- Chronicles is made possible by a grant from the Erie Community Foundation, a community assets grant provided by the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority support from Springhill Senior Living, and the generous support of Thomas B. Hagen.

This is WQLN.

- The year is 1857.

James Buchanan from Pennsylvania is sworn in as the United States 15th president.

At the same time, westward expansion continues as American settlers continue to push Native Americans out of their territories, and in many cases forcibly relocate them.

The expansion leads to railroads being built for easier transportation.

The women's rights movement, particularly focused on women's right to vote, is also beginning to gain steam.

That same year, the Supreme Court ruled on the Dred Scott v Stanford case.

This decision declared that African Americans could not claim United States citizenship, therefore had no standing in federal court, while also setting precedent that Congress could not prohibit slavery on federally controlled land.

As in the largely unsettled West, the country is barrelling toward a civil war.

By August, the US economy is falling apart.

The Ohio Insurance and Trust Company is forced to cut off payments following a string of bad financial decisions.

This, in turn, triggered what's known now as the nationwide Panic of 1857.

Amidst all the chaos of that time, a figure who would make it her life's work to disrupt a status quo is born.

Ida Minerva Tarbell was born in a log cabin in Hatch Hallow, Pennsylvania November 5th, 1857, to Franklin and Esther Tarbell.

The cabin was nestled in a wooded area near Wattsburg, Pennsylvania, in Erie County.

Esther's parents owned the property, which also contained a small farm.

Overall, it was a beautiful place where nature was the main feature.

- Ida's parents, Esther and Franklin, when they were young couple, they planned to move west, which is what seemed to be the general mood of young people.

And that's how our country was settled.

- Franklin left Erie County and went to Iowa and the plan was he was going to work and he was going to build a house and get things ready for Esther to join him.

And at this point, Esther was pregnant with Ida, but the P anic of 1857 threw things in disarray, so financial markets bottomed out and the money that Franklin had saved now wasn't worth as much as it had been.

So moving Esther out, especially pregnant, was not a viable option.

And the dreams of moving to Iowa, at least at that point, were put on hold.

But Franklin needed to get back to Esther.

- When Franklin returns in 1859, Ida is about a year and a half old.

The couple is weighing their options for their family's future.

One idea was to head back to Iowa to give the family farm idea - Another shot.

In the end of 1859, Edwin Drake was incredibly lucky.

If he had drilled 50 feet in either direction, he might not have hit what we call the Drake Stray Sand.

It was a very shallow layer of sandstone, very narrow in width that produced the oil which he tapped into.

And people came from all over the country forming their own oil companies or just drilling on their own.

- And so there's all this hubbub going on about this oil strike, and people are flocking to the area.

And as Franklin keeps hearing more about it, he decides to come down to Titusville, check it out for himself.

And the closer he got to Titusville, the more he kept hearing and the more he kept thinking maybe he should be one of the thousands coming to the area and seeing about this new industry and what he could do.

Franklin opened up business making barrels and is pretty good at it.

And so ultimately Esther and Ida joined him there in Pithole.

- Pithole was a wild west town with, you know, drinking and dancing girls, and also some people who were trying to have stable lives and home lives as the Tarbells were.

There was also horrible fires and accidents.

And Ida, as a -- growing up, saw some really devastating victims of terrible fires.

So that was wild Pithole and it was very different from Hatch Hollow.

- "My first reaction to my new surroundings was one of acute dislike.

It aroused me to a revolt, which is the first thing I'm sure I remember about my life, the birth in me of conscious experience.

This revolt did not come from natural depravity.

On the contrary, it was a natural and righteous protest against having the life and home I had known, and which I loved taken away without explanation and a new scene, a new set of rules, which I did not like suddenly imposed."

- Despite Ida's opposition to her new surroundings, the Tarbell family would spend the next several years living in and around Pithole.

Ida recalls a particular day when all the adults in pit hole had really low spirits.

The event occurred on April 12th, 1861, the day of the Battle of Fort Sumter in South Carolina, the start of the American Civil War.

One trait that stood out in Ida's early years is that of an acute inquisitiveness about the world around her.

- At a very young age, Ida realized that she really liked science and really wanted to try things, and the family shanty was along Cherry Run Creek.

And she kept noticing things going by in the creek and how some things floated and some things if you tossed into the creek, immediately sank to the bottom.

So she was curious what her brother would do, and her brother at this point is a baby.

So luckily he had enough dressing gowns on, so when she put him in the creek, he floated probably because of all the material kept buoyant and Esther immediately plucked him out of the creek.

But yeah, that was Ida's early experiment.

She learned that her brother floated in the creek.

- What was also happening then was that Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution, the Origin of the Species was becoming known.

And Franklin Tarbell was a very religious man and he was a by the book bible man.

And this general upheaval made Ida wonder what -- who was right.

And so she decided she would find out for herself and she had a microscope and she thought she was going to find the origin of life.

And I, I just love it that she did that.

- It was also at this time that a young man named John D. Rockefeller was starting his career in Cleveland, Ohio.

He was working with a company that transported grain using the still expanding railroad system.

This business became crucial in the effort to feed Union troops on the front lines.

Due to this success, John was able to pay so-called "replacement soldiers" to take his place on the battlefield so he could continue his work making sure they fed.

As the boom town of Pithole begins its decline, some businessmen like Franklin Tarbell must adapt to survive.

The Standard Oil Company owned and operated at the time by John D. Rockefeller is gaining control over the oil industry as a whole.

- As skilled cooper, it still takes a day to make one barrel.

And when you've got a thousand barrel, 3000 a day wells, you need a lot of coopers.

So then machines are invented and developed to make barrels faster.

- Franklin recognizes that his wooden oil barrels only have a certain shelf life because they're not the most practical thing to ship oil.

They leak, of course.

So fortunately for him, he recognizes that this is not a long standing venture and actually then goes into producing oil with a few partners and that's how he's able to continue in the industry, but in a different fashion.

- When Esther and Franklin moved to Titusville, when Ida was probably about 12, she didn't like being the new girl in the stranger.

And at that point of time, she just wasn't totally ready for a transition.

I think that boom and bust Wild West, that was Pithole, it did make her wary of excessive risk.

- "There was born to me a hatred of privilege, privilege of any sort.

It was all pretty hazy to be sure, but it still was well at 15, to have one definite plan based on things seen and heard, ready for a future platform of social and economic justice if I should ever awake to my need of one."

- She expressed her unhappiness by cutting class and doing whatever she wanted and pretty much defying everybody.

And she did that until the teacher said, it is such a shame that such an intelligent girl is just running wild.

And that was what Ida needed to hear.

And she changed and she became quite a, quite a good student, an excellent student.

And she made her own structure.

That was the young Ida probably up 'til the time she went to college.

- Allegheny College located in Meadville, Pennsylvania, was originally founded in 1815 by Reverend Timothy Alden.

It's one of just a few dozen institutions in the country that survived the Civil War era.

Today it's considered one of the oldest colleges in the country.

- She had been looking at Cornell University who had just started admitting women, I believe in 1872, but Allegheny, it's closer and started admitting women sooner.

So she was the only woman in her class, and I think there were only four or five other women overall in the school at that time.

And there were things that she just didn't think of.

She finds this cozy spot under a tree to read and sits down and she's corrected by one of the other female students that, "No, you can't sit there.

That's for men only."

And we think of that now as like, that's just so ridiculous.

But that's just how it was.

- Ida was part of the first generation and the first years of women going to college and not all women went.

It was still the exception to the rule.

I mean, her mother's experience had been, if you get married, you can't have a career.

You really had to pretty much had to choose one or the other.

You get married, you stop working in the world.

And Ida, she planned to go on, she planned to be a scientist.

However, by the time she graduated, the Tarbell fortunes had changed partly because of John D. Rockefeller.

And there were really two career paths that were open to her; teaching.

Another opportunity was missionary work.

And Ida said that she had learned in her study of comparative religions that the heathens were as righteous as the bible people.

So she was not interested in that.

- "Being still in that early stage of development where there must be a definite word by which to classify oneself, I began to call myself a pantheist and I had a creed, which I had repeated flower in the crannied wall.

I pluck you out of the crannies.

I hold you here, root in all in my hand, little flower.

But if I could understand what you are root in all and all in all, I should know what got a man is it reassured me I was on the right track for, was I not going to find out with the microscope what God a man are?"

- Ida was very interested in in the world and she wanted to be part of it.

- While curious about many aspects of the natural world, one topic Ida does not appear to explore, especially in her younger years, was that of interpersonal relationships, particularly those of a romantic nature, - She never marries.

She's definitely career focused.

Again, very unusual for the time period, even more so as the oldest child, there would've been some sort of expectation and there was no pressure from her parents to, "No, you don't go to school."

Or "Yes, you can go to school, but as soon as you're done, you're getting married."

There wasn't a push for that.

- Well, society said that most women are to marry, right?

Women's job is to get married and have children to reproduce.

It was not very common for women to graduate, particularly from college in the 1870s and 1880s.

But it is becoming more so because there are people advocating for women getting the right to vote.

The suffrage campaign begins in 1848 in Seneca Falls, and women are going to college to better themselves and in some cases to better themselves for their future husbands.

So it is rare for women to go to college in the 19th century, rare for that to happen.

And it is even more uncommon for them to not get married, even if they're going to an all female college, some of them are gonna end up getting married.

So why didn't Tarbell get married?

Who knows?

- Ida graduates from Allegheny College and she accepts a a position at Poland Union Seminary, and that's Poland, Ohio.

I'm not too far away from the Meadville, Titusville, area.

She takes on this position as a teacher with the assumption that she will teach by day and continue her own studies on her own time.

And that does not come true - In terms of professional women during this period.

Really, they're teachers and, and there aren't great numbers of them, but there are women establishing schools around the country.

For example, Mount Holyoke, right, which is still in existence, was established during this period as a female seminary, but it grows to become a college.

Georgia in the -- around 1809 I believe it was.

It was established, it became a Wesleyan College where women began to matriculate.

And so teachers in 1845, for example, Catherine Beecher, who established one of those female seminaries, wrote a book entitled What American Women Should Do.

And what she argued in that book was that they should go west and teach because people were moving westward as because of westward expansion, the exploration of the area towards the Pacific.

And so there was this need.

People believed that we needed to provide, for lack of a better word, civilization.

And with civilization comes education or with education comes civilization.

So women began to teach, but there were limits to women's employment outside the home.

- It was not a happy professional experience for her.

She took the place of a beloved teacher that everyone loved her and let Ida know this.

And she discovered that this beloved teacher had given this test year after year.

So everybody came to school knowing what the tests were gonna be.

And they of course did quite nicely.

Well, I was not going to go along with that.

So she found a book, another book and other tests and gave those tests and people did not do well.

- She talks about some of the subjects that she's supposed to teach, she doesn't really know much about.

So she's actually learning as she's teaching and she feels that she pulls it off pretty well.

So all that off time that she expected to have to do her own thing, she's really learning to do her own job.

And so at the end of two years, she mentions that it was sort of an unwritten agreement between her and the president that she would resign, and resign she does.

So she comes back from Poland, Ohio and she moves back home to this house.

She's not quite sure what she's going to do next, but at least she has a safe place to land, and to figure it out.

- There was a magazine that was being developed.

It was the Chautauquan and that was an outgrowth of what became the Chautauqua Institution, which had started out as a summer bible camp for Methodist.

And it was a bible study program, but they expanded it into other kinds of learning 'cause people were so hungry for knowledge.

- So the family's very in tune with Chautauqua and she's home from Poland and doesn't really have a clear path forward.

And so Reverend Theodore Flood, who was the publisher of the Chautauquan Magazine, and knowing her educational background, he offers her a temporary position at the Chautauquan Magazine, partially to annotate some of the articles because the magazine would often get mailed questions about how do you pronounce this foreign word or could you tell me more about this particular thing?

The readership was wide and so in some areas didn't, they didn't have libraries or other resources to where the readers could go and answer their own questions.

So they turned back to the magazine for those answers.

And so that's why Reverend Flood offers her that position to do that because she is very well educated and could be very well set up to answer those questions quickly.

- She was involved in every phase of it, and soon I think the circulation boomed to like 65,000 by the time she left.

One of the things she did, she, I mean they had her do everything.

She was also answering mail and people were seeking advice.

And Ida would do a little freelance, Miss Lonely Hearts and give people advice on how, what they should do and how they should proceed.

- And everything's going fine until this person comes to visit Meadville and wants to meet with Reverend Flood and thank him for all of his sage advice.

He, of course, meets with Flood and Flood, has no idea of what he is, of what this person's referring to and then tells him, well, Ms. Tarbell writes all of my correspondence.

The person is crestfallen to, to learn that a woman of all people has been writing to him and he's been taking this advice and he leaves the office kind of in a solemn manner and never writes to this Chautauquan Magazine again.

- Ida ultimately worked for the Chautauquan for nearly eight years until 1891.

But eventually her thirst for knowledge led to her feeling restless.

Another one of her many interests included the French Revolution and one of the most notable women of the time, Madam Roland.

Ida planned to write a book about her influence on France during that time of social upheaval.

With all of this in mind, she begins to feel a pull in the direction of France.

Once there, she planned to explore or rather research that people and their culture.

- This coincided with the period where Ida was really bored with what she'd been doing or more to the point she'd found what she really wanted to do, which was more writing.

- She does have this interest in the French Revolution, especially the women associated with it.

But where do you go to learn more about the women of the French Revolution?

You're not gonna learn much in Titusville, Meadville, Pennsylvania, the United States.

In typical Ida fashion, she wants to learn more and she knows that she's the only one that's gonna be able to fully answer her questions.

- "Where was I to carry on this research?

There was but one place Paris.

I did not consider the possibility of getting a regular job.

I did not want one.

I wanted freedom.

And I had an idea that there was no freedom in belonging to things.

No freedom, in security.

It took time to convince myself that I dared go on my own.

But finally I succeeded."

- Paris, beautiful, beautiful Paris was, was absolutely thrilling and enchanting, I'm sure it seemed like Oz at that time.

Science and art, everything was booming.

You had Louis Pastore, they were curing diptheria.

The novels... Ida wrote her sister, "the oranges and the greens and the yellows howl."

She wrote, that was her description of the impressionists.

She went one night to the Moulin Rouge, even as she had to go about getting rooms, she and her friends and finding out how they were going to eat.

And you know how she was gonna get paid.

She was living a real life in this fabulous setting.

- She's writing articles that then she's getting published in the US and that's how she's making money, although she's not making a lot of money.

Her main interest is Madame Roland, who is kind of, has some parallels to Ida in a way.

But that being a woman, her, her interest and her writings weren't gonna be taken as seriously or be as widely distributed as if, if she were a man.

- So one of the obstacles that women faced in the 19th century was their legal right to, to do things like sign contracts.

They couldn't even have a bank account without their husband's name on it or their father's name on, or maybe an older brother.

Some of these things will be begin to change in the mid 19th century as there are more and more women living by themself.

And these are not great numbers.

We're not talking about this massive onslaught of single women, you know?

But there are some places where there are laws that give single women the right to inherit, the right to hold property, you know?

But the but it varies.

- "Coming to a decision has a loosening tonic effect on a mind, which has been floundering in uncertainty, liberated.

It rushes galy, hopefully to the charting.

The new course I had no sooner resolve to strike out on my own and my mind was bubbling with plans.

I forgot that I was 33 years old and according to the code of my time and my society too old for new ventures, I forgot that outside of my very limited experience on the Chautauquan, when I knew nothing of the writing and publishing world, had literally no acquaintance among editors.

I forgot that I was afraid of people -- believed them all so much greater and more important than they often turned out to be, that it cost me nervous, chills to venture with a request into a stranger's presence."

- Scribner's Magazine began publication in 1887.

It printed a wide range of articles on countless topics.

Ida being someone who explored her varying interests daily was a great fit for such a magazine.

Ida sent a piece into Scribner's Magazine.

She didn't expect anything to come of it, but much to her surprise, the editor offered her a position.

Samuel Sydney McClure, better known as SS McClure, was an Irish immigrant who moved to the United States with his widowed mother when he was just nine years old.

He founded the country's first newspaper syndicate, McClure's Syndicate.

In 1884, - She has a meeting with SS McClure, Sam McClure, and he's starting up his own magazine to be known as McClure's Magazine.

He knows of her from her writings that she has published back in the US.

And so he sets up a meeting with her at her apartment.

- He was out of breath, he was always out of breath, but he raced up five flights of stairs, told her all his plans for the magazine.

- It's supposed to be a 10 minute meeting, and the 10 minute meeting turns into two hours.

- And he wanted her to come work for him.

And he also borrowed $40.

So he left and Ida thought, "I'll never see that money again."

But the next day, money arrived.

He had New York send, send the money.

So he was, he was principled about that.

- She's fascinated by him and she forgets to ask him the the important questions of, "Well, what do you want me to write about?"

And "How much will you pay me?"

She's just that sort of taken in by him.

For somebody who's always been so meticulously planned, she forgets the very important questions.

- And so this began, this amazing partnership.

- Chronicles is made possible by a grant from the Erie Community Foundation, a community assets grant provided by the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority support from Springhill Senior Living, and the generous support of Thomas B. Hagen.

This is WQLN.