Both the month of August and the year 2020 have significance for women across America. The fight for a woman’s right to vote ended in 1920 when women finally won suffrage. I’m sure it was a victory cheered by many women in Rochester. When you read through town history, there are many stories of strong women who faced and fought through adversity.
Mary (Smith) Haskell followed her husband, Mark “Witchcraft” Haskell to Rochester five years after he left Salem to settle there. Over those years, he had built a home and a farm and become Town Clerk. Mary brought with her their six children. They were Mary, whose wedding was the first to be recorded in Rochester township, Roger, Joanna, Mark Jr., John, who were all in their teens, and Joseph who was six years old. Once in Rochester, Mary saw her house burn down, and two years later, the death of her husband at the age of 49. She managed to carry on, making some money by sweeping out the meetinghouse once a week. Her children married and several built homes near their mother. John, the next to the youngest, married and built a house on the shores of Mary’s Pond on land said to have been bought for him by his mother.
Another widow who persevered after the death of her husband at the age of 46, was Bethiah Church. Her husband, Lemuel, one of a long line of Rochester Churches, had opened their house, built on the east side of the Mattapoisett River, as an inn for “the accommodation of the traveling public”. In the mid-1700s that public consisted of horsemen and footmen, as no wheeled vehicles were in use in this part of the country. Bethiah, who was married to Lemuel for 22 years was known as a woman of unusual energy. After her husband’s death, she continued to run the inn or public house and to raise her nine children. She outlived her husband by 60 years and died in 1832 at the age of 100.
Not every Rochester woman who had to single-handedly keep home and family together did so as a widow. In the 1840s, Julianne Smellie was alone with her children while her husband, James, traveled west for the California Gold Rush. During his absence, she became very sick and was bedridden for weeks until a painful operation was performed. After that, the couple’s youngest child, Lizzy, became sick and died at the age of 14 months and 24 days. Julianne, who later died in 1855 when she was struck by lightning, wrote in an 1849 letter sent to her husband in California and recounting her these events, ” I often think that if you was at home you could bear a part of the afflictions with me”.
Then there was Bessie Hulsman who came from Nova Scotia to Rochester with her husband, Oscar, in 1900. They settled on 60 acres of land along Walnut Plain Road and started a farm. Over time, three daughters were born. In 1930, Oscar decided to walk across the country to California and back, which he did leaving Bessie to tend to farm and family. When he returned in 1931, he said he had taken his trip, “just to have an adventure”.
Lastly, we have Annie Louisa Snell who at the age of 18 married James Hartley in 1885. Together, they had a farm and sawmill and 15 children, 13 of whom survived infancy. James died in 1918 at the age of 56. Annie, in later years known to many in Rochester as “Grandma Hartley” outlived her husband by 43 years. With the help of her older children, she raised the younger ones and continued the family sawmill company. She was active in the Grange and the First Congregational Church into her 90s. She was honored at the Grange after her 90th birthday. She died at the age of 95 leaving 450 or more descendants.
By Connie Eshbach