CREATION DESIGNS - Key Persons
Clarina Howard Carpenter Nichols (1810-1885) spent most of her adult life as an orator and lobbyist for women's rights and the abolition of slavery. Born in West Townsend, Vermont, she moved west to Kansas in 1854 and then again in 1871 to Potter Valley, California. Having attended a private college and earning a teaching credential, Clarina was an educated woman for her time. She spent her retirement years in Potter Valley where she lived with her son George. Another son, Aurelius Ornando Carpenter, was father to Grace Hudson. In Potter Valley, she contributed to magazines and newspapers as a spokeswoman for women's rights. Victory for her efforts did not come until the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, 35 years after her death.
I was prepared to like California, yet I did fear that seeing it would let me down. Other people's spectacles magnify so differently from our own. The whole country is made up after patterns I am not familiar with. I was born among the green mountains of Vermont; explored its gorges and climbed its granite rocks. But these western mountains, though green with trees and shrubs, are all unlike any mountains I have ever seen. These rocks here in California, so heavy with the moss of ages, might be taken for the remote ancestors of New England boulders.