Thank you Lucy Stone.
I love “Town & Country Weddings” for the single page glimpses of what’s new in the wonderful world of Weddings. I also actually enjoy reading their articles and just last evening touched upon a piece of history, I’m embarassed to admit, that I’d never heard.
I struggled with the idea of taking my husband’s name and losing my surname. Many women, I’ve read, will retain their identity as a sign of commitment to their husbands. Others feel that taking their husband’s name will make them less “pro woman”. I, myself, just love my family so much that by taking my husbands last name, I felt a bit like I was betraying my family, of whom I am very much proud to be a part.
What I’ve never for a moment thought about, until it was brought to my attention in an article from Town & Country Weddings, was that I had a choice. Lucy Stone gave every woman in America the option of choosing her partner’s name or keeping her own. Stoner was a suffragette (she fought for women’s rights to vote) and an advocate of abolition (anti-slavery) and women’s rights. She also, against traditional doctrine and her father’s will, worked to gain a formal education. She attended Oberlin College in Ohio, which was the first college in the United States to admit both African Americans and Women. Anyway, in 1855 she married a man named Henry Blackwell and is considered to be the first woman in America to have retained her maiden name.