Elizabeth Buffum Chace and family papers (Ms.89.12)

Biographical/Historical Note

Elizabeth Buffum Chace (1806-1899) was a tireless, life-long worker for women's rights and the abolition of slavery, and is probably best known for opening her home as the main Rhode Island stop on the Underground Railroad.

Elizabeth Buffum was raised in Smithfield, Rhode Island, the daughter of active Quakers Arnold and Rebecca (Gould) Buffum. The family moved to Pomfret, Connecticut for several years, before Elizabeth spent a year at the Friends' Boarding School in Providence in 1822. Her family then moved to Fall River, Massachusetts, where she met and married Samuel B. Chace (1800-1870) in 1828.

Following in the footsteps of her father, the first president of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, Chace helped found the Fall River Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1835. Her family moved to Valley Falls, Rhode Island after Samuel's business failed in Fall River in 1840. It was in Valley Falls that Elizabeth and Samuel played an active part in the Underground Railroad. There, she sheltered fugitive slaves, hosted anti-slavery speakers (such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Sojourner Truth, and Wendell Phillips), and wrote numerous letters encouraging others, including her own children, to be activists in the cause of abolitionism. For her work, Elizabeth Buffum Chace became a social outcast and found a warm welcome only among a small band of abolitionists like herself.

After the Civil War, Chace served as vice-president of the American Anti-Slavery Society as it continued its efforts to assist the freedmen.

Chace's work for women's rights began in 1850, when she attended the Worcester Women's Rights Convention. She served as president of the Rhode Island Woman Suffrage Association from 1870 to her death. She was the driving force behind a women's suffrage amendment that was rejected by Rhode Island voters in 1887, and was also influential in the founding of Pembroke College, the women's college at Brown University.

Chace's other crusade was prison reform. In 1870, she convinced the state legislature to allow female inspectors in prisons as part of a Board of Lady Visitors. Her lobbying also led to the establishment of the Rhode Island Home and School for Dependent Children in 1884.

After losing her first five children at an early age, Elizabeth had the following five: Samuel O. Chace (1843-1867); Arnold Buffum Chace (1845-1932), eleventh Chancellor of Brown University, married to Eliza C. Greene; Elizabeth B. Chace (1847-1929), author, married to John C. Wyman; Edward G. Chace (1849-1871); and Mary E. Chace (b. 1852), married to James P. Tolman.

Bibliography:

"Elizabeth Buffum Chace and Lillie Chace Wyman”:

http://www.quahog.org/factsfolklore/index.php?id=104

“Homelessness Is Not A Crime: Elizabeth Buffum Chace and Creation of The State Home and School for Children, 1875-1885”:

http://www.ric.edu/statehomeandschool/resourcesStevens.html

"Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary" (Cambridge, Mass. Belknap Press, 1971), pp. 317-319.

“'Was She Clothed with the Rents Paid for These Wretched Rooms?': Elizabeth Buffum Chace, Lillie Chace Wyman, and Upper-Class Advocacy for Women Factory Operatives in Gilded Age Rhode Island,” Rhode Island History, vol. 52, no. 4 (November 1994), pp. 107-133.