Synopsis "Eliza Duncan: An Imagined Memoir"
Eliza Tillinghast Vilette Duncan, 1796-1878, was a typical woman of her times, touched by slave-trading and abolition, by the loss of children and the isolation of the Ohio frontier. She was remembered in the Western Reserve as the woman who named the City of Massillon after Jean Baptiste Massillon, Bishop of Clermont. She was also a woman who left behind all that was familiar to her, in order to step gingerly and yet forcefully into the unknown. An only child, Eliza became a wife, mother, and grandmother, and perhaps a shopkeeper, a businesswoman, a pacifist, and even a closet suffragette. In this volume, JoAnn Streeter Shade begins with the few known facts preserved from Mrs. Duncan's life, places her in the rhythm and context of her day, and weaves an imagined memoir of adventure, loss and love.
