Deborah Barker welcomes the group and introduced J.M. Lambertson.

JML
“Well, it’s a real pleasure to be here today. I have to digress before talking a little bit about Etta. I have to say that is always a real joy to enter back into the boundaries of Franklin County and to enter the city limits of Ottawa. As I tell anybody who will listen, Ottawa is my adopted hometown. I didn’t grow up here, but members of the family have lived here off and on for generations, mostly in association with Ottawa University, so I like to claim Ottawa as my roots, anyway.

In doing research a number of years ago with the Franklin County Historical Society, I came across Etta Semple and quickly became amazed and overwhelmed at this woman. In my estimation, she was probably the most interesting, fascinating, unique, certainly controversial woman who has probably ever lived in Ottawa. Maybe there are some others who would rival her, but she is really up there at the top, certainly. I became fascinated with her story and her thinking-- in particular how far advanced she was as far as her thinking. Now again, many of her views would not necessarily be agreed with by many people even today. But so many of these issues having to do with socialism and labor issues and women’s rights and individual liberties and so forth really are still being debated and resonate among the political circles today. So she was a woman ahead of her time.

I really prefer speaking extemporaneously, but in the interests of time I’m going to read some of the material that I wrote about her. That’ll be a little more succinct and get the quotations more correct. But again as part of the introduction, I say I think that it’s fascinating that a woman like Etta Semple, who surely was one of the most unforgettable characters Ottawa has ever seen, should have over the years been forgotten. And there’s nothing more poignant or more illustrative than the fact that she has lain here in an unmarked grave for 87 years, and I am thrilled to be here and a part of this commemoration and dedication of this monument to her.

Martha Etta Donaldson Killmer Semple was her full name, and she was born in Quincy, Illinois in 1855, the daughter of a god-fearing couple who raised their children in the Christian faith. But as a young woman, Etta became really rather disgusted with what she saw was rampant hypocrisy and bigotry among Christians, and she left the church. Really little else is known pertaining to her background and education, but her intellectual abilities were formidable. She could write and debate with stinging clarity and forcefulness. She also was an avid student of the Bible, and knew it more thoroughly than some ministers, and believed that it degraded women.

By 1887, Etta Killmer was a young widow with two boys from Illinois when she met and married Matthew Semple, an Ottawa barrel maker. They had one son, Wendell Phillips Semple, named for the noted American reformer. In the 27 years that she lived here, Etta Semple proved herself to be a whirlwind of energy. Besides carefully attending to the needs of her family, she nursed the sick, clothed the poor and took in the homeless. She was, in the words of the Ottawa Herald, one of the greatest benefactors for humanity Ottawa has ever had.

But to the discomfort of many, Etta Semple was also one of the town’s greatest radicals. She was a fearless champion of the working class, attacked racial bigotry, advocated equality for women, opposed capital punishment and vehemently fought Blue Laws that legislated morality. Her most impassioned causes were rooted in the U.S. Constitution and she vigorously promoted and exercised the freedoms it guaranteed—freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of, or in her cause, freedom from religion. To further those freedoms, Etta was a founder of the Kansas Freethought Association and at one time served as its president. Several of the KFA’s annual conventions, therefore were held here in Ottawa’s Forest Park. The stated aim of the KFA was to “fight ignorance, superstition and tyranny and to keep our constitutional freedoms untrammeled. The core of the Freethought movement was the belief that “every human being has the right to do precisely as he pleases so long as he does not infringe on the equal rights of other human beings.” Now Etta extended this to mean that Free Thought strived to do away with selfishness, envy, malice, scandal, gossip, greed and backbiting. To publicize her beliefs, she twice ran for office on the Socialist Labor ticket, once for the Kansas State Board of Education and once for the State Superintendent of Education, and although she lost both times, she ran well ahead of the other candidates of her party. She also served briefly as the vice president of the American Secular Union and wrote two novels, The Strike and Society which addressed the needs of working men and women at the turn of the century. Mrs. Semple’s most notable and successful forum for her views was established when she took the editorship of the Kansas Freethought Ideal at some financial hardship. Turning her parlor into a print shop, she put out the radical 8-page newspaper twice a month. The Ideal had a circulation of nearly 2000, and was filled with editorials, writings of other Freethought advocates, notices of meetings, lectures and letters to the editor. As another paper wrote, “It has something to say and knows how to say it.” The paper’s skeptical views of religion and liberal stance on social problems sparked considerable debate, much of it heated. The most angry and most heated letters to the editor merited Mrs. Semple’s most scathing responses of crisp logic and sharp words, all published in the paper. I have to tell you that on reading through the Freethought Ideal, it’s the letters to the editor and her responses that are some of the most fascinating parts of the paper.
For example, there’s this one: this is in response to the “Christian woman” who called her in a letter “little better than a procuress,” or in other words a whorehouse madam. Etta Semple tartly replied this way, “If heaven is composed of such hatred, such abuse, such tyrannical onslaughts, such Christian love, I don’t want to go there. Hell is far preferable.”

Deborah Barker has a few other items that she wants to share before I come back to the rest of Etta’s story;.

DCB
A year before she died in 1914 Etta Semple read a poem at the funeral of a friend of hers named Henry Wiggans of Quenemo. She asked that it be read at her own funeral, and was quoted in full in the Ottawa Herald.

When o’er my cold and lifeless clay
The parting words of love are said
And friends and kindred meet to pay
Their last tribute to the dead,
Let no stern priest with solemn drone
A formal liturgy intone
Whose creed is foreign to my own.

Let not a word be whispered there
In pity for my unbelief
Or sorrow that I could not share
The views that give their souls relief.
My faith to me is no less dear,
Nor less convincing and sincere
Than theirs, so rigid and austere.

Let no stale words of church-born song
Float out upon the silent air
To prove, by implication wrong
The soul of him then lying there.
Why should such words be glibly sung
O’er one upon whose living tongue
Such empty phrases never hung?

But, rather, let the faithful few,
Whose hearts so close were knit to mine
That they with time the dearer grew
Assemble at the day’s decline.
And while the golden sunbeams fall
In floods of light upon my pall,
Let them in softened tones recall

Some tender memory of the dead,
Some virtuous act, some word of power,
Which I perchance have done or said
By loved ones treasured to that hour.
Recount the deeds which I admired,
The motives which my soul inspired,
The hopes by which my heart was fired.

Let some dear friend a poem read,
Whose words with noble meaning fraught
Have met my thirsting spirit’s need,
And peace and consolation brought.
The favorite verses of my choice
Repeated by some friendly voice
Could wellnigh make my heart rejoice.

Then let some rare, symphonic strain
Steal softly forth in place of prayer
Far more than words, the grand refrain
Shall give a calmness broad and deep
To hearts that mourn and eyes that weep,
There comes a calm.

At last, as music’s murmurs cease,
And fades the light of dying day
In that hushed hour of rest and peace
Bear lovingly my form away.
Then let the darkening curtain fall.
The dread “Beyond” may well appall
The best and bravest of us all.
Yet all is well, yes, all is well.
-Anonymous

And something from the Freethought Ideal which I found particularly interesting as an explanation of how Etta lived her own particular religion is an article from 1899 wherein she described the fact that the Methodist Church here in Ottawa organized an excursion to Leavenworth, on the railroad, obtaining a special rate. And she says, “Lo, the poor colored man, made in the image of God, appeared with purchased tickets in hand, ready
also to enjoy--to them--the trip of their whole lives. Then came the crucible test. Can these people ride on the same train we do? Is their money as good as ours? Am I here to do God’s bidding or to lord it over those unfortunate to be made in the image of a black God? Alas, like thousands of others, it did not stand. With almost an imperial mandate, those who had sold the colored people tickets were ordered to collect them again, and at the station the colored people were refused transportation, even though most of them were members either of the [St. Paul’s A.]M.E. Church or the [Bethany Chapel] Baptist Church. If I ever have a religion it must be robbed of all prejudice, all injustice, all class rule. It must teach love to all men, must try to uplift instead of degrade, and must at least be equal to that which I worship now-- “The world is my country and to do good my religion.”

JML
Etta’s crusade therefore at the turn of the century was for intellectual, religious and social freedom. Now at the same time, Kansas also had another woman fighting a crusade, Carry Nation, who sought to better the world by abolishing booze. Semple approved of temperance but sharply disagreed with Nation’s religious motives and efforts to force prohibition. The two crusading adversaries made quite a contrast in the summer of 1901 and entertained those nearby with an arm-in-arm stroll engaged in earnest but amiable debate. As one wag wrote at the time, “One of the women believes in no saloons and one believes in no God!”

1901, the year that she met Carry Nation was also a turning point for Etta. Her husband was having some serious health problems and she decided she needed to give up the Freethough Ideal and its editorship to help with his care. As she wrote in the paper, “We love him so, he is our all, and his life is dearer to us than the pittance invested in the Ideal. “

No longer having the paper not only gave Etta time to devote to her husband and his care but also to help countless others. Ever since she was a girl, she appeared to possess unusual healing powers. By the early 1890s she was taking people into her home for treatment for all kinds of internal disorders , dislocations and deformities.
As the Herald reported, “Her diagnosis of a case was by clairvoyancy. She would talk to a patient for a few moments and then diagnose the ailment without an examination. Baths were greatly used in her system of cures. Chiropractic massages were also employed. Etta’s reputation grew and patients from all over the Midwest came to her door. In 1902 the Semples built a large house on the side of their own cottage at 128 N. Locust St. just south of the old Locust Street bridge. Made even more rambling with several additions, the Semple sanitarium still stands today, although empty. It was here that the sick, the lame and infirm were nursed back to health regardless of whether or not they could pay. It’s interesting, therefore that the atheist proprietress ironically earned the name of “the good Samaritan.” Etta Semple didn’t believe that one had to be a Christian to show compassion and help one’s fellow man. Once in defending her beliefs, she wrote, “Although I am poor, still not one cent of dishonest money ever crosses my palm. For twelve years our house has been the home of dozens of unfortunates of one kind and another. No tramp ever went away hungry and no fallen woman has ever been kicked down by us.”

Etta Semple however also had her enemies. In 1905 an intruder crawled through her bedroom window and with a knife and an ax savagely attacked the figure sleeping in the bed. Now, fortunately for Etta, she was not in her own bed that night. She had given it to an elderly woman from Wellsville. But Caroline Jobe, who was that unfortunate person, lingered for about a week before she died. The intruder and attacker was never found, and Etta always maintained that it was indeed an assassination attempt directly focused on her.

Little is known of Etta’s later years other than the fact that she remained busy in attending to the needs of others and she died of pneumonia on April 11, 1914 in her sanitarium She was just 59.

You know, in the fifteen years that have passed since I discovered Etta and did research on her, sometimes political and social issues have come to the fore and I have wondered, Hm, I wonder what Etta would say about that one! Just a few of the many that have come to light recently that I’ve pondered that question about have to do with the issue of gun control. Would she support the individual liberties there? The bigamy trial in Utah, would she support that gentleman’s personal liberties or would she view that situation as degrading women? I don’t know the answer on that one. Immigration policies and the border of Mexico, I wonder what her thoughts would be? A little bit more clear would be her response to other issues. I can just imagine the venom and the scathing attacks that would flow from her pen in response to the efforts of the infamous Rev. Fred Phelps of Topeka. I also think she would be very much opposed to the various efforts of censorship—censorship of art, of books and even of high school plays. Those would not be things she would champion at all.

When Etta died, it’s interesting that someone of her “peculiar disposition” and radical views and atheist beliefs should have such an outpouring of warmth and support from the people of Ottawa. At the final hour of her funeral, and before she was laid to rest here, businesses closed in downtown Ottawa, the court adjourned session, and so many people made their way to the house on Locust Street that the big rooms could not hold them all. They had to quickly move the service out onto the front porch and the throng filled the street. As the Otawa Herald reported in multiple headlines “A Philanthropist Will Long be Remembered Here”, and “Good Deeds of a Good Woman are on the Tongues of Ottawa Today.” It was viewed as the largest funeral that Ottawa had ever seen. The service besides being held out on the front steps, was unusual in the fact that no minister spoke, of course, no hymns were sung, no prayers given. The Ottawa Herald reports, “In the bright sunshine of a beautiful spring day one of her friends paid tribute in touching and eloquent words.” The eulogizer read a couple of poems. Deborah has given you one of those that was especially having to do with her religious views. Then the throng sang the secular song “Scattering Seeds of Kindness.” Now, we tried to find that song, and we didn’t have any success. But we did finally track down the poem that we believe and understand were the words for that song, and I want to close today with that in just a few moments. I simply want to add here, as you can see on the tombstone, Etta, sort of tongue-in-cheek, several years before she died said in the Freethought Ideal, “If there’s any money after I’m gone, this is the epitaph that I would like to have”.

And it is, “Here lies a woman that through her peculiar disposition lived a life of turmoil, as did all who knew her.”

The poem that was apparently sung is by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and is entitled “Wishing,” and I think it’s a rather upbeat end for my part of this service today.

Wishing
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Do you wish the world were better?
Let me tell you what to do.
Set a watch upon your actions,
Keep them always straight and true.
Rid your mind of selfish motives
Let your thoughts be clean and high.
You can make a little Eden
Of the sphere you occupy.

Do you wish the world were wiser?
Well, suppose you make a start,
By accumulating wisdom
In the scrapbook of your heart;
Do not waste one page on folly;
Live to learn, and learn to live.
Do you want to give men knowledge
You must get it, ere you give.

Do you wish the world were happy?
Then remember day by day
Just to scatter seeds of kindness
As you pass along the way,
For the pleasures of the many
May oftimes be traced to one.
As the hand that plants an acorn
Shelters armies from the sun.

DCB

Would anybody else like to add anything at this point?

EG

I’d like to read something in Etta’s own words which expresses her Freethought views. Fred Whitehead included this in his book, Freethought on the American Frontier, and it is part of a larger article Etta wrote for the Freethought Ideal, May 1, 1899. For me it has become a kind of Litany for Freethought!

Freethought, then, means liberty of thought, science, mental activity, and
justice. It teaches that no written creed is elastic enough to stretch into the
next century--it teaches freedom of the mind as relating to religion--it teaches
morality--it teaches truth and is willing to go over rough and dangerous paths
when in search of it--it teaches its true followers to do good to all, because of
the happiness it affords both the doer and the receiver--not for the sole purpose
of shunning an endless hell; it offers no reward here or hereafter save the
reward of a good conscience. True conscience is being sacrificed every day by a
spirit which tends to destroy it, just as our occult powers were destroyed years
ago. It is the same tyrannical, bigoted, oppressive spirit. Our consciences
are so trained that what is absolutely right is thought of with "fear and
trembling." The mandate, "thus far and no farther," "thou shalt not," and "obey
my laws," are so constantly before the mind that conscience is almost driven out
or crushed. Freethought strives to reinstate conscience--dispel fear--shut out
superstition--ease the mind when death comes, and even robs the grave of its
terror. It cries out NOW, NOW, NOW! Happiness and joy here on earth now--not
waiting until death robs us of our consciousness and nature claims our body to
mingle again with the elements an unconscious matter.

DCB
The Franklin County Historical Society, in collaboration with the Heartland Humanists, has prepared a reception at the Old Depot Museum, and we invite all of you to attend. Thank you for coming.

Martha Etta Donaldson Killmer
SEMPLE
Born September 21, 1855 Quincy IL
Died April 11, 1914 Ottawa KS

“Here lies a woman that, through her peculiar disposition, lived a life of turmoil, as did all who knew her.”
--Etta Semple

Atheist, Radical Socialist, Feminist,
Philanthropist and Freethinker,
Etta Semple Was a Newspaper Editor, a Novelist,
a Medical Intuitive, a Sanitarium Founder and Operator,
and a Champion of the Downtrodden.

“Liberty of conscience is all we ask.”