Ida C. Craddock

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In: 19th Century Women, Activists, Authors, Spiritualism, Women's Rights
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In honor of Banned Books Week, I am sharing more about Ida Craddock , the heroine of my novel Censored Angel. Bright and studious, Ida was an unlikely woman to become the enemy of Anthony Comstock. Upon rejection from the University of Pennsylvania, she decided to carry out her own research. She chose as her topic Female Sex Worship, motivated by the question of why there were no women ministers. This research and the pain and abuse women at the time experienced in their marriages, led her to write, lecture, and distribute a series of sex education pamphlets, intended to help men and women experienceRead More →

Jane Grey Swisshelm

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In: 19th Century Women, Abolition, Activists, Authors, Civil War, Journalists, Women's Rights, Writing

JANE GREY SWISSHELM (December 6, 1815 -July 22, 1884) was a journalist, abolitionist, publisher, and advocate for women’s rights. Early Life Born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, she was raised by her widowed mother. Bright and energetic, she began as a teacher, but was drawn to journalism. After a difficult marriage to a farmer and a subsequent divorce, she moved to Minnesota and became editor and publisher of the St. Cloud Visiter. She was outspoken in her support of abolition, women’s rights, and against capital punishment. She was known to be full of righteous fury. For example, she hounded a Southerner who had moved to Minnesota withRead More →

Dr. Anna Elizabeth Broomall

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In: 19th Century Women, Activists, Medicine, Motherhood, Women's Rights

Anna Elizabeth Broomall (1847-1913) suffered name-calling, spit wads, and the anger of fellow male students in her battle to become a renowned physician of obstetrics. Anna Broomall was born in Upper Chichester, Pennsylvania to a well-to-do Quaker family. Her mother died in her infancy, and Broomall was raised by an aunt and uncle. Her father, John Broomall, a successful lawyer, and later U.S. Congressman, sent her to private academies in the area. She, at first, wanted to become a lawyer, but no opportunities existed at the time to study law. Instead, she decided to become a doctor. Her father, a supporter of women’s rights, encouragedRead More →

Alice Moore Hubbard

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In: 20th Century Women, Activists, Women's Rights

A bold feminist, suffragette, and writer, Alice Moore Hubbard (1861 – 1915) considered herself one of the “New Women” at the turn of the century. Early Life Born on a small farm in Wales, New York, Alice Hubbard desperately wanted to be a teacher. Through effort and economizing, she attended the State Normal School in Buffalo, New York, followed by the New Thought Emerson College of Oratory in Boston. Following her graduation she taught at East Aurora College in New York. In 1885, Elbert Hubbard founded the William-Morris-inspired Roycraft, an Arts and Crafts community and publishing company, in East Aurora, where Alice met him. TheRead More →

Nannie Helen Burroughs

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In: 20th Century Women, Activists, Education, Women's Rights

Nannie Helen Burroughs (May 2, 1879 – May 20, 1961) was an educator, public speaker, and civil rights activist. Early Life Raised by her widowed mother, she grew up in Washington D.C. where she attended the M Street High School along with Anna J. Cooper and Mary Church Terrell. She graduated with honors in 1886 and applied to teach in the District of Columbia public schools. However, she was rejected because of her dark skin color. From 1898-1909, she worked as a secretary and bookkeeper for the Foreign Mission Board of the Baptist Convention. While there, she founded the Women’s Convention where she served asRead More →

Harriet Martineau

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In: 19th Century Women, Abolition, Activists, Authors, Education, Journalists, Women's Rights

Meet the woman who sold more novels than Charles Dickens. Harriet Martineau (1802 – 1876) was a British novelist, feminist, abolitionist, philosopher, travel writer, journalist, and more. She is considered the first female sociologist. Martineau struggled with ill health all her life. She had no sense of taste or smell and became partially deaf starting at age twelve. In her forties, she developed a uterine tumor that affected her for many years of her life. Nevertheless, she traveled widely and wrote extensively for over seventy-years, with major journeys to the United States and to Egypt and the Middle East. As girl, her mother tried toRead More →

Maud Allan Dancer

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In: 20th Century Women, Actresses, Artists, Women's Rights

I am sure you have heard of the Dance of the Seven Veils, but do you know who created it? Dancer Maud Elizabeth Allan (c.1873- 1956), born Ulla Maud Durrant in Toronto, Canada, was raised in San Francisco. Musically talented on the piano, she went to Germany to study. While she studied there, her brother committed a brutal murder in San Francisco. Unable to return, she changed her name, and encouraged by the director of the Meister-schüle, gave up the piano and took up dancing professionally. For five years, she toured Europe dancing to classical music. In 1906, she performed the dance Salome based onRead More →

Josephina St. Pierre Ruffin

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In: 19th Century Women, Civil War, Journalists, Women's Rights

Born in Boston, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842-1924) grew up in a family of fighters for justice, her father a leader in the Black community. So, it is not surprising that she devoted herself to bettering the standing and power of 19th century black women throughout her life. As a young, newly married woman, she and her husband, the first black graduate of Harvard Law School, resettled in Liverpool, England to protest the Dred Scott decision, which solidified slavery in the United States. They returned at the start of the American Civil War to speak out for abolition and to recruit black men to serveRead More →

Ida C. Craddock

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In: 19th Century Women, Activists, Authors, Education, Motherhood, Spiritualism, Women's Rights

Ida Celenire Craddock (1857-1902) was born into a world where middle class women were expected to have little ambition, dutifully marry, and keep their mouths closed about sex. Brilliant and constrained by a domineering mother, Ida wanted more from life. She wanted a career, and she wanted to be heard. So, she left home to teach stenography at Girard College, a school for orphaned boys and write stenography textbooks. She also applied to the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences. In 1882, she passed the exams and was accepted by the faculty to be the first female undergraduate, but her application was rejectedRead More →

Carrie Burnham Kilgore

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In: 19th Century Women, Lawyers, Women's Rights

Carrie (Caroline) Burnham Kilgore (1839-1909) was a woman of firsts. Born in a remote Vermont village, at age twelve, she was taken out of school when her parents died and put to work in the family woolen mill. But her desire to learn was too strong. At fifteen, she began teaching at local schools and doing domestic work to pay the tuition to study the classics at a local academy and then two seminaries. Illness from typhoid, sent her to live with her sister in Wisconsin, where she recovered and took up teaching again. When a male high school teacher fell ill, she took overRead More →

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In: 19th Century Women, Business, Women's Rights

Not Just a Madam: Lula White of Basin Street Getting to know Lula White (c.1868-1931) means getting to know her world. In the thirty-eight block New Orleans “red light district” of Storyville, and between 1897 and 1917, there were too many houses of prostitution to come up with an accurate count. Reigning over them all was Lula White’s house, Mahogany Hall. Reigning over Mahogany Hall, was Lula.  Lula seized the crown of the New Orleans sex trade because she put her eye to the keyhole that was New Orleans and shrewdly assessed the world she saw through it. She had to have noted: Women asRead More →