s tor ica l s tor ies about and the or ig ina l Wal lenpaupack set t ler s.

Reading of Tradi t ions o f Wal lenpaupackMarch 15 , 1 :00 p.m. at the ELC

Wallenpaupack Historical Society

• OFFICERS

Robert Essex, President Kristen Brown, Vice-President

and Newsletter Editor Jon Tandy, Secretary

Donna Stuccio, Treasurer •

DIRECTORS Arnold T. Anderson

Robert Ammon C. Richard Briden

Donal Coutts, Dir. Emeritus Nancy Gumble Douglas Hayes

Rolf Moeller Gertrude Schleiker

Bruce Taylor R. Anthony Waldron

Ann Wiedenman •

103 Manor Woods Court P.O. Box 345

Paupack, PA 18451 •

( 570 ) 226 - 8980

• WallenpaupackHistorical .org

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As it was generally assumed that Hillary Clinton would succeed in her 2016 campaign for President, and while Ms Clinton won millions more votes than did her opponent, it was Ms Clinton’s ubiquitous presence in American politics, beginning with the time of her husband’s terms as President, that created an outlook of expectation and presumption among the American public. For had any woman who was not previously First Lady, whom the voters did not know so well nor had seen so frequently the past decades, run a competitive campaign for President, there would have been, I assume, a sharper study within the media of the role of women’s leadership globally throughout history. It is obvious that women in the United States have only begun to uphold positions of power in the form of government leadership. Yet many in the U.S. do not realize the extent to which women have upheld leadership roles for centuries, if not millennia, throughout other parts of the world. The U.S. political campaigns of the present tend to refrain from placing America within a greater context of world civilization, and it is the isolation of the U.S. within its Western Hemisphere that has ( continued )

A H I S TO R I C A L V I E W O F

WO M E N L E A D E R S

By Kr i s t en Brown

My childhood’s home I see again, And sadden with the view; And still, as memory crowds my brain, There’s pleasure in it too.

O Memory! thou midway world ‘Twixt earth and paradise, Where things decayed and loved ones lost In dreamy shadows rise,

And, freed from all that’s earthly vile, Seem hallowed, pure, and bright, Like scenes in some enchanted isle

All bathed in liquid light.

As dusky mountains please the eye When twilight chases day; As bugle notes that, passing by, In distance die away;

As leaving some grand waterfall, We, lingering, list its roar — So memory will hallow all We’ve known, but know no more.

Near twenty years have passed away Since here I bid farewell To woods and fields, and scenes of play, And playmates loved so well.

Where many were, but few remain Of old familiar things;

But seeing them, to mind again The lost and absent brings.

The friends I left that parting day, How changed, as time has sped! Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray, And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved survivors tell How nought from death could save, Till every sound appears a knell, And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread, And pace the hollow rooms, And feel (companion of the dead) I’m living in the toms. A. Lincoln from Wallenpaupack Historical Society archives

Poem by Abraham Lincoln , a f ter re turning f rom a 20 year absence

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resulted in the ignoring of world culture and antiquity, primarily that of the Eastern Hemisphere. Were this not the case, it would be more obvious that women have ruled on this earth since antiquity and during the middle ages, up to and including this very day, throughout the regions of Asia, Africa and Europe. Although not as great in number as their male counterparts, Queens have existed throughout the monarchies of both history and the present. Women have, more recently, become elected Presidents and Prime Ministers in many contemporary countries. Some women have upended the support of their constituents and have been impeached, such as Park Geun-hye, President of South Korea from 2013 to 2016, and Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil from 2011 to 2016. Isabel Martinez de Peron, President of Argentina from 1974 to 1976, served as both Vice President and First Lady during her husband’s third term as President, and became President upon her husband’s death in 1974. Argentina has confirmed to date two women Presidents, with Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner being the second female President from 2007 to 2015. Fernandez de Kirchner was the first woman ever directly elected as President of Argentina, and the first woman re-elected. The first elected woman head of state in Africa was Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of Liberia, who took office in 2006 and remains in office today. Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom was the first woman to hold the office of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, which she upheld from 1979 to 1990. Thatcher was also the longest-serving PM of the UK in the twentieth century. Since the evolution of the role of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the first Prime Minster of Sir Robert Walpole in approximately 1721, there have been two women to achieve the role, the second being the current Prime Minister Theresa May. The first woman appointed to the position of Chancellor of Germany, the country’s head of government, was Angela Merkel in 2005. Merkel has remained in office and, having served the longest out of all incumbent EU leaders, Chancellor Merkel is acknowledged amongst the European Union as the senior leader of the EU. In 2007 Merkel served as President of the European Council and Chair of the G8. Although Merkel’s female leadership is unique within the history of German Chancellorship, women leaders in Europe have existed since leaders, or Kings,

have existed. In 2015, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II achieved distinction as the longest-reigning monarch in the history of the British Monarchy. Queen Elizabeth ascended in 1952 and is the current head of state of 16 Commonwealth realms, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica and the Bahamas. Throughout the centuries of European history, female leadership has been an accepted part of civilization and society. The Roman historian Tacitus describes in his Histories, c. 100 - 110, the first century Queen of the Brigantes, named Cartimandua, who reigned from 43 to 69 AD in what is today northern England. Along with the many Kings throughout history are their wives, the Queens consort, but many, many women ruled as Queens regnant, or monarchs equivalent to a King, such as Cartimandua in 43 AD. In other cases women were appointed to reign as Queens regent, temporary rulers who governed because the King was a minor or was absent; such was the reign of Mary of Gueldres, who ruled Scotland from 1460 to 1463 during her son James III’s minority. Empress Matilda, wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, was named successor to the Kingdom of England by her father King Henry I in the early twelfth century. Had Matilda been crowned Queen, she would have become the first Queen regnant of England. However, upon Henry I’s death in 1135, Matilda’s cousin Stephen of Blois usurped Matilda’s power and ruled instead, with the support of the crowds of London. A similar situation took place in 1553 when the ill King Edward VI nominated his cousin Lady Jane Grey as his successor instead of his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth. After Edward’s death, his will naming Jane’s succession was not honored, for the Privy Council favored Mary. Jane Grey was executed for treason by beheading, and Mary I became the first Queen regnant of England in 1553, followed by the Queen regnant Elizabeth I in 1558. There were five Queens regnant of Jerusalem who ruled the Kingdom of Jerusalem of 1099 to 1291. There were 17 women rulers of Egypt, beginning with Sobekneferu who ruled as Pharaoh from 1806 to 1802 BC. Cleopatra VII was the last woman ruler, reigning from 51 to 30 BC before Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire. Similarly to Matilda and Jane Grey, Cleopatra was deposed by her brother who was supposed to rule jointly according to their father Ptolemy XII. Cleopatra’s power was restored by Julius Caesar, and the son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra VII became the last Egyptian ruler before Egypt was annexed by the Roman Republic in 30 BC. In

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27 BC the republic became the Roman Empire with its first Emperor, Augustus. The earliest known African Queen of ancient Nubia was Shanakdakheto, who ruled with full power from 170 to 150 BC the Kingdom of Kush, located east of the Nile in what is today Sudan. Lady Tikal, Queen of the Mayan city Tikal, ruled as Queen from 511 to 527 AD; the city’s ruins exist today in northern Guatemala. During the middle eighteenth century, Queen Pokou was the Queen and founder of the Baoule tribe of West Africa, today the Ivory Coast. The last Queen of the Tahitian island of Bora Bora was Teriimaevarua III, who reigned from 1873 to 1895 AD. The first Empress regnant of Japan was Empress Suiko, who reigned from 592 to 628 AD as the 33rd monarch of Japan. The Imperial House of Japan is today the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world, and was founded in 660 BC. As all reigning monarchs did, Queens regnant throughout history commanded armies, waged battles, and won or lost wars in order to protect their kingdoms and their titles. Queen Elizabeth II is not only the Commander-in-Chief of the UK, but also Canada, even though the strategic decisions made for the use of armed force are conducted by the Prime Ministers and Cabinets of each country, by for example Theresa May. Similar to the UK, Denmark is a constitutional monarchy and Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II, who ascended in 1972, is the head of the Danish military. For however much Queens of the centuries have exercised their power and ruled as any ruler does, justly or unjustly, with or without popularity, the power to vote within the world’s recent democracies was a privilege awarded to men only. In fact in 1787 women lost the right to vote in all U.S. states except for New Jersey, which revoked women’s voting in 1807. The territory of Wyoming was the first to grant suffrage to women in 1869. The territory of Utah followed in 1870, but took away the right in 1887, yet to reinstate it upon receiving statehood in 1896. In 1886 the suffrage amendment was defeated two-to-one in the U.S. Senate. New York was the first eastern

state to grant full voting rights to women in 1917, the same year Rhode Island granted women Presidential suffrage only. The suffrage movement persevered and the legal right to vote was granted nationally in 1920 with the Nineteenth Amendment. In the United Kingdom, it was in 1918 that a coalition government enfranchised women over the age of 30 who owned property, and all women over the age of 21 were

allowed to vote with the Representation of the People Act of 1928. While the concept of women’s national leadership seems foreign in the U.S., it is accepted in other countries throughout the world, particularly Europe, and has been so for centuries. However I do not mean to trivialize the challenges in Europe women leaders of modern political democracies confront because of their gender, or women in Africa, Asia or South America; I only perceive that the U.S. is conspicuously absent from upholding the belief that women can govern as well as men can. It is not that women in the U.S. are restricted from leading at this day in age, but that they are essentially alienated by a culture of masculinity that disparages feminine qualities of articulation, consideration, and empathy: qualities of culture which political

leaders have perhaps evaded, due to stigmas of weakness and inferiority. Although the United States has yet to elect a woman as President and is yet to maintain a percentage greater than 20% of women within leadership roles throughout the many facets of government, I do not mean to emphasize that women should be occupying these positions instead of the men who do so currently. I emphasize that respect for women and for their abilities as skilled and effective leaders be demonstrated by our country’s citizens, valuing the many qualities women leaders bring to our culture, and to the world’s civilization, which has, in many places, honored women’s leadership throughout the millennia. Sources included: wikipedia.org, “List of queens regnant”, “List of elected and appointed female heads of state”; thelizlibrary.org/suffrage/

“Votes for Women Wanted” 1909 poster for the Women’s Social and Political Union, United Kingdom, by Hilda Dallas