Letters They Might Have Written

F-8

Letters They Might Have Written

Ione Clark, Sun City, Arizona

1997, Revised May 2005

Costumes: Dresses of the period of 1869 (long black skirt, white blouse)

Stage setting: An old table with perhaps a fringed cloth, old-fashioned oil lamp, and inkwell with pen. Taller chest or table topped by seven candles in holders. Straight chair by the table. Perhaps a fern on a stand.

Suggestions: As narrator mentions a Founder’s name, she lights one candle in memory of that one. As she is lighting it, the Founder comes to the stage and sits at the table, pretending to write a letter. When the Narrator finishes the description of her, the Founder stands, reads her letter, and then returns to her original place. Movements should be slow and reading done with expression.

Order of Appearance: Narrator, Hattie Briggs, Franc Roads, Alice Coffin, Mary Allen, Suela Pearson, Ella Stewart, Alice Bird

Script to follow: For NARRATOR with seven Founders letters on separate pages.

Narrator:

It was just an idea once, a thought, an inspiration born out of the friendship between seven girls, and the thought bound them together in a circle that had neither beginning nor end. They must have thought they were building something beautiful and lasting.

The seven were just girls, but the maturity of their idea belied their ages. The heritage that held them together they left to the world—to generations of women who believed in their idea. Though they had a diversity of lives, personalities, associations, and abilities, they became one, and in their unity lay strength. It made them sisters in love, in thought, in action, forever. This is our heritage—a gift to us from seven young girls.

Each year, as we honor our Founders, we are reminded of the difference in customs and life since that January of 1869. We try to imagine what was in their minds and hearts in the midst of a busy college life, as they laid the foundations for our beloved P.E.O.

What would they be thinking about in the year of 1869? What was going on in the world around them _____ years ago? The Civil War was over. Thomas Edison was 22. Victoria was Queen in England. Croquet was popular. Bustles were becoming. The feminist movement was alive with the status of women changing. The girls felt fortunate to be receiving a college education.

In an attempt to comprehend their position, we have imagined what they might have written to family or friends in winter or spring of 1869. Certainly the organization of P.E.O. would have been uppermost in their minds. Yet, we are sure they were interested in all phases of life about them in the world in those days. Let’s go back in time and light a candle in memory as we honor each of our Founders.

1

HATTIE enters and sits at table as NARRATOR lights candle.

NARRATOR: (lighting first candle)

This first candle is in memory of HATTIE BRIGGS. She was a leader on the campus of Iowa Wesleyan College. Her father was a Methodist minister and a trustee of the college. Their home at the northwest corner of the campus attracted a stream of young people during the school year. It was Hattie who was the first to mention her dream of P.E.O. She was a joyous leader, whose key statement was “Let’s have a society of our own." She left us the dream, and though she did not linger long, the seed was hers. She lived only eight more years after the founding of P.E.O.

HATTIE reads letter, finishes, and leaves.

FRANC enters and sits at table as NARRATOR lights second candle and says:

NARRATOR: (lighting second candle)

This candle is in memory of FRANC ROADS. Franc was considered “ahead of her time." She was the artist in the group, energetic and dynamic. Her mother was also an artist. Franc taught art after graduation, attended the Art Institute of Chicago, and was interested in the feminist movement. She was to count Susan B. Anthony, Frances Willard, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucy Stone among her friends. In addition, she worked many years to get women admitted to the General Council of the Methodist Church. She taught us to reach toward the star, to look for new things to accomplish. She married her classmate Simon Elliot. Her interest in education led her to study in many universities and enjoy one including one summer of study in Europe. We can but imagine what was in her thinking in 1869 as she wrote . . .

FRANC reads her letter, then leaves.

ALICE VIRGINIA COFFIN enters and sits at table as NARRATOR lights candle and says:

NARRATOR: (lighting third candle)

Our third candle is in memory of ALICE VIRGINIA COFFIN. Alice was a southern beauty. Her mother died when she was nine, but she, her sister Mary Frances, and two brothers were a close family, conscious of their colonial ancestry and devoted to their father. Alice was to become a teacher, greatly loved by her pupils and her young nieces and nephews. She loved gaiety but was very perceptive, and education (then often called "general improvement) was important to her. Early in her teaching career she left the Methodist Church and became an Episcopalian, not only because she was impressed with the ritual of that church but because she was fond of dancing, and the Methodist Church frowned on that activity. It was Alice, born in Kentucky, who chose our emblem—the star we all wear to bind us to our sisters. We imagine her writing to her sister during the winter of 1869.

ALICE reads letter, then leaves.

MARY ALLEN enters and sits at table as Narrator lights candle and says:

NARRATOR: (lighting fourth candle)

Our fourth candle is in memory of Mary Allen. Mary was born in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. Her home was the hospitable center of Wesleyan college life. Much of the early P.E.O. history was made in the Allen home. God was her companion. Her unswerving faith gave spirituality to the dream and made it an ideal she could cling to, finding in it rich virtue. Mary was noted for her sense of humor and a ready wit. As wife of a Methodist minister, Charles L. Stafford, her happiest days were when her husband served as President of Iowa Wesleyan and she returned to Mt. Pleasant to live. We imagine her writing to a congenial relative, a cousin perhaps, about the happenings of P.E.O. and her life in 1869.

1

MARY ALLEN reads letter and departs.

SUELA PEARSON enters and sits at table as Narrator lights candle. (Please note that “Suela” is pronounced Sue-EE-la not Sue-EL-la, per Joyce Goff, International President, 2004).

NARRATOR: (lighting fifth candle)

Our fifth candle is in memory of Suela Pearson. Suela was the youngest of the seven and a favorite of all. She had beauty, charm, and intelligence, we are told. She was wealthy and pretty as a flower, but not spoiled. Music was her specialty, and she loved to sing. Following her graduation, her doctor father moved the family to Washington, D.C. If she had written her cousin in Ohio in the winter of 1869, no doubt she bragged a bit about P.E.O.

SUELA reads letter and departs.

ELLA STEWART enters and sits at table. NARRATOR lights candle and says:

NARRATOR: (lighting sixth candle)

This candle is in memory of Ella Stewart. Ella’s life was one of devoted service to others. She loved people—all people—and readily identified herself with every person she met. Her natural intuition and training made her unusually sensitive to others. But more than that, Ella was a doer, quick to respond to the needs about her and capable of enlisting help when needed. She filled her role to perfection.

ELLA reads letter and departs.

ALICE BIRD enters and sits at table. NARRATOR lights candle and says:

NARRATOR: (lighting seventh candle)

This last candle is in memory of Alice Bird. Adventuresome Allie, brilliant student with total recall, an intellectual, an expert at Latin, with a tremendous knowledge of literature. She felt a kinship with literary characters whom she dramatized and quoted freely. She was not what she called a “man worshipper” but had lots of fun. She was a forceful reader and singer, and in demand on city and college literary programs. To give Hattie’s idea reality, Alice created a vow and drew up the constitution to give the dream strength, dignity and substance.

ALICE reads letter and departs.

NARRATOR:

Without these seven the dream would not be ours. How rich, our heritage. Let us light the eternal fire in our hearts and again pledge our devotion to the dream and to each other—handing on the torch to generations to come, knowing that if we can only plant the seed in the spring of each generation, someday there may be an end to war and hate, and only love will inhabit the world.

CANDLE ONE

HATTIE BRIGGS LETTER

Dear Aunt Mary,

I take my pen in hand to tell you all the family are well and hope you are too. I am studying hard this term. I have an interesting course that includes Moral Philosophy, Logic, Astronomy, Evidences of Christianity, and Political Economy. Already we are busy working on our commencement orations.

I have six very good friends here at school and recently we organized a society. But it’s not a Greek society. We want to be different. We are P.E.O. s and the name is secret. We have agreed to tell NO ONE the meaning—not even our husbands after we marry. I’m not sure you will approve of that, for you, no doubt, think a wife should have no secrets from her husband. But we have pledged ourselves to secrecy. No member shall ever reveal its meaning.

Last week a teacher drove some distance west to see the special train that was going to Ogden, Utah, to meet the Union Pacific train from San Francisco. He said the train was all trimmed in red, white, and blue and carried many flags. There was a solid gold spike aboard which they were going to put into the last tie that will join the rails from one coast to the other. Think of the speed with which people will travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific!

There are some folks here who wonder if this speed is a good thing. They think that our wild rush for speed and the trains opening up all over the country have much to do with young people going so wild. Did you hear that Jessie and Frank James robbed a bank in Creston last week and killed the teller? But I think the war has a lot to do with the present wickedness. Wars always bring grief and disaster. How good it is to know that it is over at last and we can look forward to peace and tranquility in our beloved land. But oh, how things have changed. The men coming back to college after the war are part of the cause. Sometimes you see a man actually walking alone with a girl! Last year he would have been called on the carpet. You don’t even see many professors frowning when they hear laughter.

The family sends greetings.

Your niece,

Hattie

1

CANDLE TWO

FRANC ROADS LETTER

Dear Auntie,

It is with great joy that I take my pen in hand to tell you of an exciting event her at Wesleyan. I know I have told you of my six best friends, “the seven sisters” we are sometimes called. Well, we have decided to be sisters indeed and have organized a sorority. Alice Virginia and I designed the pin. I’m enclosing a drawing of it. I’m sure even my artist mother will approve. (She also approves that I’m learning to paint china.) As soon as the pins are made, we plan to walk into assembly together wearing them. The girls thought that if we wore aprons just alike it would be really a spectacle, and I told them I was sure my mother would design them for us. I can just see us—aprons alike, the stars blazing—walking into Assembly Hall. We are keeping quiet about it until that day. Although, no doubt, some have wondered at our frequent meetings in the Music Room—always behind closed doors. And it’s not just aprons, pins, and so forth; we want it to help build our ideals and character. We’ve written fine ideals into it, and we hope to grow and develop by following them. Of course we know living up to fine ideals is up to us ourselves, but surely having “sisters” with the same standard will help.

I have heard rumors that there has been dissention in the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Miss Anthony and Horace Greeley shouted at each other at a recent meeting, and Miss Anthony and some of the women left. They are organizing the National Women’s Suffrage Association, while Miss Lucy Stone and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe are organizing the American Women’s Suffrage Association. It is surely too bad that they can’t work together for such a great cause. I read in the American Woman’s Home Magazine that women should have more rights because of the “great social and moral power in their keeping.” I wonder if women will ever be permitted to vote. When I think that in our own beloved church, women are not allowed on the General Council, I despair of women ever being allowed to vote for President.

Do take care of yourself during this awfully cold winter.

Your loving niece,

Franc

CANDLE THREE

ALICE VIRGINIA COFFIN LETTER

Dear Mary Frances,

I hope this finds the family well. Has Father escaped the grippe this winter? Are the girls well? The weather has been extremely cold here. I packed my bed tick just as full of straw as I could but the cold came right through anyway and I had to break the ice in my water pitcher this morning.

I told you in my last letter about our new P.E.O. Well, we made our first appearance in Chapel the other day. It was thrilling! The night before, we completed our aprons which Franc’s mother had designed for us. They are black and white calico, ruffled all around, left shoulder high for our P.E.O. pin—a golden star. You can imagine the excitement when we walked in together. I was especially happy because the star was my idea.