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Ellen Smith Tupper was from a well-respected New England family who landed with the Mayflower and then settled in Rhode Island.
Of all the women beekeepers I have written about, none is more compelling to me than Ellen Smith Tupper. Tupper is a fascinating figure in American beekeeping industry, not just because of her contributions to bee extension on the Iowa frontier, but because in her efforts to provide for her family, she entered a moral gray area that few women beekeepers have taken. No one looks good under a microscope, and yet, I find that in Tupper's case, such close study provides a cautionary tale that has much to teach us in this age of financial risk and scandals.
Ellen Smith Tupper was from a well- respected New England family who landed with the Mayflower and then settled in Rhode Island. But her mother, Hannah Draper Wheaton, died when Ellen was very young, leaving Ellen to raise the rest of her brothers and sisters. Her father, Noah Smith, moved the family to Calais, Maine. There, she met Alien Tupper, whom she married in 1843.
By marrying into this family, Ellen Tupper gained an impressive mother-in-law, Mary Ann Mcllwayne Tupper.1 Mary Ann Tupper ran a millinery business, and at one time employed eight women. In addition, Mary Ann was an abolitionist, a temperance worker, and a "friend to the fallen. Long before I knew your father," Ellen Smith Tupper wrote to her daughter, Margaret, "I knew his mother by reputation, and what first attracted me to him was the curiosity to see the son of such a mother. In those days, a business woman was seldom seen."-2
Perhaps because of his mother's leadership, Alien Tupper was considered quite progressive for the time. He had once taught slaves to read and write when staying with an uncle in the South. After he married Ellen Smith, he seemed to have no objection to her teaching bees at Iowa Agricultural School. Their daughters would become leaders in education, the arts, and missionary work. The Tupper family's move in 1851 to Brighton, Iowa, was because of Ellen's precarious health. But her husband Alien struggled to make the transition to the frontier. Whereas it seemed that he wanted to...