Laura Smith Haviland

Laura Smith Haviland was born on December 20, 1808, in Kitley Township, Ontario, Canada, to American parents Daniel Smith and Asenath "Sene" Blancher, who had immigrated shortly before her birth. The Quakers encouraged the equal education of men and women, an extraordinarily forward-thinking position in an age when most individuals were illiterate, and providing a woman with a thorough education was largely viewed as unnecessary. Quaker women as well as men acted as ministers. While most Quakers did not agitate vocally for abolition, the majority condemned slavery as brutal and unjust. It was in this atmosphere that Haviland was raised. In 1815, her family left Canada and returned to the United States, settling in the remote and sparsely populated town of Cambria, in western New York. At the time there was no school near their home, and for the next six years Haviland's education consisted of little more than "a spelling lesson" given to her daily by her mother. Haviland described herself as an inquisitive child, deeply interested in the workings of the world around her, who at a young age began questioning her parents about everything from scripture to Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation. Once she had mastered spelling, Haviland supplemented her meager education by devouring every book she could borrow from friends, relatives, and neighbors, reading everything from religious material to serious historical studies. At sixteen, Laura met Charles Haviland, Jr., a devout young Quaker, whose parents were both respected ministers. They were married on November 11, 1825, at Lockport, New York. According to Laura, Charles was a devoted husband and theirs was a happy marriage. They were the parents of eight children. The Havilands spent the first four years of their marriage in Royalton Township, near Lockport, New York, before moving in September 1829, to Raisin, Lenawee County, in the Michigan Territory. They settled three miles (5 km) from the homestead her parents acquired four years earlier. Michigan was then a largely unsettled wilderness, but land was cheap, and there were a number of other Quakers in the vicinity. == Anti-slavery work and the Raisin Institute ==

Haviland vividly recalled seeing African Americans verbally abused, and even physically assaulted, in Lockport, New York, when she was a child. These experiences, combined with the horrific descriptions in John Woolman's history of the slave-trade, made an indelible impression. Five years later, in 1837, Haviland and her husband founded a "manual labor school ... designed for indigent children," which was later known as the Raisin Institute. Haviland instructed the girls in household chores, while her husband and one of her brothers, Harvey Smith, taught the boys to perform farm work. Some of Haviland's white students, upon learning they were to study with African Americans, threatened to leave. Most were persuaded to remain, however, and Laura wrote that once the students were together in the classroom their prejudices "soon melted away." By 1839, in order to continue with their abolitionist work, the Havilands, her parents, and fourteen other like-minded Quakers, felt compelled to resign their membership. They then joined a group of Methodists known as the Wesleyans, who were equally devoted to the abolitionist cause. Laura remained on for several months as the settlement's teacher. She then traveled to Ohio, where, with her daughter Anna, she taught in a school founded for African-American children in Cincinnati and Toledo, Ohio. By 1856, she returned to Michigan, having raised sufficient funds to reopen the Raisin Institute. The new curriculum included lectures by former slaves about life on a slave plantation. In 1864, the Institute closed again after many in the staff and some students enlisted to fight in the Civil War. == Work for the Underground Railroad ==

During the 1830s, the Haviland family began hiding runaway enslaved people on their farm. Their home became the first Underground Railroad station established in Michigan. She also traveled to the South on multiple occasions to aid escaped enslaved people. Her first trip was made in 1846, in an effort to free the children of fugitive enslaved humans Willis and Elsie Hamilton. The children were still in the possession of their mother's former enslaver, John P. Chester, a tavern-keeper in Washington County, Tennessee. Chester had learned of the Hamilton's whereabouts and sent slave-catchers after them. When that failed, Chester attempted to lure the Hamiltons to his plantation with the promise that they would be treated as freedmen and reunited with their children. == Civil War and Reconstruction ==

During the Civil War, Laura toured many refugee camps and hospitals, even venturing onto the frontlines, to distribute supplies to displaced citizens, freed slaves, and soldiers. Haviland's actual duties consisted of far more than inspecting hospitals. She spent the next two years traveling through Virginia, Tennessee, Kansas, and Washington, D.C., distributing supplies, reporting on the living conditions of Freedmen and indigent whites, organizing refugee camps, establishing schools, working as a teacher, volunteering as a nurse at freedmen's hospitals, and giving public lectures. In an effort to help whites understand what the freedmen had endured under slavery, she toured abandoned plantations and collected chains, irons, restraints, and other implements which had been used on slaves. Haviland transported these items north and exhibited them during her lectures. She also met personally with President Andrew Johnson to petition for the release of former slaves still being held in Southern prisons for attempting years before to escape slavery. While working at the Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C., Haviland met and befriended Sojourner Truth, who later recalled an incident that took place one day when they had gone into town to get supplies. Haviland suggested they take a street car back to the hospital. Truth described what happened next as follows: == The Haviland Home orphanage ==

After the Civil War, the Freedmen's Aid Commission acquired the former Raisin Institute, renamed it the Haviland Home, and converted it into an orphanage for African-American children. Its first residents were seventy-five homeless children brought by Haviland from Kansas. As other children joined their ranks, and their numbers increased, many whites in Michigan became unnerved. They claimed that Haviland was burdening white taxpayers and demanded that Haviland Home be closed. Matters came to a head in 1867, when the orphanage was purchased by the American Missionary Association, who closed the orphanage, and literally threw the orphans out into the street. Haviland abandoned her work in Washington, D.C., to return to Michigan and help the children. She managed to collect enough donations to purchase the orphanage and began to manage it herself. By 1870, funds were extremely scarce. The situation became so dire that, at Haviland's urging, the state took over the orphanage and it became the Michigan Orphan Asylum. == Later years ==

When the Reconstruction ended in 1877, many African Americans fled the South, where they were subject to attacks by racist individuals and groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Thousands of African-American men, women, and children, crowded into makeshift refugee camps in Kansas. Determined to help, Haviland set out with her daughter Anna for Washington, D.C., where she testified about the appalling conditions at the camps, before traveling to Kansas with supplies for the refugees. Using her personal savings, Haviland purchased in Kansas for the freedmen at one of the refugee camps to live on and farm. == Death ==

During her life, Laura Haviland not only fought slavery and worked to improve the living conditions of freedmen, she was also actively involved in other social causes, advocating for women's suffrage, and helping to organize the Women's Christian Temperance Union in Michigan. She is buried next to her husband in the Raisin Valley Cemetery in Adrian, Michigan. Symbolically, at Haviland's funeral, hymns were sung by a choir of white and African-American singers, and then her casket was carried to the grave by a group of white and African-American pall-bearers. == Legacy ==

• The town of Haviland, Kansas, is named in her honor. • A statue of Laura Haviland stands in front of the Lenawee County Historical Museum in Adrian, Michigan. == Selected work ==

• (1866) Letter from Laura Smith Haviland to Sojourner == References ==