Episode 10: Remember the Ladies

In this episode, Caitlin and Francesgrace wandered through the cemetery and almost literally stumbled onto the lives and extraordinary times of Mary Lemist Titcomb and Annie Smith Peck.

LINK TO SHOW NOTES

Season 1. Episode 10. Remember the Ladies.

Caitlin: Hello, and welcome to Grave Escapes, the podcast helps those who've died tell their stories once again.

INTRO MUSIC

Caitlin: Hey Frances.

Frances: Hey.

Caitlin: We’ve been really busy lately.

Frances: Yeaaah.

Caitlin: It’s been fun, but we’ve toured a cemetery at night—which as amazing—did a ghost/history/pirate/walking tour.

Frances: Yeeeah.

Caitlin: That was fun.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: From it we’ve had a lot of inspiration.

Frances: That is true.

Caitlin: So one of the things I feel, we really started this podcast and set out to do on this podcast is educate those of you who might not know about someone, about who they are. And today, I feel like we’ve got two “unknowns.”

Frances: Absolutely.

Caitlin: So I think I will dive in first…Yeah, you ready?

Frances: Absolutely.

Caitlin: So question for you. Think back to your summers as a child, did you ever have…and I’m wondering if this is a weird vernacular thing based on what part of the United States you’re from. Where I’m from we call them bookmobiles.

Frances: So I’ve never actually seen a bookmobile, but I’ve heard of them.

Caitlin: Really?!

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: We…I remember getting to go on them as a kid. Not very often cuz we actually went to the library pretty frequently, but it was a treat, right? Cuz it’s books on like…a bus.

Frances: I mean, that sounds like mah jam, but I’m a little jealous.

Caitlin: It’s one of my favorite book memories that I have. That and the Scholastic Book Fair.

Frances: Oh! Yeah. Loved Scholastic.

Caitlin: But with that, I found someone that I want to talk about today. Her name is Mary Lemist Titcomb…I know…

Frances: It’s an unfortunate last name.

Caitlin: It is, but at the same time, it is what it is. Spoiler, everyone, she’s dead. She won’t be offended. So she was born in New Hampshire, actually. Farmington, which I am not very familiar with New Hampshire. I trust that it is there. I have to admit…she’s kind of a doozy, because I think that she’s a very important person and one of the reasons why I decided to bring her to you today is because a lot of…kind of, what she stood for reminds me of a lot of people that we know. It was just really inspiring. But there was very little out there on her.

Frances: That’s unfortunate.

Caitlin: She did graduate from a women’s seminary in New Hampshire and the rumor is that she heard about librarianship in a church bulletin.

Frances: Uh…okay. As you do, I guess?

Caitlin: Honestly, like I said, this was kind of like grasping at straws for some of this information so I’m willing to throw that out as hearsay, but it’s also a cute story. So you have to remember, where we’re at right now in the 1850s, librarianship…you can be a librarian, but there’s actually not an MILS. There’s no formal training to become a librarian right now. So really quick, I just wanna give a brief history of libraries cuz I actually didn’t…I didn't know as much as I do now and a lot of that had to come from me, kind of moving to a place where I saw the various libraries possible. Libraries have, let's say for lack of a better argument, always been around in some form or another in the United States.

Frances: Ben Franklin.

Caitlin: Right. But free libraries as in kind of what we typically stereotypically think of today. Those actually weren't standard. Those weren't normal. They actually weren't around until 1833 and there is debate on what the first one was according to the American Library Association.

Frances: Cool.

Caitlin: So libraries at this point are a lot of private collectors. You typically have to pay to be a member of the library, which this translates to books, not really being accessible.

Frances: That sucks.

Caitlin: Why do we wanna give knowledge to people? Right?

Frances: Mmm. Huuh.

Caitlin: But so Mary actually is very interested in this profession of librarianship. And she takes an unpaid apprenticeship as a librarian in Concord, Massachusetts.

Frances: Heeey.

Caitlin: Yeah. So she's there for a while, but eventually moves to Rutland, Vermont where she's hired initially as a cataloger and then stays for 12 years.

Frances: As you do.

Caitlin: And so as cataloger, basically what she's done is continue to build up her profession and she actually starts to direct the library and it's just…it's really cool. She basically becomes the library boss.

Frances: Cool.

Caitlin: So she also takes some volunteer roles in this position. I'm not gonna actually focus a lot on her volunteer roles, but I am gonna say that she is constantly helping out associations. She's constantly helping out memberships to better give library and book access to those in need.

Frances: Cool!

Caitlin: So after she's done at the Vermont library association, it's 1902 at this point. And she takes a job as the head librarian at the Washington County Free Library in Maryland.

Frances: Oh.

Caitlin: It only opened a year previously, and it is being touted as the second county library in the United States.

Frances: What was the first one? Do we know?

Caitlin: I'm not sure, but I'll find out.

Frances: Cool.

Caitlin: So with that, she basically just goes to work. I wanna quote the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame for her accomplishment next: “the Washington county free library, which opened August 27th, 1901 became the second working county library in the United. Within two years, the library was operating 22 deposit stations outside of Hagerstown. In addition, books could be ordered through the stations from the main library and all services were provided for free. During the next five years— This is again, all under Mary's guidance—It went from 22 stations to 66.”

Frances: Yo! That's cool.

Caitlin: She worked.

Frances: I guess.

Caitlin: And this is where, like, I kind of fall in love with her a bit. She was convinced this wasn't enough.

Frances: Yikes.

Caitlin: And she is actually quoted saying that—this is a very brief bit of a very long quote, but—“no better method has ever been devised for reaching the dweller in the country. The book goes to the man, not waiting for the man to come to the book.” And that's why I've brought up bookmobiles.

Frances: Oh yes.

Caitlin: So Mary actually in 1904, develops a plan for what is going to be called a book wagon, literal wagon: pulled by horses.

Frances: Cool.

Caitlin: The libraries board of trustees are just like—I mean, I don't know this, this is a lot of me like inserting my own thoughts, but in my head, it’s—whoa, you've done so great with all these deposit station! And she's like, whoa, but we need to reach more people. And they're like, whoa, here's $2,500 to pay for the book wagon.

Frances: Oh, cool. $2,500 is not a small amount of money in 1902.

Caitlin: Oh no, I actually…I did convert it. Would you like to know how much that would be in 2022 dollars? Do you wanna take like a little guess first?

Frances: I will take a little guess. I'm gonna guess that it's somewhere in the vicinity of 10 or 15,000.

Caitlin: 83

Frances: Thousand?

Caitlin: Mm-hmm

Frances: Oh. Wow. Okay.

Caitlin: Like over 3000%, cuz this doesn't account for inflation.  I should say that.

Frances: Huh.

Caitlin: So that's fun.

Frances: Wow. That’s…Okay. Like here here's a lot of money.

Caitlin: Yeah. They believed in this.

Frances: Cool.

Caitlin: So she gets her book wagon again, horse drawn. It could transport about 2,500 books.

Frances: Cool.

Caitlin: And it was driven by Josh Thomas, who was the library's janitor.

Frances: Also kind of cool.

Caitlin: Yeah. Right? He was apparently from the area where the bookmobile was going.

Frances: Oh!

Caitlin: And so they were like, oh, well…

Frances: Wanna go home?

Caitlin: You know, it just do. I also wanna cite here, Harold mail in the first six months, the book Matt wagon made 31 trips and averaged 30 miles of travel daily and distributed a thousand books.

Frances: Coooool!

Caitlin: But where would we be without something terrible happening?

Frances: Oh, geez. Did she get to Tuberculosis?

Caitlin: No, thank God. She actually lives a very long and healthy life.

Frances: Nice!

Caitlin: The program is like crazy successful and. So the wagon is accidentally hit by a freight train.

Frances: Uh—What?

Caitlin: Yeah. Everyone's okay. But I mean, the wagon's destroyed.

Frances: Aww.

Caitlin: This is 1910. So it's only been around for like five years.

Frances: Aww.

Caitlin: And the library was like: Nope, we're getting you a new one. And they actually upgraded the wagon to be motor.

Frances: Hey, cool. They don't have to pay for the horses anymore.

Caitlin: Yeah. And they could expand the service. It went even farther than it did before.

Frances: Hah! Cool.

Caitlin: She did have a reputation for being, I mean, honestly, for being a bitch.

Frances: *noise of disdain*

Caitlin: Yeah. Her community sort of ousted her and that sucks, but you know, she did a lot of good.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: And I do wanna say just a quick update. In 2022, the Washington County Historical Society actually donated a chest that belonged to her and it is now in the library.

Frances: Cool.

Caitlin: So it's weird here because there's not a lot about this person out there. There is a wonderful children's book that I did want to recommend, but I want…and that children's book is called Library on Wheels.

Frances: Hmm.

Caitlin: But I wanna just kind of chat real quick about her personal life, because not a lot is known, but it seems like there have been some others kind of like us who don't really wanna let this lapse and let her identity kind of get forgotten.

Frances: Okay.

Caitlin:  So she lived again, born in New Hampshire, lived in Concord mass for like a little bit and then went to Vermont and then basically stayed in Maryland. So I have found her obituary and we can publish this with the show notes, but she gets what appears to be like a first page announcement. She had had a very long illness. It doesn't say what that illness is. And I unfortunately cannot find what the illness is.

Frances: Tuberculosis.

Caitlin:  It's possible, but I kind of doubt it cuz I feel like…

Frances: Yeah, that's fair.

Caitlin:  I feel like someone would've said something.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin:  So after the book mobile, she continues to work. She actually starts the official training for libraries.

Frances: Oh, cool.

Caitlin:  And how to become a librarian. The training actually started in 1924 and it continued until 1931.

Frances: Cool.

Caitlin:  She was also the second Vice President ever of the American Library Association. And she was the…she held a lot of… I don’t—again, I hate to say it this way, but—female roles. So she was in the women's club of the ALA, that kind of thing.

Frances: Mm-hmm

Caitlin:  But, so she dies. The training ends in 1931 and she dies in 1932 at the age of 80.

Frances: Nice.

Caitlin:  So she had, like I said, a really long and great life. Now here's the interesting thing, the stone that we are going to be posting to our social media…That’s not her stone.

Frances: Oh, it looks kind of new.

Caitlin: Bingo. So she was actually buried in Concord, Mass. in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery with her family. So I actually went off on kind of a weird research tangent because I…she had no husband. She had no children on record. She just lived her life for her books, which I will not fault her for whatsoever.

Frances: Nope.

Caitlin: When she dies, they take her back to Concord where her parents are buried.

Frances: That makes sense.

Caitlin: Yeah. Right? And she is interred with no headstone.

Frances: Aww.

Caitlin: Yeah. Weirdly enough, her sister also dies at this time. Her name is Lydia Folsom Titcomb Howell, and she's also buried in an unmarked grave with the parents.

Frances: Okay.

Caitlin: In a partnership, Charlene Mullens Glenn, who is the one who wrote that book I just mentioned for kids? Library on Wheels? Joins together with Friends of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, and they raise the money to put a marker for Mary and for her sister.

Frances: I like that.

Caitlin: Yeah. I'm a little ashamed to say when the headstone is dedicated.

Frances: Oh, no.

Caitlin: Because it's 2015.

Frances: Sounds like Sissieretta Jones.

Caitlin: That's exactly who I thought about. I will say like one thing that, you know, Mary has in front of Sissieretta, is that Mary is recognized her accomplishments and she is actually inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 1990.

Frances: Okay.

Caitlin: So, I mean, there, there is a break before, you know, she actually gets her final headstone, her final resting place. But yeah, the stone is basically, I mean it's seven years old.

Frances: Yikes.

Caitlin: Yeah. There are pictures that will link to in our sources of Charlene Glen and her daughter of the headstone. And they also played bagpipes at the dedication.

Frances: Cool. I like.

Caitlin: Yeah. Yeah, I do too. So it was really sweet, but this is a woman who we don't know a lot about, but I feel like, especially like in the history of librarianship—which I did not really think was a thing until I started doing the research for this—it's brilliant. She's an amazing person who seemed to believe that books were the key and went out of her way to do her absolute best to get them ready and get them to the public.

Frances: Cool. She sounds like a badass.

Caitlin: She does,  but I think you also have a badass that we're gonna talk about today.

Frances: Oh, geez. That is a true fact. Yeah. Have you…what do you know about the history of mountain climbing?

Caitlin: …People die on Everest.

Frances: People die on everything, but yes, people die on Everest.

Caitlin: That's like kind of all that I know. I'm not gonna lie…I'm not a mountain climber. I'm not a climber. I went to…I went climbing once and it frustrated me.

Frances: That's fair. I am a hiker. So not the kind that you need equipment for, but I have done Mount Washington and stuff.

Caitlin: Do you have the bumper sticker?

Frances: I don't have the bumper sticker.

Caitlin: Okay. For those of you not from New England, it's like a Rite of Passage to get a bumper sticker that says like this car climbed Mount Washington, my bike climbed Mount Washington. I climbed Mount Washington. Like…yeah, I get it.

Frances: So in defense of the bumper stickers, I usually avoid cars that have those on there because yikes. I would not wanna be behind a car that has driven up Mount Washington. It is nuts.

Caitlin: All right. Fair.

Frances: She also climbed Mount Washington, the woman I'm doing today.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: So that's a good segue. So have you ever heard of a woman named Annie Smith Peck?

Caitlin: No.

Frances: Okay. Annie Peck was a woman, who was born in Providence. She actually lived near North Burial Ground.

Caitlin: Oh, wow. So she's a local.

Frances: Wicked local. She'd walk by North Burial Ground every day on her way to the First Baptist Church. For those of you who don't, who aren't familiar with religious history in Rhode Island? I do mean the First Baptist Church, as in the first one in the country.

Caitlin: Just ask them.

Frances: Yes, it's a beautiful church.

Caitlin: It is. It's a truly beautiful church.

Frances: Absolutely. Annie came from a family of boys. She had three older brothers. they were all extremely intelligent. They were all well educated. They went to Brown. I think one of them also went to Harvard. Her eldest brother served in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Caitlin: All right.

Frances: So she was born 1850. So he's a little bit older than her. Well educated family. Well connected. They weren't the richest people in the world, but they were well connected and well positioned in society.

Caitlin: Providence society?

Frances: All of Rhode Island pretty much, but yeah.

Caitlin: Oh, okay. Wow.

Frances: That gave them the attendant problem of appearances and what the neighbors will think.

Caitlin: Mm-hmm.

Frances: When their daughter doesn't follow what they think she should do. Annie was an extremely precocious child and she's extremely intelligent. And she wanted to do what her brothers did, which is to say she wanted to go to school. She was extremely active. Rode horses. She swam, she rowed crew at the high school that she went to. Obviously, so she's a woman in the 1870s. She's not allowed to go to college. I don't believe any of the colleges in Rhode Island were accepting women at the time she tried to get into Brown. They were like, ha ha no. Eventually…

Caitlin: No, I feel like that's still how they give their rejections.

Frances: As someone who has gotten a rejection from brown twice now. Yeah. Kind of.

Caitlin: Ha-ha. No.

Frances: Yeah. You're from Rhode Island, huh? No.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Frances: So she wanted to go to college. She wasn't allowed to go to college. She graduates from high school, is kind of aimless, kind of doesn't really know what she's gonna do with her life. She's casually dating a man named will Kellen. She actually helps him navigate his college career. They are in love her family does not approve of this at all because he's the son of an Irish immigrant and poor. She ends up spending some time teaching piano and substituting…being a substitute teacher at her old high school while she's kind of trying to figure out what's going on in her life and what she's gonna do.

Caitlin: Hmm.

Frances: So her family wants her to get married.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Frances: To someone socially appropriate or become a teacher at a girl's high school. Because of course that's the only two avenues that she could pursue.

Caitlin: I mean, to be fair, when I was graduating with my college degree, I got basically the same thing. I'm not gonna be kidding. It was kind of a horrible day.

Frances: Yeah. That's fair. Her boyfriend on the other hand, Will is like, no, you are smarter than this. You should like reach for what you want.

Caitlin: Yes. We love strong capable men.

Frances: Yes. Who support strong, capable women.

Caitlin: Yes, mm-hmm.

Frances: I really like Will. He seems like a really great guy.

Caitlin:  I'm a little terrified of where you're going with him and their relationship. Not gonna lie.

Frances: Mm. Fair. She actually listens to the boyfriend. She listens to Will. And she goes to…at the time it was called the Rhode Island Normal School. It was a sort of college sort of teaching certificate program. It's a one year program. The school is now called RIC. Rhode Island College still.

Caitlin: Oh my god! I got my master's from RIC.

Frances: Excellent. Rick is actually one of the best teaching programs in the state. So…

Caitlin: Yeah, I didn't go for teacher

Frances: That's fair. It started early. So she gets her teaching certificate here and can't get a job in Rhode Island.

Caitlin: Yup.

Frances: Her old…her mentor at her school, Eliza Doyle won't hire her because she's convinced that Annie should be like doing more with her life than staying in Providence.

Caitlin: I love that.

Frances: As a mid-20-something, Annie is like, okay, fine. I'm moving to Michigan. And she goes…

Caitlin: Okay. All right.

Frances: She gets a job teaching at Saginaw high school in Michigan and she was so good at it that the principal kept giving her honors—So this is a co-ed high school. The principal kept giving her honors classes and classes that traditionally would've been taught by male teachers.

Caitlin: Mm-hmm

Frances: So she's extremely good at teaching, but again, she still really wants to go to college. And so she finds out that the University of Michigan is accepting women and she applies. She's 27 years old and she gets in.

Caitlin: What? That awesome!

Frances: Her family's like, nah, you're not doing that. And she is like, sorry, I'm living in Michigan. Yes, I am. I can fund it myself. I'm doing it. And she basically just badgers her dad with letters until he says yes. And he says, yes. Unfortunately her brother, her one of her brothers, John, not the oldest one is very, very against this.

Caitlin: Well, fuck him.

Frances: Yeah. He seems pretty sexist. He's pretty much against her doing most of the things she does in her life. So he answer a bunch of annoying, annoying letters. Her boyfriend, Will, is like do it, but also maybe come back to Boston and go to a college here where I am in law school? Maybe?

Caitlin: Is your family still just approving of him while he's in law school?

Frances: Yep.

Caitlin: Oh, that's awesome.

Frances: I mean, he went to Brown and was in the same program…fraternities or whatever as her brothers and has many, many connections now, but  the family still like, he's not good enough for you.

Caitlin: Wow. That’s…Someone tells me that I'm immediately doing the opposite.

Frances: Mm-hmm.

Caitlin: So glad they understood that.

Frances: So he tries to convince her to move to Boston and go to a program there. She actually considers it because that sounds great to her, but she writes a letter to a previous employer. Who's like: don’t. D on't do the thing. The program's new. Nobody will hire you if you get a degree from there. Just don't do the thing. And so she doesn't do the thing. She stays in Michigan. She goes to the University of Michigan. Will's disappointment at her refusal to move back, I think is, seems like it might have been the beginning of the end of the relationship.

Caitlin: Gotcha.

Frances: Her disappointment…So his disappointment with her moving back to Boston…I think he…so he clearly still loves her

Caitlin: Mm-hmm.

Frances: And she clearly still loves him, but he basically writes her a letter. That's like, I can't keep corresponding with you. But I'm not gonna stop being your friend. If you ever need a favor, let me know. I got you. But like, I can't preserve this friendship if we keep corresponding. Because she's writing him letters that are like talking about her, hanging out with male classmates and he is real upset about it. Real jealous, real…just sad in general.

Caitlin: Yeah. I mean, that makes a little sense.

Frances: So they part friends who don't correspond. She actually cries for the last time in her life about their breakup. So she spends a couple of days real sad about it, crying about it, then never cries, according to her.

Caitlin: I mean, yeah, sure.

Frances: It's kind of sad. Like he seemed like a really good guy. I like him.

Caitlin: Yeah. No, I'm actually kind of bummed out.

Frances: Yeah. I mean, they do part his friends and for the rest of her, his life or her life, I'm not sure who lived longer…Anytime she needed a favor, he was there.

Caitlin: All right.

Frances: Even though he did get married and have kids.

Caitlin: Oh, I was hoping you were gonna be like surprise! They got back together and they love each other. Yay.

Frances: No.

Caitlin: All right.

Frances: She died Miss Annie Peck.

Caitlin: Aww… That's interesting. I didn't realize they both had that connection for today.

Frances: Yeah…Yeah. Both unmarried.

Caitlin: Huh. Cool. Go then they got more done

Frances: Yeah. Oh, she got so much done. Okay. So it's around this time that she also starts climbing, the late 1870s, in the Adirondacks. And she's all about this life. She loves climbing mountains. So with the master's degree in hand that she gets, so she gets her undergraduate degree in Greek and classical studies from University of Michigan. And then she goes and does a master's program there as well and gets a master's in Greek and Classical studies. And so with this master's degree in hand, she gets hired at Purdue University to teach, which is kind of cool. She is teaching men.

She haaaates it. She absolutely despises living in Indiana. She's living in Lafayette, hates it after a year, she leaves. She's like, no, I can't deal with this life. She bops her own for a little while, teaching it at a couple of different places. And finally she decides she wants to go to Europe. She wants to do some study in Europe and so she moves back home to Providence, to live with her family and saves some money to go to Europe. She goes first to Germany and actually gets piano lessons from a student of Franz Lizt.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: Who is impressed by her playing. Apparently she was good enough at the piano to impress a student of Franz Lizt. So she spends some time in Germany. She learns how to speak German. She goes to Italy. She spends some time in Italy, touring around. She learns how to speak Italian. She goes to France. She learns how to speak French—She might have known how to speak French already from high school. I'm not sure—And so she's doing sort of the 1800s tourist thing.

Caitlin: Mm-hmm.

Frances: Bopping around, ends up in Switzerland where she sees the Matterhorn for the first time.

Caitlin: That's cool.

Frances: Yeah. Unlike me, if I were ever to see the Matterhorn and would probably be like, that's pretty, let me take a picture. I'm gonna go now. She looks at it and goes, yeah, I wanna climb that.

Caitlin: That is not an urge I would have.

Frances: Me either. She said that she felt quote “an irresistible longing to attain its summit,”  but she was broke. So she couldn't afford any of the equipment or the guide she'd need to climb it. So instead she goes to Greece where she becomes the first woman to matriculate at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. She studies archeology and ancient Greece. And while she's there, she actually accidentally meets the king of Greece. She's like visiting at a room with a couple of friends and she bumps into him. He's not supposed to be there.

Caitlin: What? This is like fairytale shit.

Frances: Yeah. And she has a chat with the king of Greece. It's great. He will not be the only head of state she meets. Fun fact. And it's in Greece that she starts climbing in earnest. Like mountains, as opposed to like little hills and stuff.

Caitlin: There's a distinction.

Frances: Yeah. So she’s…the kind of climbing where you need equipment and rope.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Frances: As opposed to good shoes.

Caitlin: Hard pass for me. Sorry.

Frances: Yeah. It's also here where she's she bumps up against blatant sexism in her career.

Caitlin: Yeah, no…this is my shocked face.

Frances: Right. So she is trying to get a job back home while she's still here in Greece and she's not having any luck. No one's hiring her. Eventually, she writes to her brother, George, who's like I got you. He helps her get a job at Smith College in the Pioneer Valley (MA).

Caitlin: Oh my God. Really?

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: That was one of my goals. Have I told you my like weird pandemic story about Smith?

Frances: No.

Caitlin: I actually had an appointment to go into the Sylvia Plath archives at Smith the day that lockdown happened and I didn't really know what was going on because like I had been driving to Smith and I walked in the room and everyone's freaking out and I was like: I have an appointment and they're like, you shouldn't have come. I was like, if someone would've just told me I couldn't have come, I wouldn't have driven two hours.

Frances: Yuuup. *shakes head* She's a…she gets a teaching position at Smith. I actually went to Mount Holyoke, which is like 20 minutes from Smith. And older than Smith. Sorry, dudes.

Caitlin: I didn't realize there was a rivalry that I just started. I apologize.

Frances: No, the seven sisters—what’s left of them anyway—kind of all do the thing, but Mount Holyoke's the oldest. *blows raspberry*

Caitlin: All right, there you go. End the podcast.

Frances:*laughs* So she gets a job teaching Latin at Smith and hates that as well.

Caitlin: So does she just hate teaching?

Frances: No, I think she hates teaching…

Caitlin: Entitlement?

Frances: I think she hates teaching that has. Like railings on it.

Caitlin: Okay. Yep.

Frances: If you know what I mean? Like she…yeah. So she's not feeling teaching at a women's college. She wants to teach at a co-ed institution or whatever, but at this point she decides, you know what? Teaching is too much. Finding some place that I actually enjoy is too much. I'm done. So she decides that instead of teaching, she's gonna do her first best plan that she had wanted to do since she was a child, which is go on the lecture circuit.

Caitlin: Ok—okay.

Frances: Like Emerson did.

Caitlin: But like, this is a job that I was unaware of?

Frances: Apparently in the 1800s. Yeah. It was a…so you could like…if you were an expert in something, or you were a good public speaker, you could actually make a full living, just giving lectures to places.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: So she was…I mean, she was extremely well educated at this point.  She basically had the equivalent of a PhD in classical studies. So she— and she's been to Greece—So she takes all of her slides that she took, the photo slides, and she sets up a lecture that she—and moves back out west to give lectures, small lectures to private groups. So families would hire her to come over to their house and give talks to them and their friends.

Caitlin: I feel like I would take that job.

Frances: Right? As she got popular, she would…she started booking lecture halls, so she's making more money than she was teaching at this. And this was what she wanted to do all along. She decides that she's going to do the lecture circuit for full seasons at a time, and then spend the summer in New Hampshire, cuz there's this place in New Hampshire called Ravine House that she really likes. She enjoys spending time there. It just so happens to sit at the bottom of Mount Madison on the Presidential Range. She starts climbing the Presidential Range.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: Mount Madison, Lafayette's up there. There's a whole bunch of 'em, but…and she climbs Mount Washington, which let me tell you is not easy. I climb Mount Was—and she's doing it in skirts and leather boots with no kind of contact if something happens. And the weather at the top of Mount Washington is so unpredictable that people still die. Like it is 2022 and people—you can still die climbing Mount Washington. It's a Tundra at the top.

Caitlin: That's intense.

Frances: It's wild. So she's just like bopping around. She claims that climbing Mount Washington is no big deal. And she climbed Tuckerman's, which is one of the harder climbs. I did the backside, which is easier. And Tuckerman's is the one that they ski at now in the spring.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: So she's like, yeah, She's bopping around doing the Presidential Range, doing some lectures, but she is…in the back of her mind planning to go climb the Matterhorn because that's what she wants to do. That's what she was wanted to do since she saw it. So in 1895, she finally gets enough money. She collects…that she saves enough money to go back to Europe and climb the Matterhorn.  Yeah. So she like does all the things, she hires the guides, she gets all the equipment. She decides that she's not gonna wear a skirt to do this.

Caitlin: Yep. I'm fine with that.

Frances: So she puts on these things called Knickerbockers.

Caitlin: Yep.

Frances: They were kinda like baggy breeches. And she put a short…a shorter kind of skirt over them, but halfway up the mountain, she took it off  and left it in a hut.  And just like, was done with wearing skirts to climb things at that point.And she…according to newspapers back home, she is the third woman to ever climb the Matterhorn. She wasn't, she was like the 12th, but whatever.

Caitlin: Oh, all right. What?

Frances: Yeah, like it had been summited by two women wearing skirts previously, according to us newspapers, but Annie was the first woman to like do it in pants. They were wrong on both counts, but

Caitlin: All right.

Frances: They didn't care.

Caitlin: So right. Because like, why would we accurately report the news?

Frances: Right? So she gets—climbing the Matterhorn, she gets bitten by the climbing bug. She's like lecturing, eh, whatever. I just really wanna climb all the mountains. And so she comes home and she convinces the United States government to give her some scientific equipment, s o she can go to Mexico and figure out the tallest mountain…like the height of a couple of mountains in Mexico, and she raises a bunch of money and does the thing. So she goes to Mexico and actually  uses a barometer to measure the height of Pico de Oribiza (It’s actually Pico de Orizaba—sorry)?  I think it's called.

Caitlin: Mm-hmm.

Frances: She climbs El Popo, which apparently causes a lot of controversy with some of the other people who are climbing El Popo. But yeah, so she's climbing, she's climbing up a storm. She's giving lectures back home about the climbs she's doing and the more she lectures, the more she writes articles in newspapers, the more famous she becomes.

Caitlin: Right.

Frances: So she earns the tag, Ms. Peck, Mountain Climber. Oh, Lady Climber first that becomes Ms. Peck, Mountain Climber. And eventually as she ages, it becomes like famous mountain climber and noted author, Annie Peck, which she's like, yes, this one. We'll go with this name. She calls herself the Queen of Climbers.

Caitlin: Okay. So. Very not…not subtle in her belief of her accolades. I'm here for that.

Frances: Not subtle. She actually acqui—So she achieves the altitude record for women at this…during this period, by climbing, I think it was Illampu.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: I think is the name of the mountain. They called it Sorata because that's the nearest town name at the time. She beats some dude up to the top of it and he's real grumpy about it.

Caitlin: *Makes a disgusted face*

Frances: Yeah. So as she does more… she is climbing all over south America and all over Mexico and Central America. The more she climbs the more difficulties she has with sexism. So she’s—

Caitlin: More difficulty? God. I was hoping they'd be like, you're good.

Frances: No. So she's coming up against guides who won't listen to her even though she's the leader of the expeditions, scientists who refuse to cooperate with her, and other climbers like this dude that she beat up to the top of Sorata who are just very upset and determined to prove that she doesn't deserve to stand on the top of the world's highest peaks…They’re real grumpy about it.

Caitlin: Wait, so because she's a woman, she doesn't deserve to stand somewhere?

Frances: Yeah, pretty much.

Caitlin: Mm. All right. I'm gonna need little, I'm gonna need a little more, uh, I don't know. Coffee, calm down. Argh!

Frances: Oh yeah.

Caitlin: Ugh.

Frances: Oh yeah.

Caitlin: Yep. I'm sorry, to our male listeners, but there are just so many times where I'm just like, Ugh, men.

Frances: Yes. Fair, especially this man. This guy was a jerk, I'm not even gonna give you his name.

Caitlin: I feel like we should also backpedal. There are a lot of men throughout history who have been great allies to women, the BIPOC community, LGBTQ+ community, but there are some who are just, Ugh, men.

Frances: Yep. I'm not giving you this guy's name, but he was a jerk. He was also real grumpy because apparently she spent enough time traveling around South America that the US government was like, you are an expert in the field of North and South American relations and hired her to do things. And so he was real grumpy about that, cuz that was his literal field of study.

So she's aging. She's in her sixties now I believe, or, yeah. So round about her late sixties. And she decides she's gonna write a book about South American…about South America. Pretty much like a travely like ‘you should visit, this place is awesome’ kind of book. And she goes to the heads of state of each of the countries she's gonna talk about and is like, Hey, do you wanna help fund my book? And they're like, yeah, you're cool. Sure. And so each head of state basically pays for the publication of their chapter.

Caitlin: Frances, do you wanna fund my book?

Frances: Right.

Caitlin: That's so cool.

Frances: It's like, I'm gonna talk about how awesome your country is. You wanna fund my book? Suuure.

Caitlin: I mean, we've seen that happen with other people too. Like, I mean, Walt Disney, but anyway, continue.

Frances: Yep. So she comes back for the publication of the book. It's called The South American Tour or something like that. So she comes back to the US and decides that she is going to join the suffragist movement. She marches in the suffrage parade in New York and she becomes an outspoken suffragist, even though she's been obviously a proponent of women's rights since like birth, but she gets loud about it. And she meets Teddy Roosevelt. She meets a whole bunch of very famous people. Fun fact: she actually was friends with Alexander Graham bell and his wife, Mabel. Mabel, if you remember, was a student of Mary Ann Balch Lippitt, the deaf education advocate we covered a few episodes ago.

Caitlin: The world is just like so tiny, so tiny.

Frances: It's ridiculous.

Caitlin: I'm honestly…the one thing I'm most shocked about this episode so far is that we haven't spent 10 minutes talking about tuberculosis, but anyway…

Frances: Yeah. So nobody connected to her died of TB as far as I know.

Caitlin: Cause they weren't hanging out with Emerson.

Frances: So…actually one of her classmates married his niece.

Caitlin: Oh my God, everything is connected. And in like maybe not a great way. Did his niece get TB?

Frances: I don't know…Yeah, I'm not sure.

Caitlin: And then we find out they're actually all vampires and that Mercy Brown was actually completely fine.

Frances: *Laughs*

Caitlin: Sorry. Tell me more, tell me more.

Frances: Okay. So she's like, she's bopping around. She's doing stuff. She's now in her seventies and she decides she wants to be the first woman to fly around South America in a plane. So she does. And finally, she comes back to New England. She's spending some time up at Ravine House again at the base of Mount Madison, doing some more local climbing…in her seventies. And then when she—so she climbs her last mountain. It is Mount Madison in New Hampshire at the age of 82. Then, at the age of 84, decides she wants to climb the Acropolis in Athens as a throwback to her grad school days. So she goes to Athens and she climbs the Acropolis and feels ill while she's up there.

So she comes home and the year is now 1935 and she dies of pneumonia that she caught while climbing the Acropolis. She is 84 years old.

Caitlin: But…  we're almost fine with that, right? Because no, when it sucks, we don't want her to die, but like, damn what a life!

Frances: So cool. Right?

Caitlin: Yeah.

Frances: Okay. And then the last thing that I wanna say about her is a postmortem kind of thing. So she gets cremated and buried at North Burial Ground with her family. Promptly, she is kind of forgotten. Her records are all…I think all of them are broken,  her altitude records.

Caitlin: I mean—

Frances: Although—

Caitlin: Technology advances. Yeah, I get it.

Frances: Yeah. Although she did get a peak named after her in…I think it was Peru, because she was the first person to summit it at all. Man, or woman or non-binary person. So she gets a mountain named after her in Peru, but America kind of moves on,

Caitlin: Right? I mean.

Frances: And forgets all about her.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Frances: Fast forward. It is now the late 1980s. And there is a, a professor at Brooklyn College named Professor Rahman…I’m not a hundred percent sure how to pronounce her first name.

Caitlin: Was it noodle?

Frances: It was not noodle. I think it's Sha-I-sta.

Caitlin: Oh, cool.

Frances: Shay-sta? (spelled Shaista)…Something like—something along those—I should have checked the pronunciation of this name. But she is a teacher at…she's a professor at Brooklyn College and she lives in New York and she's walking down her street one day and she bumps into a chest that looks old. It's like a steamer trunk kind of thing. That's sitting out on the sidewalk with the garbage and she looks at it and she's like, nah, this has gotta be a mistake. Somebody put this out here accidentally. I don't want it to get thrown away and then somebody's upset. So she sends her husband out to bring it into their house and they open it up and it's full of Victorian letters and photographs and slides. And she's like, oh, this is clearly important to someone

Caitlin: Mm-hmm.

Frances: So she go—she starts knocking on doors, going around her neighborhood being like, okay, who's missing a trunk. She finally finds the woman who would put it on the sidewalk and the woman's like, nah, I don't want it. There's another one in the basement. You want that one too?

Caitlin: What?

Frances: Yep. So she goes down to the basement. She gets the second steamer trunk. She brings it to her house and finds out that these are the papers, diaries, and photographs of Annie Smith Peck.

Caitlin: What?!

Frances: The entire, her entire…like she'd saved biographical notes. She'd saved her diaries. She'd saved all her letters. They were all in these two trunks. So Professor Rahman donates them to Brooklyn College, which is why Brooklyn college has the Annie Smith Peck collection.

Caitlin: That's insane.

Frances: Yep. They were found in…the family had been doing renovations and found them in the basement and was like, I don't want these. I don't know who this person is.

Caitlin: I don’t…I really don't understand why people are the way they are sometimes, but okay.

Frances: Same, but like, imagine that complete happenstance, this professor walks by this trunk just in time to get it, to save it from the trash

Caitlin: That’s…all right. Well, okay. That's also interesting though, that like Mary and Annie both have had like trunks discovered, you know what I mean?

Frances: Yep. Yep.

Caitlin: That's that's like a weird coincidence.

Frances: That is the story of Annie Smith Peck, mountain climber.

Caitlin: And she's buried here in Providence?

Frances: She is buried in Providence at North Burial G round. She has a nice big…so she was cremated, but she's in, like a full size…She has a full size slab headstone.

Caitlin: That's cool.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: All right. Wow. I'm happy about talking about these two people today, just because I feel they were ones that have truly kind of been forgotten.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: Unless you're an academic and I still feel like academia can be very inaccessible.

Frances: Oh, speaking of, shout out to Hannah Kimberly, who wrote the only biography and some of the only scholarship on this woman.

Caitlin: Excellent. Excellent. I'm glad they had that in common too.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: All right. Well, I guess until next time, we will see you all in the cemetery.

Frances: Yeeeah.

OUTRO MUSIC

Caitlin: Grave Escapes is hosted, written and produced by Caitlin Howle and Francesgrace Ferland and is produced and edited by Jesse D. Crichton. The music is melancholy after sound by Kai Engel. Follow us on social media to see images of today's graves and more about us. Our social handle is Grave Escapes. For a transcript, show notes, and land acknowledgement, visit us online at www.graveescapes.com We'll see you in the cemetery.

Frances: We’d like to acknowledge that we recorded this podcast on the traditional lands of the Wampanoag, Pokanoket, and Narragansett peoples. Here in the Northeast and all across the country, native peoples are still here and thriving. For more information about indigenous history, we’ve added a link in the show notes to An Indigenous People’s History of the United States as a place to begin. For ways to support native leaders and communities, we’ve added links to both the North American Indian Center of Boston and Native Land Conservancy.