I’m not even sure where to start with this woman because her life had so many notable occurrences. If someone were to write about me, they could get the job done in a few sentences. Tops. This isn’t the case with Victoria Claflin Woodhull. She was on this earth from September 23, 1838, all the way to June 9, 1927.
During those 88 years, she was an American leader of the women’s suffrage movement. But she also ran for President of the United States in the 1872 election. Most historians agree that Woodhull was our first woman to run for the presidency. Others say she was too young because she would turn 35 during the year of her inauguration. She gets my vote as being the first. But apparently, at the time, few took her run for the presidency seriously. Regardless, she was a staunch activist for women’s rights and labor reforms.
But she had a tough start of things. She was born Victoria California Claflin.
I always like the seventh child, and she was. Victoria was born the seventh of ten children (six of whom survived to maturity). Not only that, she was from the town of Homer, in Licking County, Ohio. My Kronenbergers and Uhls were in Licking County around the time of her birth. I wonder if they knew of the Claflins.
But her parents don’t quite sound like my conservative Catholic ancestors. Nope, nope, nope. You see, her mama was named Madame Roxanna “Roxy” Hummel Claflin, and she was born to unmarried parents who were also illiterate. Madame Roxy had become a follower of the Austrian mystic Franz Mesmer and the “New Spiritualist Movement.” (Another sidebar: We had Mesmers in our family tree. I may have to dig on them a little.)
Anyway, Victoria’s father was Reuben “Buck” Buckman Claflin, Esquire. Now, here was a guy for you. He was a con man, lawyer, and snake oil salesman.
And worse. Young Victoria was beaten by her father. She was also starved and sexually abused by him when she still very young. That isn’t much of a start for a little girl.
From the sound of it, things stayed pretty rough. She only had three years of formal education by the time she wears eleven. Yet, her teachers found her to be extremely intelligent.
But then there was her father, once again. It seems the family had a “rotting” gristmill. So Mr. Claflin insured it heavily, and then he went and burned it to the ground. His arson and fraud were discovered. And then a group of the town’s vigilantes ran him out of town. The town held a “benefit” to raise funds to pay for the rest of the family’s departure from Ohio.
I’m not entirely sure where they went from there. But Woodhull believed in spiritualism. She referred to “Banquo’s Ghost” from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. I don’t know Banquo or his ghost, but it gave Victoria a belief in a better life.
She was married twice in the early goings of things. The first at age 15. Both marriages ended in divorce and had a lot of bumps. But she had two children, named Byron and Zulu.
During her life, she went from rags to riches twice. The first fortune was made as a “magnetic” healer. She took her movement on the road during the 1860s to 70s.
Then, later with her sister, Tennessee Claflin, she was the first woman to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street. She made her second and more reputable fortune there. They were among the first women to found a newspaper in the United States, Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, which began publication in 1870.
When Woodhall was the candidate in 1872 from the Equal Rights Party, supporting women’s suffrage and equal rights, her running mate was abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass.
However, a few days before the election, she was arrested on obscenity charges. Her newspaper had published an account of the alleged adulterous affair between the prominent minister Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Richards Tilton. And in that printed account, they added much more detail than was considered proper at the time.
All of this, of course, added to the sensational coverage of her candidacy. Ulysses S. Grant won the election that year. Second, in the count, was Horace Greely.
Her life story continued with much color, including the fact that she was “asked nicely” to leave the country because she had scandalous dirt on the Vanderbilts. She was convinced to move to England in 1877, with a healthy lump of money as an incentive. She lived out the rest of her life in England.
So there is yet another colorful page from our country’s history. As always, so much in this world to be discovered.
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“Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.”
― Erol Ozan
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“No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.”
― Isaac Newton
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“Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
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