Guide to the Archival Collections.pdf - Missouri History Museum

Girls and later was tutored in college subjects by Yale professors. She married Philadelphia
lawyer Frank Geoffrey Quay Umsted in 1855. A few years later, she published her first novel,
Southwold. Her husband died in 1859, and she took up her literary work as a means of
supporting herself and two children. During the first year of the Civil War, she was Washington
correspondent of the New York Evening Post. In 1866, she married New York merchant Grenfill
Blake. Her first active work in behalf of woman suffrage began in 1870. She arranged
conventions, addressed committees of both houses of Congress and the legislature of several
states, presided at public meetings, and made extensive lecture tours. One of her novels, Fettered
For Life, was written during this period (1874) as a protest against the status of women in the
community. She was president of the New York State Woman's Suffrage Association for 11
years, and in 1900 she founded the National Legislative League to obtain for women equality of
legal, municipal, and industrial rights through action by Congress and state legislatures. She
championed measures that established matrons in police stations, women census takers, and
women physicians in insane asylums admitting women patients. Her last book, A Dangerous
Experiment, was published in 1892.
Collection consists largely of data used by her daughter Katherine Devereux Blake to write
her biography, Champion of Women: The Life of Lillie Devereux Blake. Although the collection
contains few of Blake's letters, it does include several, though not all, of her original journals and
diaries, ranging from 1847 to 1903; a complete transcription of her diaries as prepared by her
daughter; her unfinished autobiography; notes and texts of many of her public addresses;
correspondence received; scrapbooks and printed matter relating to her involvement in the
woman suffrage campaign. The collection includes letters from Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. While the correspondence files
relate largely to woman suffrage activities in New York and in the national arena, they also
contain material relating to women's reform activities nationwide especially in connection with
the National Legislative League that Blake founded to lobby for reform in the state legislatures.
The collection also contains a small body of Civil War letters that Blake received from men in
service with whom she was acquainted.
Finding aid available.
Cite as: Lillie Devereux Blake Papers, Missouri History Museum Archives, St. Louis.
A2075
Bland, P.E.
Letter, 1869 Oct 26. 1 item [formerly Alphabetical File]
Letter signed P.E. Bland, St. Louis, to a friend regarding a legal suit brought before the St.
Louis County Court.
Cite as: P.E. Bland Letter, Missouri History Museum Archives, St. Louis.
A2076
Bland, Richard Parks (1835-1899).
Letter, 1878 Apr 10. 1 item [formerly Alphabetical File]
Richard Parks Bland was born in Kentucky. He moved to Missouri in 1855 but later left for
the West. He returned to Missouri in 1865 where he eventually settled in Lebanon. In 1869, he
was elected to Congress as a Democrat. He became an advocate of free silver coinage and
sponsored the Bland-Allison Silver Purchase Act of 1878. His work as a silver advocate earned
him the nickname "Silver Dick" Bland. He was a strong contender for the 1896 Democratic
presidential nomination but lost to William Jennings Bryan. Although unsuccessful for reelection
in 1894, he was reelected in 1897 and served until his death in 1899.