A celebrity sighting on Seneca Lake
By Jonathan Monfiletto
Seneca Lake drew the Public Universal Friend and their followers to settle what is now Yates County and led the Society of Universal Friends to become the first permanent, non-native group of people to establish a community west of the modern-day Utica-Rome area. And ever since then, the Finger Lakes region has attracted people of all kinds for a variety of reasons; in particular, celebrities of different types and sizes have found refuge in waterfront properties along the 11 lakes.
I am well aware of all this, of course, especially the celebrity thing. I have heard the tales of Rod Serling and his family staying in their cottage on Cayuga Lake and visiting the nearby village of Interlaken, and I recall – from my days as a weekly newspaper editor – the stir created in the community by reports that Derek Jeter had purchased a mansion on Skaneateles Lake. Then, there are the many well-known people, again of different types and sizes, who are well-known locally for their residences, both permanent and season, around the region and along the lakes.
Yes, I am well aware of all this; however, I was not prepared when someone called asking me to find information about Crystal Eastman and her whereabouts in Yates County history. OK, I now know a little more about who Eastman was, which I will get to very soon, but at that point I had never heard of her. I assumed she was some sort of a relative of the woman calling, and the woman was looking for more information about her relative. Unfortunately, as I told the woman, I found little evidence that connected Eastman to Yates County. Searching our database of digitized newspapers, I uncovered just 10 mentions of Eastman in Yates County newspapers, mostly from the personals sections.
However, searching the NYS Historic Newspapers website (www.nyshistoricnewspapers.org – a wonderful resource for any genealogical and topical research within the context of New York history), I uncovered more information about Eastman and realized just what a celebrity she was in her day – quite a stalwart in the labor rights and women’s rights movements in the first quarter of the 20th century. It also appears she wasn’t from Yates County but did hail from elsewhere in the region, having grown up in Canandaigua and Elmira and then being buried in Canandaigua in her family plot upon her death.
Yet, a few of the references to Eastman in the Yates County newspapers read like reports of a celebrity sighting in the area, while others do account for her noteworthy professional career. Her biographies on Wikipedia and Find-A-Grave describe her as an antimilitarist, feminist, socialist, and journalist, having earned her law degree from New York University, received her master’s degree in sociology from Columbia University, and graduated from Vassar College in 1903. Both biographies note her roles within the fights for women’s suffrage and labor justice, both as an outsider and an insider (for example, she served on a New York State commission on employer’s liability and industrial accidents and drafted the first worker’s compensation law in this capacity). Meanwhile, her mentions in Yates County newspapers highlight her visits to the area – perhaps to see relatives and stay at their cottages.
An item under a column titled “Glenora” in the August 4, 1909 edition of the Dundee Observer notes, “Miss Crystal Eastman is spending her vacation at the Eastman cottage,” indicating she was related to the Yates County branch of the Eastman family. On September 5, the newspaper reported Eastman had returned to New York City. It is interesting to look at other newspapers to see what else was going on in Eastman’s life around the time of this excursion to Seneca Lake. In December 1908, she was admitted to the bar as a practicing lawyer with two other women in a class of 134 students. In May 1909, she spoke at a meeting of the Woman’s Trade Union League about her recent study of cases of 500 men killed in industrial accidents. Calling the federal employers’ liability laws “painfully inadequate,” she noted she found little provision made for the families of these men – putting the United States on par with Russia in this regard, she said. The next month, the New York governor appointed her to a committee to study employers’ liability and the causes and effects of unemployment in the state. The month after she returned from Glenora, she appeared as a speaker at the Greater New York Woman Suffrage Convention at Carnegie Hall. In March 1910, she testified – along with other notable people on either side of the women’s suffrage question – at a hearing of the New York Legislature on whether to give women the right to vote statewide.
The April 26, 1911 edition of the Yates County Chronicle and the April 28, 1911 edition of the Rushville Chronicle carried identical announcements of Eastman’s engagement to her first husband, Wallace Benedict, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Listing Eastman as of Elmira, these reports seem to show Yates County residents would have been interested in the whereabouts of this relatively local person. Around this time, she continued to advocate for fair labor laws and practices – such as a nine-hour workday for women – through her work with New York State. After her marriage, it appears she moved to her husband’s home state and championed the cause of women’s suffrage there.
On March 3, 1913 – as reported locally in the Penn Yan Democrat – Eastman took part in the Woman Suffrage Procession as one of four horsewomen forming a relay into Washington, D.C. to herald the progress of the procession. That October, she was added to the staff of the Federal Labor Commission and continued to advocate for workers, women, and working women. This included, according to the June 2, 1915 edition of the Penn Yan Express, a stint in charge of the saleswomen’s bureau for the Maxwell Motor Company as the automobile manufacturer sought to employ women to sell its cars to other women.
Around this time, she also took at least two more trips to Glenora – first as Mrs. Crystal Eastman Benedict, of Milwaukee, according to the June 30, 1915 edition of the Dundee Observer and then, after her divorce and remarriage, as Mrs. Crystal Eastman Fuller, of New York, according the newspaper’s August 8, 1918 issue. Interestingly, newspapers in the intervening years highlight Eastman’s denial of alimony from her first husband as her way of asserting her independence and self-sufficiency. She felt women should show their ability to support themselves by rejecting assistance from their ex-husbands. At the same time, as the Great War broke out in Europe and eventually the United States joined the conflict, Eastman became involved in the Women’s Peace Party and its activities and events. The group opposed that war and any war or militaristic preparations for war.
Of course, there is much more – and always more – to say about Eastman’s life, times, and work, as I have discovered in my brief research of her. For example, she was recently celebrated locally for her role in co-authoring the Equal Rights Amendment. This is just a glimpse of her through the lens of Yates County newspaper coverage, with a celebrity sighting on Seneca Lake.