The Mockingbird's Ballad

"Well, girl, take it easy for a few days. The way you've been working this winter on finishing that new shed, it's no wonder," Mama Bear said with her back to Lou as she took her flour from the kitchen cabinet for biscuits. She smiled at the tin front of the cabinet, her face away from Lou. Mama Bear hoped. No children in seven years had been disappointing but she'd tried to hide those feelings. Maybe she'd have a baby to fuss over in not too long a period of time.

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While Lou's hands and back were busy with the life and work of a farmer and stockbreeder, her thoughts were focused on a variety of ideas. From her time as a six-year-old when Grand had taught her to read, she had cultivated that skill and avocation. Sherrill's had a small news/book corner and she spent part of her shopping time every few weeks exploring its publications. Solon had told her about The Revolution, a magazine run by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, that advocated her social passion - women's suffrage. Her Cherokee heritage of strong women, a matriarchal social structure, skills as farrier and stock handler, lover of the land and its tending, experience as a soldier, talents and convictions about business matters was a strong foundation and informing structure for her beliefs and hopes for women. Solon was not threatened by that. It served to endear him to her mightily. She didn't see being married to anyone who didn't let her believe and act as she felt.

He had noticed early on the importance and contribution of women in the church. He'd met Olympia Brown, the first denominational ordained Protestant minister in 1863. Miss Brown's (she kept her maiden name) husband, John Henry Willis and Solon had taken to one another when Solon had traveled to Chicago in 1874 on church business. He told Lou that Miss Brown was a pixie with the heart of a lion. He thought she was as good a preacher as he'd ever heard, save Edwin H. Chaplin, influential and eloquent Universalist minister in New York. A good half of Lou's precious leisure time, usually late at night in the glow of a kerosene lamp, was devoted to reading about the women's movement and writing letters to the field soldiers in that effort from Maine to the Wyoming Territory. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton's organization, American Women's Suffrage Association, got an annual donation, only $5 at first in 1870, now $15 in 1877. She'd tried to enlist G. W. in the cause but he couldn't bring himself to that challenge. He said he was too old.