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Modern Persecution, or Married Woman's Liabilities

From: Modern Persecution
Creator: Elizabeth P. W. Packard (author)
Date: 1873
Source: Available at selected libraries
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 1  Figure 2  Figure 3  Figure 4  Figure 5  Figure 6  Figure 7  Figure 8  Figure 9  Figure 10  Figure 11  Figure 12  Figure 13  Figure 14  Figure 15  Figure 16

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244  

SARAH RUMSEY, sworn, and says:

245  

Have lived one week in Mrs. Packard's house. I was present at the interview when Mrs. Packard ordered us to leave the room. Mrs. Packard was very pale and angry. She was in an undress, and her hair was down over her face. It was 11 o'clock in the forenoon -- I staid at the house; Mrs. Packard came out to the kitchen. She was dressed then. She said she had come to reveal to me what Mr. Packard was. She talked very rapidly; she would not talk calm. She said Mr. Packard was an arch deceiver; that he and the members of his church had made a conspiracy to put her into the Insane Asylum; she wanted me to leave the Conspirators. Soon after dinner she said, "Come with me, I have something to tell you." She said she had a new revelation; it would soon be here; and that she had been chosen by God for a particular mission. She said that all who decided with her, and remained true to her, would be rewarded in the millennium, and if I would side with her, that I would be a chief apostle in the millennium. She wanted to go to Batavia, but that Mr. Packard would give her no money to take her there; that Mr. Packard called her insane. She started to go out, and Mr. Packard made her return; took her into Mr. Comstock's, and Mr. Comstock made her go home.

246  

I saw her again when Libby had the brain fever. She was disturbed because the family called her insane. She and Libby were crying together; they cried together a long time. This was Tuesday. She would not let me into the room. The next morning while at breakfast Mr. La Brie passed the window and came in. He said that Georgie had been over for him, and said that they were killing his mother. She acted, very strangely all the time; was wild and excited.

247  

Cross-examined. -- Knew Mr. Packard two years before I went there to live. He was the pastor of our church. I am a member of the church. I did not attend the Bible-class. Brother Bole came to me and said somebody of the church should go there and stay at the house, and assist in packing her clothes and getting her ready to take off to the Hospital, and stay and take care of the children. I consented to go; I heard that Brother Packard requested Brother Dole to come for me. I never worked out before. They had a French servant, before I went there; Mr. Packard turned her off when I came, the same day. I did not want to take Mrs. Packard away. I did not think she exhibited any very unusual excitement, when the men came there to take her away. Doctors Merrick and Newkirk were the physicians who came there with Sheriff Burgess. She did not manifest as much excitement, when being taken away, as I would have done under the same circumstances; any person would have naturally been opposed to being carried away.

248  

The church had opposed her, in disseminating her ideas in the church; I was opposed to her promulgating her religious ideas in the church; I thought them wrong, and injurious. I was present at the Sabbath School when she read the paper to the school; I thought that bore evidence of insanity. It was a refutation of what Mrs. Dixon had written; I cannot give the contents of the paper now.

249  

I was present when she read a confession of her conduct to the church; she had had her views changed partially, from a sermon preached upon the subject of the sovereignty and immutability of God. I did not think it strange conduct that she changed her views; and never said so. This was in the spring before the June when they took her away.

250  

The article she read in the school was by the permission of the school.

251  

I was present when she presented a protest against the church for refusing to let her be heard; I have only an indistinct recollection of it; it was a protest because they refused to listen to her.

252  

Mr. Dole was the only person who came to the house when she was taken away, except the men with Burgess.

253  

She said that Mr. Packard had deprived her of the liberty of conscience in charging her to be insane, when she only entertained ideas new to him.

254  

I thought it was an evidence of insanity, because she maintained these ideas. I do not know that many people entertain similar ideas; I suppose a good many do not think the Calvinistic doctrine is right; they are not necessarily insane because they think so.

255  

When she found I was going to stay in the house, and that the French servant had been discharged, she ordered me into the kitchen; before that she had treated me kindly as a visitor.

256  

I thought it was an evidence of insanity for her to order me into the kitchen; she ought to have known that I was not an ordinary servant. The proper place for the servant is in the kitchen at work, and not in the parlor; I took the place of the servant girl for a short time.

257  

She wanted the flower beds in the front yard, cleaned out, and tried to get Mr. Packard to do it; he would not do it. She went and put on an old dress and went to work, and cleaned the weeds out, and worked herself into a great heat. It was a warm day; she staid out until she was almost melted down with the heat.

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