Can you imagine being alone with three small children in the bustling port of New Bedford in the very early 1860s, and hear the news that your husband - on whom you depend for your daily upkeep - has expired at sea?
Well, this happened to Sarah Wood Howland Devoll, the wife of Captain Zebedee Devoll. And how she coped is an inspiring story.
On
August 28, 1851, Zebedee Devoll (born in New Bedford 18 November 1817) married
his first cousin, Sarah W. Howland, in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. He was 35, she
was just 16 (born 17 January 1835), and it was a first marriage for both. In
July 1852 they had a daughter, Sarah jr., and in 1856 a son, named Augustus,
followed by another daughter, Ida, who was born in Honolulu on 24 November
1858, during the voyage of the Roman. When the ship had sailed from New
Bedford in November 1855, Sarah had taken a servant with her, an Irish girl
named Abby Noonan, who married a widowed whaling master, Frederick Coggeshall,
on 29 November 1859, while Sarah and her children were in Honolulu, and Zebedee
Devoll was sailing back to Hawaii after a season a-whaling in the icy north.
The Roman, which had been doing well in
the Okhotsk Sea, arrived in Honolulu four days after the birth, on November 28,
1858 — evidently in time to witness the marriage, as well. They sailed away on
December 29, Devoll declaring that he would cruise and then head home. On
February 18, 1859, the ship was reported off French Rock, bound for the Bay of
Islands ‘on account of the sickness of Mrs Devoll’ (Pacific Commercial
Advertiser April 28, 1859). The ship was reported back in Russell, Bay of Islands,
on February 20, 1859, but Sarah (or her baby) must have recovered, as Devoll’s
only report was that he had shipped most of his oil, to make room
in the casks for any whales he might capture on the way back to New England.
The
ship arrived home on June 9, 1859, and in August 1860 Captain Devoll sailed
again, in command of the Lagoda. Sarah and the children were not with him. Instead, they stayed in New Bedford, as Elizabeth Marble, wife of the captain of the Awashonks,
made plain in a December 31, 1860 sea-letter. Her ship hadmade a mid-sea social visit with
Captain Devoll, ‘the one that bought Capt. Topham’s place and it was his wife
the Capt. Cogshalls wife went out survant with ...’ and Mrs. Marble certainly would
have mentioned Captain Devoll's family if they had been there.
Captain
Zebedee Devoll died at sea of ‘Java fever’ (possibly dengue) in September 1861.
The crew carried on with the voyage, arriving back in New Bedford on 18 April
1864, but of course the news of his death preceded that. On 2 May 1862, Sarah
made sure that debtors could not seize her inheritance, by applying for
guardianship of family and property. This was highly unusual, signifying that
she was shrewd, as well as very confident. She also went to the owners for her widow’s
share of her husband’s last voyage, receiving $2619.92, a good sum at that
time.
This
resourceful woman then set about establishing her own career. Never again was
she going to be dependent on a husband for the upkeep of herself and her
children – and so she went to medical school. In 1872 she graduated from the
New England Female Medical College, Boston, and went on to practise medicine in
Portland, Maine, as there was nowhere in Boston that would employ female
doctors. Portland was a good choice, as a branch of the Female Medical
Education Society of New England was there. Sarah did even more than that –
with grit and persistence, she made her mark by being the first woman in
history who was allowed to join the Maine Medical Association.
In the 1880 census she is listed as widowed, living in Portland, Maine, and working as a physician, while the daughter who had been born in Honolulu is a medical student. Dr. Sarah Devoll authored many papers — ‘Dress Reform’ and ‘Hygienic Value of Labor’ – plus much about the need for women in the treatment of the insane. She featured on the boards of charities, and was involved in the Women’s Rights movement. From 1888 Sarah was the government physician for the Sioux Indians at Standing Rock Agency, Fort Yates, in the territory of Dakota. She died 30 October 1922 in Boston of pneumonia, aged eighty-seven. Unusually for her time, too, she was cremated.
A remarkable woman indeed.