RLP 332: Elizabeth Packard – The Woman They Could not Silence

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 332 Elizabeth Packard The Woman They Could Not Silence. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.

Nicole (41s):
Today’s episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com. Well hi everybody, welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (48s):
Hi Nicole. how are you doing today?

Nicole (50s):
Good. I’ve been studying how to cite records from the National Archives, specifically land records. I had ordered some for my kinship determination project from Twisted Twigs, which is a retrieval company that will go and get various national archives’ records like Bounty land records, land entry files, various things like that. And the Evidence Explained example was a really good one, gave me some ideas, then Evidence Explained talks about how you should study the National Archives pamphlet on how to cite their materials, so I did that. And then I looked up all the instances of National Archives in Tom Jones’ book Mastering Genealogical Documentation to see ideas from him.

Nicole (1m 39s):
Then I studied all the NGSQs online. I opened up a bunch of ’em and then searched for land entry to see how they were cited in the NGSQ. So I got a lot of ideas and then kind of made my decision about how I wanted to cite for my own work and I think it’s tempting to just follow the model that Elizabeth Shown Mills made, but I wanted to make sure that what I was using was cited properly and had the correct series and not just blindly using whatever series she had listed, even if it didn’t match up with what I was seeing and so that was kind of how I went about it. And it kind of took longer, but at the end I felt confident that what I had put together was citing the correct information and thankfully Twisted Twigs, the retrieval service took a picture of the information card on the box that held the land entry file that I wanted to cite.

Nicole (2m 36s):
And so it had the nested information that you need to cite when using a repository. And so kind of the main idea of the citation was to start with the basic item and then describing that in full, basically like who the land entry file was for. Was it a cash entry file or a credit? And then the date and the land office and then a semicolon. And then you can put like the file jacket information and then another semicolon and then you can put the series and then another semicolon and then the subgroup and then a semicolon and then the record group and then a semicolon and the repository. And the idea is that you’re going from smallest to largest so that people can see all the different nested levels that you need to look at to find the exact item.

Diana (3m 22s):
So interesting. So why would you do semicolons instead of maybe like the waypoint symbol that we often use?

Nicole (3m 29s):
That’s just the convention.

Diana (3m 31s):
Oh, so interesting.

Nicole (3m 32s):
Mastering Genealogical Documentation and Evidence Explained and that’s how the National Archives pamphlet says to do it as well.

Diana (3m 40s):
Okay. So that’s just a convention for the National Archives records?

Nicole (3m 44s):
Yeah, and any repository that you’re using that has the nested groupings like that, the subgroups and things in the Mastering Genealogical Documentation class that I took this summer with Tom Jones, he talked about how we go from smallest to largest here in the US but then if you’re at a repository in Europe, I think he said that the preference there is to go largest to smallest. So you start with the repository name and then you go down to the specific item in reverse order.

Diana (4m 13s):
Well, and I know different people in our study group have had questions about doing that type of thing ’cause they’re working with repositories in France or Germany or Ireland and trying to figure out the best way to cite a record when it’s from an onsite location. So it’s so good to know that there are different ways of doing things and really best rule to follow is that we are being clear so that someone else can go pull that. And also consistent now that you’ve got that template, you can save that and you can use that each time.

Nicole (4m 45s):
Right, and I do actually have several land entry files that I’m using. So it’s gonna be important to have a consistent citation for all of those.

Diana (4m 56s):
Absolutely.

Nicole (4m 56s):
Well our announcements for today are that the webinar series this month we will be featuring Diana and she’s going to be talking about Who Was Clemsy Cline’s Father? DNA and Indirect Evidence Provide a Candidate in this Burned County Case Study. So this will be fun and we’ve been talking a lot about Clemsy Cline this year and Henderson Weatherford and all of your research that you’ve been doing on this family. So it’ll be nice to end out the year of 2024 with a case study webinar about what you found and how you found a potential father for her, which is so challenging to do, especially when you have burned counties and indirect evidence and DNA, so this will be really interesting.

Nicole (5m 37s):
You’re going to talk all about the Morgan County Missouri household that included those two Cline children that went along with her maiden name and then in the same neighborhood you had Jacob and Ali, the Cline’s household with more Arkansas connections. So figuring out the connection between these Cline and going back to a burn county, Izard County, Arkansas and looking at their tax records that were not burned and then continuing to research this potential Cline family and looking in DNA evidence for more information So, that will be such a fun webinar and we look forward to that. And the topics include burned counties, Arkansas, Tax Records, Federal Land Records, Cluster Research, Boundary Changes, Census Records, DNA, Indirect Evidence.

Nicole (6m 27s):
So that will be really fun and we look forward to that. And that will be held on December 10th at 11:00 AM Mountain Time. And if you haven’t registered for the webinar series for Research Like a Pro for this year, then you can still do so on our website and you’ll have lifetime access to all of this year’s recordings and the reports that go along with them. The next Research Like a Pro with DNA study group begins February, 2025. And it’s because Diana and I are always doing the study group and researching our own families, that we have all this great material and findings that we get to share in our podcast and in our webinars. So if you want to make great discoveries about your family, we really encourage you to join us in our Research Like a Pro with DNA study group.

Nicole (7m 9s):
Especially if you are still feeling uncertain about how to incorporate DNA evidence into your documentary research, then this will be a great way to dive in and really get all the info you need to apply DNA evidence. If you feel confident with your DNA evidence application, please join us as a peer group leader. You’ll get free registration and your responsibilities will be holding a Monday peer group meeting and providing feedback to a small group of peers of about five to seven people. Alright, if you haven’t joined our newsletter, we have the FamilyLocket newsletter that comes out every Monday and that has all of our recent blog posts, videos, and podcast episodes for you to see.

Nicole (7m 51s):
And special deals or coupons that we’re running will be listed there, so be sure that you join our newsletter to get that information. Our upcoming conferences include RootsTech on March 6th through 8th in Salt Lake City, which will be in person and online. And we look forward to presenting several lectures there and hopefully seeing many of you at our exhibit hall booth.

Diana (8m 12s):
It’s so fun to look forward to a new RootsTech and we have loved doing those in the past. We’ve gone every year except for the Covid years, since I think 2016. Such a great conference. Well today we are going to talk all about a book that we have both read and it’s titled The Woman They Could Not Silence, the Shocking Story of a Woman Who Dared to Fight Back. And this is all about Elizabeth Packard, a woman in the 1860s. The author is Kate Moore. And so first we’ll talk a little bit about the story in the book and then we’ll talk more about Kate’s writing of it.

Diana (8m 52s):
So this is all about women who have been institutionalized for mental illness and I don’t have anyone in in, you know, in our family tree. I don’t think we have anyone in this situation, but I have seen it in a couple of client projects where someone was institutionalized. So you may wonder what situation would warrant entry into an asylum. Well, in the early years, 1700s, 1800s, the United States and the colonies were using Common Law, which was from their British heritage. And there was something called coverture where when a woman married her husband took control of her property and she lost all her rights to govern her affairs.

Diana (9m 39s):
And if you can believe it, this also extended to determining whether she was sane or not. So it is so hard for us to imagine a world like this where a husband or a father could deem a woman insane and condemn her to an asylum for many reasons. Things like depression, anxiety, speaking out against her husband’s beliefs and many more things. The superintendents of the asylums would make an evaluation and generally they agreed with the husband or father.

Nicole (10m 11s):
Oh my goodness. It just makes me feel sick to think about that because it just feels like so unfair. Reading the book really gives you an insight into how unfair this was. So the book is about a woman in the 1860s who took a stand against this practice after her husband, Theophilus Packard committed her to the Illinois State Asylum and Hospital for the insane in Jacksonville. Elizabeth Packard not only worked for her release and that of many others kept against their will at the asylum, but upon her release she campaigned tirelessly to change the law in 24 states. She also worked to improve the treatment of the mentally ill within the institutions.

Nicole (10m 51s):
So this was just such a great book. And you know, I’m only about one third of the way through the book because I had to return it back to the library. I was listening to the audio book. So far what I’ve read is the part of the book where she is living at home and she’s having disagreements with her husband who is a preacher. He’s talking a lot about how it’s really sad to think about that he wanted her to stop speaking her opinions in church and he thought it was affecting his church. Then it kind of talks about from her perspective how her children were so important to her, but also she wanted to have the freedom to speak about what was important to her at church and in the community and just feeling like her husband wasn’t supporting her with that.

Nicole (11m 37s):
It talks a lot about how much her children loved her and how they were afraid for her because their father had been talking about sending her away. And it just is kind of heart wrenching to imagine a situation where a mother would be taken away from her children of all ages. You know, they had a lot of children and they were, there were some that were under 10 years old and some that were adults almost and and so it was just a sad situation. And then I’ve also listened to the part of the book where she is at the asylum, also the scene where she is being taken from her home and the onlookers in the community are feeling like they can’t do anything and she’s just certain that somebody’s gonna do something to help, but no one does anything and she’s just kind of shocked.

Nicole (12m 20s):
And then once she gets to the asylum, she’s certain that the superintendent will notice that she’s not insane and will send her back home. But that is kind of a shocking revelation as well that he doesn’t think she’s sane. Then it talks a lot about her experiences there and how there’s two different wards. There’s the ward for the people who are less violent and then there’s the ward for the people who are a little bit more wild and need to be contained more. And how as a punishment Elizabeth is sent to the the ward that has dangerous inmates in it and how it was scary for her. So that’s where I am in the book. She’s in that part of the asylum. So I’m excited to keep reading and finish it.

Nicole (13m 2s):
It’s just fascinating to consider how difficult it was for women at this time period.

Diana (13m 6s):
Right. I think when we’re doing our research we see a record and we think, oh, okay, well that is, I wonder what was going on there. But when we dive into a book like this, it gives us so much context and really opens our eyes, which is what this did for us. I love reading books like this because I can always take my own ancestors and put them in the place of the person and as I said, we don’t really have anyone that we know of that was put in asylum except for I did remember we have got my great grandpa’s sister who was in asylum, Debbie Harris, and there are family stories that she had some mental illness.

Diana (13m 51s):
And it makes me sad to think about how these asylums at the time probably were not really treating any type of illness that was just a place to put people. And certainly that’s the way it was in the 1860s. So if you have someone who was institutionalized before 1880, the book will really tell you what it was like after that. Elizabeth Packard had done the work to start changing things in many of the states. And so things did improve, but up until then, the superintendents were all powerful and it was one man and they would meet with the inmates, perhaps not even meet with them depending on, you know, how well off or how much they wanted to to meet with a person, but they would just declare a person sane and keep them in the institution indefinitely.

Diana (14m 42s):
And I appreciated how in the book we do learn a few of the other stories of other women and many of them were just like Elizabeth. Their husbands just wanted to get rid of them or their fathers wanted to get rid of them and put them in the institution. So it’s one of those books where it’s a little bit hard to swallow and read. But it’s important for us when we come across this in our family history to understand what it was like and maybe it will open the doors to some research to some more understanding for a family about what was going on. And I think if I did discover this in my family history, I would want to really try to understand what it was that could have caused this woman to be put in the institution, you know, like as you mentioned, we find in the book that Elizabeth Packard was, she was just outspoken.

Diana (15m 33s):
She had a mind of her own. And often that was the problem. you know, a woman was not supposed to have a mind of her own. And so she disagreed with her husband and it was causing a problem that could be grounds for putting her away.

Nicole (15m 46s):
While the author of the Woman They Could Not Silence is Kate Moore and she researched Elizabeth Packard for years in preparation. And the bibliography and the end notes in the book are very impressive. She wrote an epilogue about Elizabeth Packard’s work and the effect that her work had on the mental health institutions. So this is really helpful to kind of understand what the result of all this work was. In 1880, the National Association for the Protection of the Insane and the Prevention of Insanity was established to encourage patient friendly legislation and meaningful oversight of asylums.

Nicole (16m 28s):
And historians attribute its founding to agitations caused by campaigners, including Elizabeth who got society so riled up that formal action became essential. The arguments Elizabeth had been making for years now began to be printed in respected medical journals, which of course they were allowed to speak in public, but it is interesting to see how women were silenced in certain ways. You know, she wasn’t allowed to be the mouthpiece in the respected medical journal. It had to be a man publishing that. So not only does this kind of give you an insight into what it was like for those who are in a mental health institution, but it gives you an insight into how difficult it was for women to be heard and to have a voice in this time period.

Nicole (17m 11s):
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Nicole (17m 51s):
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Diana (18m 11s):
Well the book The Woman They Could Not Silence begins with Elizabeth being sent to this hospital. And as we’ve talked about already, her, her husband, Theophilus Packard had decided life would just be better without his wife. And we find out later in the book that he was really relying upon his income as a minister. And so it also had some economic repercussions because if she was taking away part of his congregation, he wasn’t going to get as much money and it was going to look bad for him. And he was answering to a religious group above him. And so, because Elizabeth had really started gathering some people that believed like her, she had unique views on religion and she was teaching that and had this whole group that was following her.

Diana (18m 59s):
And so Theophilus was not happy and she would not back down. He kept asking her to stop or telling her to stop and she just wouldn’t do it. So as you mentioned Nicole, it’s really a sad scene when she finds out that he is serious and he comes with these men to take her away from her children. And she loved her children so much. I was so impressed with, you know, everything about her children and they adored her. And if you can imagine having your mother taken away from you, it’s just hard to believe. So it’s very intriguing and as you start reading it, you just can’t put it down ’cause you’ve gotta see what’s gonna happen to her once she gets to this, this hospital.

Nicole (19m 39s):
Right? Yeah. And it’s interesting to hear about the various religious beliefs and you know, kind of the things that they disagreed on. And one thing that stood out to me was the morality of slavery and where Elizabeth was against slavery, which kind of embarrassed Theophilus, especially since his financial backers were supporters of slavery. And so he was feeling like a lot of pressure to teach whatever his financial backers were in favor of, which obviously is sad. You don’t want your church to have to be influenced by the person who’s bankrolling it, but that’s, that was the situation at the time.

Nicole (20m 21s):
And so, that seems to be the main disagreement that they had. But also the fact that she would not listen to what he told her to do, which is to be quiet. And I think he was also jealous of her, that she was really well spoken and he was kind of more awkward and just not very good at interpersonal relationships and things like that. She was just a, a sparkling personality and he felt like he paled in comparison. So there were a lot of factors and you know, in this day and age, a couple like this would just get divorced, but back then, especially this couple where they were so religious, didn’t believe in divorce. And so, you know, she wanted to have custody for children so she wouldn’t seek a divorce and he obviously didn’t believe in that.

Nicole (21m 9s):
So the only thing available for him was to use this method of sending her away to an asylum. And he just wanted her to be quiet and leave her alone. And she, she wouldn’t, she would not stop talking about her beliefs and she wanted to have a voice and so they really didn’t have the tools they needed to reconcile. And so he, you know, did this awful thing of sending her away as an insane person, which she obviously was not. But at the time there were a lot of beliefs that, you know, if a woman wouldn’t listen to her husband and if she wouldn’t quietly and submissively do what was asked of her, then she must be insane. And so there was kind of this like idea of a woman’s place and if she didn’t fit into that mold, there was something wrong with her.

Nicole (21m 57s):
So of course to our perspective, she doesn’t appear insane. But at the time they had these different beliefs for what women should be like. Well, at the state hospital, Elizabeth discovered she was not alone and there were many other completely sane women that had been sent to the hospital by their fathers or husbands. Elizabeth was at odds with the superintendent Andrew McFarland, and tried relentlessly to engineer her release and improve conditions for others in the hospital. Unfortunately, McFarland proved to be a formidable foe. And even when Elizabeth had been proven sane, he continued to fight against her work.

Nicole (22m 39s):
Elizabeth never gave up and continued to try. And in the book, Moore writes her husband, her doctor, and her very time all tried to silence her, but Elizabeth left her own record behind and her words now blaze through history to light the way to truth. She wrote, we should set our light blazing as an example to others and not set under a bushel. Thanks to her brilliance, her light still burns, inspiring others to follow. I love that because you can see not only her desire to let her voice be heard, but also her religious convictions, which I think are a lot of what made up her beliefs and personality and her desire to help others.

Nicole (23m 20s):
That she wanted to follow the Bible verse that talks about putting your light on a hill to show to others instead of hiding it under a bushel.

Diana (23m 30s):
Right. She did amazing work and it’s fun because we get to actually learn more about her because she wrote so much and I was fascinated with all the information that Kate Moore had to work with. You know, of course as I’m reading it, I’m always questioning, how does she know this or how does she know that? And there’s so many end notes in a a large bibliography you can see that the author researched so much. But the great thing is that Elizabeth Packard herself, well she wrote while she was in the asylum for one thing because she wanted to record everything that was happening to her. And then she also published pamphlets and books to support herself after she was released from the asylum and to further her work in change, changing the laws.

Diana (24m 17s):
So while she was in the asylum, she would write, she would get some paper and she would write tiny. And she wrote everything down, all the different abuses of the women that were going on. And she had to hide them because she knew if the superintendent found them, he would destroy them. And he did find some and did destroy some, but she was able to save so many of her notes and then go ahead and publish. When she was released from the asylum, she had to make her own way in the world. And she found that telling her story, people were very interested in hearing her story and they would buy her pamphlets and books. She would go around selling them and she made enough money, she became, you know, very self-sufficient and supported herself, which is awesome.

Diana (25m 5s):
At the very beginning, Kate Moore states, this is a nonfiction book. Everything in it is based on careful historical research. Every line of dialogue comes from a memoir letter, trial transcript or some other record made by someone who is present at the time. So I love that. That was so fascinating that she made this nonfiction, but she was able to use real dialogue throughout it because of all of her research and all the writing that had been done. So even though it is nonfiction, The Woman They Could Not Silence reads more like a fictional novel. And for us here in our modern world, it does seem incredible what was happening at the time.

Diana (25m 49s):
But injustices do continue in our own world and we see voices of women and the mentally ill continue to be silenced in various cultures and countries. So Elizabeth Packard is a role model for anyone who refuses to back down.

Nicole (26m 4s):
I love that. Well, what value does this book for us as family historians? Well, so much value. It provides context for our ancestors, especially our female ancestors who lived in this time and place in the, in the 1800s in the US and even women who lived all over the world during times where these views about women were held. And we may discover similar situations in our family tree and we have had several people in study groups and clients who have had women in their families sent to insane asylums for various reasons. This book also provides an example of writing a historical narrative based on research. And it’s really neat to see all of the sources that are used and how it’s woven together to create a story like feel.

Nicole (26m 52s):
One of the challenges of listening to the book, which is what I’ve been doing, is that I don’t get to look at the end notes as much. I know that usually audiobooks have a PDF file that goes with it. So, I need to look at that. But listening to a book versus looking at the book and being able to see the sources, you kind of miss out on some of that. So if you listen to it, make sure you look at the attached PDF to see all of the sources that were used, so that you can get that benefit of learning about how you can weave a historical narrative in kind of this format that uses dialogue and sounds much like storytelling rather than just technical writing. And get some ideas for how we can better write about our family histories and make them come alive.

Diana (27m 35s):
Right, and I think there’s also so much value of just understanding what women’s world was like with not being able to own property or to start a business, you know, they had so many rights that they did not have that we take for granted in our day because of this whole idea of coverture. So you know, that gradually became better as we move into the the more modern day. But when we’re looking at those records and we’re imagining our female ancestors, it kind of helps us to understand the world they were living in.

Nicole (28m 13s):
Absolutely. Well this has been so fun talking about Elizabeth Packard and The Woman They Could Not Silence By Kate Moore. We highly recommend it. We hope that you’ll take a chance to read it and learn about women in this time period in the US and the 1800s and insane asylums and we hope it helps you to to learn about this. Alright, well have a great week and we’ll talk to you next week.

Diana (28m 39s):
Alright, bye-Bye everyone.

Nicole (28m 39s):
Bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.