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Announcement :: Civil & Human Rights |
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Women In The Woods |
Current rating: 0 |
by EcoLitGy Communications
Email: ecolitgy (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified!) |
01 Jan 2005
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More than a century ago, social activists flocked to Lithia Springs, six miles east of Shelbyville, Ill., every summer to attend Jasper Douthit’s Lithia Springs Chautauqua Assembly. Many of these women were activists fighting for equal rights and men who encouraged them. During the first weekend of Aug. 2005, the women return to the woods as part of the First Annual Lithia Springs Conference. |
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Dan Wormhoudt, a professional historian from Effingham, will revive the memory of Rev. Ada Kepley in a keynote address about her life. Jo Thomas, a former Shelbyville resident, portrays Kepley, the first woman to earn a law degree. Kepley was also a Unitarian minister, ordained in the First Congregational (Unitarian) Church of Shelbyville, where she was a member. She was also a frequent chautauquan at Lithia Springs and sometimes served as a day manager. Today part of her farm is preserved as Wildcat Hollow State Forest.
An annual event at Lithia Springs was the healthy cooking school conducted by Dr. Carolyn Geisel from Kellogg’s Battle Creek Sanitarium. In keeping with that tradition,
Cheryl Sullivan, M.A., R.D., a registered dietitian working with the World Initiative for Soy in Human Health at the University of Illinois will speak on healthy grains during the conference luncheon.
Conference activities will include a tribute to Daisy Hubbard Carlock Pollitt, a sister of Elbert Hubbard, founder of the Roycrofters. Daisy, a McLean County, Ill., native, moved to Kentucky to accept a faculty position at Berea College where she met and married Rev. Flor Pollitt. She was a special friend of the Lithia Assembly and a section of the Lithia Springs property is named Daisy Carlock Point in her honor. When she died, Elbert Hubbard had committed to delivering three lectures at Lithia Springs to raise money for a memorial to Daisy. Unfortunately he died in the shipwreck of the Lusitania before that could happen. This year Daisy will finally be honored.
A Friday evening reception will be held at the Shelby County Historical and Genealogical Society headquarters and will feature a tour of the new Abraham Lincoln Room. Saturday events include presentations plus a guided walking tour of the historic Lithia Springs and an informal evening for sharing historic accounts of Lithia Springs, especially by relatives of those who attended the assemblies. A Sunday morning service will feature “A Woman’s Catechism” written by Rev. Jasper Douthit.
The conference will be held August 5-7, 2005, in Shelbyville, Ill., and is designed to be of interest to historians and genealogists. For more information, visit the conference website at http://www.ecolitgy.com/JLD/ConferenceInfo.html or contact EcoLitGy Communications, 395 Heritage Drive, Mackinaw IL 61755 (309)339-2183. |
See also:
http://www.ecolitgy.com/JLD/ConferenceInfo.html
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This work is in the public domain |
