The house owned by Richard Hunt at 14 East Williams Street was a handsome
brick Greek Revival with a wide cornice and returns on the gable ends.
The M'Clintocks lived in this rented house for nearly twenty years.
It was near their drugstore. The back doors faced each other across
the village lot and were joined by a walkway. Both the drugstore and
the house were the center of the family's religious and reform activities.
No merchandise produced by slave labor was sold in the store, and the
M'Clintocks advertised that fact in the local newspaper.
The radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison told Thomas M'Clintock in 1840:
You have a soul, capable of Embracing the largest idea of humanity. …I regard you as one of those whose country is not America, Europe, Asia or Africa, but the world; and whose countrymen are all the rational creatures of God, …whether their complexion be white, black, red, or any other color…. When this spirit shall universally prevail among men there shall be no more wars, no more slavery, no more injustice.
It was this spirit that guided the residents of the M'Clintock house. They used their home to plan antislavery fund raising fairs, draft public documents of social and religious importance, possibly harbor fugitive slaves, and provide a refuge for overworked reformers, who were urged to "fold thy wings and rest awhile". The household sometimes included African-American children and young adults. Here the M'Clintocks lived out, in their daily work, convictions of equality that knew no bounds of race, or gender, or religion.
The family often spent evenings exploring the possibilities of Spiritualism, including spirit "rappings" and "animal magnetism" (hypnotism), a popular evening activity among social reformers in the early 1840s. Quakers believed that each individual could seek guidance directly from God through her/his own "Inner Light". For this reason, perhaps, they were often drawn to Spiritualism -- the effort to communicate with the spirit world. The M'Clintocks reportedly heard spirit "rappings" and daughter Elizabeth was frequently magnetized. On one occasion, a visitor to the M'Clintock home wrote to the abolitionist Gerrit Smith of Peterboro with an inquiry:
During my stay with the family curiosity led me to try my hand at the strange art [magnetism]. I was completely successful and carried her to Peterboro, New York & Boston. To test the fidelity of her magnetic vision, I am anxious to learn from yourself how you and your family were employed On Thursday evening last….
Long before the
1848 Woman's Rights Convention, Frederick Douglass, Abby Kelley, William
Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott and others passed through the M'Clintock
home.
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