Lottie could hardly believe what she was hearing. “And did you?” she asked.
Sarah nodded, her eyes shining. “Every one of us signed. Papa says we will leave within a month.”
Lottie gasped. When she had been younger, six and seven and eight years old, she had believed everything her parents and the pastor told her about God and the Bible, but now that she was ten, most of it didn’t make sense anymore. Even though the Moons tried not to talk about religious differences in front of the children, Lottie was a smart young girl who knew that many churchgoers in Scottsville and nearby Charlottesville avoided one another because of their different views on religion. Her own Uncle James and Aunt Julia were a case in point. They had left the Baptist church to join a new denomination called the Disciples of Christ. And they weren’t the only ones; entire congregations had left the Baptist church to join this new denomination. Bitterness and gossip ran deep, and Lottie, following the lead of her older sister, Orie, decided she wanted nothing at all to do with religion or God.
And now her three cousins were going off to the other side of the world to teach Jews about Jesus Christ. Lottie attempted a weak smile, but inside she could hardly believe that Uncle James would drag his family away from their comfortable and happy home. But the thing that troubled Lottie the most was that Sarah and the rest of her family seemed to think going to Jerusalem was a good idea.
What could she say? In the end, Lottie grasped Sarah’s hand. “You will write to me, won’t you?” she said, certain that they would be leaving soon. Uncle James was the kind of man who, when he announced something, went right out and did it.
Sure enough, a month later, people from all over the district gathered in Scottsville for a farewell service for the Barclays. Two of the Moon children were not in attendance. Tom, Lottie’s now nineteen-year-old brother, was in Charlottesville studying to be a doctor, and Mollie, the newest Moon baby, was at home with her nanny.
Lottie wished she could have stayed home, too. The thought of her cousins leaving Virginia, possibly forever, made her very sad, especially since they were going off to be missionaries. If there was a single way to waste a life, Lottie told herself, being a missionary was it.
Chapter 2
Proper Young Ladies
Lottie watched out the window as her father’s carriage was brought around to the front entrance of Viewmont. It seemed to her these days that someone was always coming or going. It was 1853, and thirteen-year-old Lottie was the oldest child left at home. Tom was in his final year at medical school, and Ike was in his first year at the University of Virginia studying to become a lawyer. Meanwhile, Orie was attending Troy Female Seminary, where she was learning all sorts of interesting facts about the new women’s rights movement. In fact, some of her teachers had been at Seneca Falls in 1848 for the first Women’s Rights Convention, and Elizabeth Blackwell and Lucretia Mott had come to Troy Female Seminary to visit the teachers.
“So you will make sure the new driveway is dug out to a depth of at least ten inches before the stones are laid on top.” Lottie heard her father instructing her mother as the two walked down the spiral staircase together.
“Yes, Edward, I’ll see to that,” replied her mother. “And I have the instructions written down on how to have the crape myrtles trimmed. I’m hoping they’ll bloom well this year.”
Lottie watched as her parents stopped at the bottom of the stairs and chatted about the last few matters her mother would need to take care of while her father was away in New Orleans on business. As they talked, Lottie’s newest sister, twenty-two-month-old Robinette, played quietly at her father’s feet.
Edward Moon looked out the window. “I’m glad to see the snow’s stopped,” he said, and then turning to the butler, he asked, “Louis, has my wooden trunk been placed in the carriage yet?”
“Yes, master,” replied the old slave, bowing slightly. “I put it there myself.”
“Good,” Mr. Moon said, and then turning to his family, he continued, “I will see you all when I get back.”
“Good-bye, dear,” said his wife. “Take care. This is not a good season to be traveling.”
Edward Moon laughed and rustled Lottie’s braids. “Your mother is a worrier!” he exclaimed. “I expect to hear your French verbs when I get home, young lady.”
“Yes, Papa,” responded Lottie, relieved that he hadn’t asked to see her geometry calculations. French verbs were easy compared to the properties of a circle.
Lottie felt a blast of cold air as Louis opened the front door and escorted her father to the carriage. She shivered and then lifted Robinette up so they could watch the carriage head off down the tree-lined drive and disappear around the bend.
Six days later an envelope edged in black arrived at Viewmont. Lottie watched as her mother opened it with trembling hands and then burst into deep sobs. It was quite a while before her mother was able to read the letter to her. According to the account in the letter, on January 26, her father had been aboard the steamboat James Robb when a fire broke out. The steamboat was very close to shore, and the passengers began jumping overboard and wading ashore. Edward Moon had dragged his wooden chest, which contained the gold coins he was taking to New Orleans, across the deck and then jumped into the freezing water. With considerable effort he had hoisted the trunk onto his back and carried it ashore. Once ashore he collapsed in the mud, and when the other passengers tried to rouse him, they discovered he was dead. He had died of either a stroke or heart failure; no one could be sure which. The letter ended by saying his body would be delivered to Viewmont the next day.
The weeks that followed the arrival of the letter were a blur to Lottie. Hundreds of people came to the house to pay their respects; there was a huge funeral service at the Scottsville Baptist Church and a smaller one at the graveside in Viewmont. Afterward Lottie hated to look out the parlor window and see the black soil around the newly dug grave in the family cemetery.
Lottie’s mother was overcome with grief at the turn of events. She insisted that Robinette’s name be changed to “Edmonia Harris Moon” as a way to honor her husband. Gradually the family returned to some sort of order, but it was never the same without Lottie’s father around.
Edward Moon had left behind a very specific will in which he wrote that all of his children—even the girls—were to have as much education as they wanted. And when Mrs. Moon died, everything in the estate was to be split equally among all the children.
Lottie was grateful that her father had made arrangements for her to go to college. This was an unusual step, and many of the neighbors thought it was scandalous to waste money on sending girls to college. Most southern girls did not even have a high school education; their “job” was to be pretty and polite so that they could attract a good husband. Once they were married, their time was to be taken up raising children, offering hospitality, and managing the house. All the women in Lottie’s family had followed this pattern, and while Lottie was not opposed to doing the same herself, she was glad for the choice her father had given her.
By the fall of 1854, Lottie was ready to spread her wings, and she left home to attend the Virginia Female Seminary as a boarder. By now her brother Tom was a fully qualified doctor and had married a wealthy and “suitable” young belle named Helen Vaughan Wilson. After their wedding they had decided to stay on at Viewmont to help Mrs. Moon manage the huge plantation.
Orianna was off again, too, this time to Pennsylvania to enroll at the Quaker-run Pennsylvania Female Medical School. The school, Orie told Lottie proudly, was only four years old, and no southerner had lasted more than a few months at it. Orie fully intended to be the first southern woman to graduate as a doctor from the school.
The two sisters promised to write to each other regularly, and that is what they did. Lottie would write letters telling Orie all about the Latin texts she was busy reading, while Orie’s letters were filled with startling new ideas about freedom. Many members of the faculty at the medical school were Quakers, who were committed to freeing slaves. Some of them were even links in the Underground Railway, which helped runaway slaves make it to freedom in the northern states. Not only that, the Pennsylvania Female Medical School was a hotbed of “freethinking” women who were calling for women to be treated equally with men. Dr. Ann Preston, Orie’s anatomy teacher, was a close friend of Lucretia Mott, one of the women at the forefront of the Seneca Falls Convention, and she often led discussions about women’s rights in American society. She even thought women should have the right to vote!
The women at the medical school faced stiff opposition from the otherwise all-male medical profession. Orie wrote how the female interns were forbidden to treat patients in public hospitals, so the school had opened its own clinic to treat only women. It was the first such clinic in the country to do so.
The year sped by, and the two sisters were together again at Viewmont for the summer. By now both of them refused to attend church with their mother and instead spent the hours together discussing the plight of women’s rights in America.
Lottie went back to Virginia Female Seminary in the fall of 1855 along with her younger sister Colie, who was about to start her schooling there as well. It was hard to leave behind little Edmonia, or Eddie, as she had come to be called. Eddie was four years old now, and Lottie loved to play with her. There was another baby in the house, too: Thomas Moon, her brother Tom and his wife Helen’s first child. However, they wouldn’t be staying on much longer at Viewmont. As soon as Helen was strong enough, Tom told Lottie, the three of them were going to head down the Missouri River on their way west to join the Californian gold rush. Ike, who had recently been admitted as a lawyer to the Albemarle Bar, came home to take over Tom’s responsibilities running the plantation.
Lottie had been back at the Virginia Female Seminary only a few weeks when she received the terrible news. Tom and Helen and baby Thomas had been on a riverboat just west of Leavenworth, Kansas, when an epidemic of cholera had broken out onboard. Since none of the three of them were sick, Tom had taken his wife and baby son ashore and found them a boardinghouse to stay in. Since he was a doctor, Tom had gone back onboard the riverboat to care for the sick. Within days he had contracted cholera himself and soon died. Lottie was stunned by the news. Tom was only twenty-three years old. It seemed unbelievable to her that she would never see him again.
In an attempt to forget her sorrow, Lottie plunged into her studies. She did very well in Latin and French, but no matter how hard she tried, she only scraped through in mathematics.
Little in the way of “proper” entertainment was available to the girls at the school, which over the summer had changed its name to Hollins Institute. The students were given only two hours of “uncommitted” time a day. The rest of their time was taken up with a schedule of study, meals, and endless hours in chapel. Indeed, about the most exciting thing at the school was the trip across the street to Enon Baptist Church on Sundays. Not that Lottie ever listened to the sermon. No. She sat with her cousin Cary Ann Coleman, and they whispered gossip to each other about the young men in the congregation.
All the structure associated with school was difficult for Lottie. As a child she had been schooled at home and had had a lot of freedom to romp and play. But now, at fourteen, she was supposed to be a young lady. Lottie told herself she simply wasn’t yet ready to give up having fun. She would often lie awake at night thinking up practical jokes to play on her friends and even on the teachers.
On the eve of April Fools’ Day 1856, while Cary Ann drifted off to sleep, Lottie was thinking very hard about something spectacular to do, something that everyone would be aware of. Suddenly it came to her. What was the thing she hated most about Hollins Institute? The schedule! And what kept everyone on schedule? The bells that rang every fifteen minutes from the school bell tower. Lottie’s mind raced, and she had to hold her hand over her mouth to suppress a giggle, her plan was so good. She just had to make sure she woke up very early the next morning, preferably before dawn.
