Page:Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state (Vol. I).djvu/64

60 by the vast majority of their advocate. But of course they could not know this. And even if they had, it might not have helped the situation. Anyhow the Wyandots were fighting mad, nobody more so than Margaret’s husband and convert, Chief Solomon.

It took all the influence Margaret had to persuade Chief Solomon and the other leaders of her people to accept the decree of the white father, to say farewell to their lands and homes. The wonder is that any influence, wifely or religious or both, could extend so far. It did, though. So the Wyandots moved by wagon train to Kansas and settled there in 1843.

Now comes the sequel. Mother Solomon’s soul was at peace, no doubt. But her heart, it seems, was not. The heart of the woman, like the heart of many and many another, remained with her old memories, cried out for her old home. Finally her husband died and the longing to see the land of her birth, the place where her children were buried, became insupportable.

So Mother Solomon sent a written message to the great white father at Washington, pleading that she might return to her homeland, Wyandot County, O. One holds one’s breath at this point, lest stupidly and senselessly, the request would have been refused. So many mistakes are due to stupidity rather than to any innate love of injustice.

But it turned out all right. Mother Solomon’s request was granted and she came back to Ohio. It was some homecoming. When the little mission church at Upper Sandusky was restored, in 1889, it was Mother Solomon who centered all eyes and ears, as she chanted the native songs of her tribe at the dedication.

After her return to her native land, Mother Solomon lived in a little frame cabin near Hayman’s Mill. She died there Aug. 17, 1890. She was buried in the Old Mission Cemetery, where her ashes rest, close to those of tribal chiefs.

In view of the fact that she helped, as early as 1816 to establish the Wilmington Library Association and that she was the only woman member in all the 23 years of its existence, records of Wilmington, Ohio, do not say as much as they probably should about MARY FALLIS PIERCE.

Mary Fallis was like other woman pioneers facing danger and hardship like a man. She was unlike most of them apparently in considering herself man’s intellectual equal. She joined enthusiastically in a project for establishing a library at Wilmington before they had anything but tallow dips—certainly no pioneer could waste daylight to read by. There is good reason to suspect that Mary’s ideas of mental equality may not have found favor with all the good wives of Wilmington—or with all the good men either. But at least one man seems to have approved. This was Richard Pierce, proprietor of the Pierce Home Tavern. He married Mary Fallis. Even so, there is something to be said perhaps, for the negative side. For although the library association Mary helped to found