Eliza Tupper Wilkes

Eliza Tupper Wilkes
A white woman, standing, in a black clergy robe, with hands folded.
Tupper Wilkes from an 1893 publication
Born
Eliza Mason Tupper

October 8, 1844
Houlton, Maine, U.S.
DiedFebruary 5, 1917
Atlantic City, New Jersey, U.S.
OccupationMinister

Eliza Mason Tupper Wilkes (October 8, 1844 – February 5, 1917) was an American suffragist and Unitarian Universalist minister.

Early life

Eliza Mason Tupper was born in Houlton, Maine, the daughter of Allen Tupper and Ellen Smith Tupper. Her father was a Protestant minister; her mother was a writer and editor, and an expert beekeeper.[1] Her sisters included Mila Tupper Maynard (who also became a Unitarian minister)[2] and educators Margaret Tupper True and Kate Tupper Galpin.[3] The family moved to Iowa in Tupper's childhood, but she returned to live with grandparents in Maine for her schooling. She graduated from Iowa Central College in 1866.[1]

A white woman, in 3/4 profile, wearing a high-necked white dress with large sleeves.
Eliza Tupper Wilkes, from a 1913 publication.

Ministry work

Tupper taught school in Mount Pleasant, Iowa as a young woman, hoping that her training as a teacher would prepare her for life as a Baptist missionary. However, she converted to Universalist instead, and became a minister in that denomination, preaching first in Iowa, then Wisconsin,[4] then Minnesota, where she was ordained in 1871.[5] After her husband became a lawyer, the family moved to Colorado, where she organized a new church in Colorado Springs.[6] In 1875 she attended the first Women's Ministerial Conference, hosted in Boston by Julia Ward Howe. In 1876 she was one of the founding leaders of Colorado College.[1]

In 1878, Wilkes moved again, to Sioux Falls in Dakota Territory. She organized seven Universalist congregations in the upper midwest, sometimes providing sermons and pastoral care in multiple states by riding a circuit from church to church.[5][7] Once the churches were established, she handed them to another pastor, often another woman pastor from the Iowa Sisterhood.[8] She was director of the Iowa Unitarian Conference.[1]

Wilkes relocated to California in the 1890s, serving as pastor of the Unitarian Church in Alameda, and assistant pastor in Oakland, California.[1] She was a delegate to the Pacific Unitarian Conference,[9] and was president of the Western Woman's Unitarian Conference.[10][11] Late in life, she was chaplain of the Cumnock School of Expression in Los Angeles.[12]

Suffrage

Wilkes was honorary vice president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, representing South Dakota, in 1884. She attended the World's Congress of Representative Women in Chicago in 1893.[4] In 1896 she spoke at a Salvation Army camp meeting in Oakland, on the same platform as Susan B. Anthony.[13] She split pulpit duties with Anna Howard Shaw and Eleanor Gordon at the 1905 national suffrage convention in Portland, Oregon. She shared the platform with both Anthony and Shaw at the second annual Women's Congress in San Francisco in 1895,[14] and at a 1905 suffrage rally in Venice, California.[15] She represented California at the International Woman Suffrage Conference in Budapest in 1913.[1][3]

Personal life and death

Tupper married William Augustus Wilkes, a lawyer, in 1869, in Wisconsin; they had five sons and a daughter born between 1872 and 1884.[3][16][4] Tupper Wilkes was widowed in 1909, and died in 1917, aged 72 years, while on holiday in Atlantic City, New Jersey.[17] Wilkes' grave in South Dakota[18] is not separately marked, but there is a historical marker about her life and work nearby.[19]

Her sister Mila Tupper Maynard wrote a biography, A Mother's Ministry: Glimpses of the life of Eliza Tupper Wilkes, 1844-1917.[20] Her sister Margaret Tupper True's son was illustrator and muralist Allen Tupper True.[21]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Eliza Tupper Wilkes". Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography. Retrieved 2019-09-09.
  2. ^ "Mila Tupper Maynard". Nevada Women's History Project. Retrieved 2019-09-09.
  3. ^ a b c Porter, Florence Collins; Trask, Helen Brown (1913). Maine Men and Women in Southern California: A Volume Regarding the Lives of Maine Men and Women of Note and Substantial Achievement, as Well as Those of a Younger Generation Whose Careers are Certain, Yet Still in the Making. Kingsley, Mason & Collins. p. 86.
  4. ^ a b c Mielewczik, Michael; Jowett, Kelly; Moll, Janine (2019). "Beehives, Booze and Suffragettes: The "Sad Case" of Ellen S. Tupper (1822–1888), the "Bee Woman" and "Iowa Queen Bee"". Entomologie heute. 31: 113–227.
  5. ^ a b Lindell, Lisa R. (Summer 2008). "'Sowing the Seeds of Liberal Thought': Unitarian Women Ministers in Nineteenth-Century South Dakota" South Dakota History 38(2): 152-156.
  6. ^ Encyclopedia Staff (2018-05-21). "All Souls Unitarian Church". Colorado Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2019-09-10.
  7. ^ Levisay, Sheri (May 12, 2010). "A Church Built by Women; Circuit Riders Started Congregations, Donated Building for Use as Library". Argus-Leader. p. 13. Retrieved September 10, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ Peterson, Polly (2011-10-26). "Eliza Tupper Wilkes Riding for Faith, Hope, and Love". Unitarian Universalist Association, Toolbox of Faith materials. Retrieved 2019-09-09.
  9. ^ Sunderland, Jabez Thomas; Herford, Brooke; Mott, Frederick B. (June 1897). "Portland, Ore". The Unitarian. 12: 284.
  10. ^ "Women's Unitarian Conference". The Pacific Unitarian. 2–3: 239. June 1895.
  11. ^ "Work of Woman". The San Francisco Call. April 12, 1894. p. 3. Retrieved September 9, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ^ "Woman Minister is Called to Reward". The Los Angeles Times. February 8, 1917. p. 13. Retrieved September 10, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ^ "Ardent Suffragists". San Francisco Call. July 24, 1896. p. 13. Retrieved September 9, 2019 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
  14. ^ "Women the Speakers, 'Home' the Theme". San Francisco Chronicle. May 21, 1895. p. 9. Retrieved September 10, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  15. ^ "Thousands Hear Suffrage Leaders". Los Angeles Herald. August 2, 1905. p. 6. Retrieved September 9, 2019 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
  16. ^ Tucker, Cynthia Grant (1994). Prophetic Sisterhood: Liberal Women Ministers of the Frontier, 1880-1930. Indiana University Press. p. 74. ISBN 9780253208224.
  17. ^ "Club Women Mourn Associate's Death". Los Angeles Herald. February 8, 1917. p. 2. Retrieved September 9, 2019 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
  18. ^ "Mt Pleasant Cemetery – Sioux Falls, SD » Featured Resident". Archived from the original on 2019-06-29. Retrieved 2019-09-10.
  19. ^ "Eliza Tupper Wilkes". South Dakota Historical Markers on Waymarking.com. Retrieved 2019-09-10.
  20. ^ Maynard, Mila Tupper. A Mother's Ministry: Glimpses of the life of Eliza Tupper Wilkes, 1844-1917 (J. F. Rowny Press, c. 1917).
  21. ^ Rinaldi, Ray Mark (2009-09-24). "Allen Tupper True: The West's True Visionary". The Denver Post. Retrieved 2019-09-10.