Anneke, Mathilde Franziska Giesler (03 April 1817–25 November 1884), suffragist, author, and educator, was born in Lerchenhausen, Westphalia, Germany, the daughter of Karl Giesler, a Catholic landlord and mine owner, and Elisabeth Hülswitt. She grew up comfortably and was well educated, more through learned company than tutors and schools. In fact, as a teacher in later years she would read “Fridjhoff’s saga to her pupils and recite from memory the translation she had read when eleven years old,” given to her by a prince (Heinzen, p. 3)....
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Anneke, Mathilde Franziska Giesler (1817-1884), suffragist, author, and educator
Barbara L. Ciccarelli
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Couzins, Phoebe Wilson (08 September 1839?–06 December 1913), lawyer, suffragist, and lecturer
Mamie E. Locke
Couzins, Phoebe Wilson (08 September 1839?–06 December 1913), lawyer, suffragist, and lecturer, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of John Edward Decker Couzins, a carpenter and builder, and Adaline Weston. Her parents were both politically active. Her father held the posts of chief of police of St. Louis and U.S. marshal for the Eastern District of Missouri. Her mother served as a nurse to the Western Sanitary Commission during the Civil War where she provided aid to wounded and sick soldiers. Both parents instilled in their daughter an activist spirit....
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Garnet, Sarah Smith Tompkins (1831-1911), educator and suffragist
Elizabeth L. Ihle
Garnet, Sarah Smith Tompkins (31 August 1831–17 September 1911), educator and suffragist, was born Minisarah J. Smith in Queens County, New York, the daughter of Sylvanus Smith and Ann Eliza Springsteel, farmers, who were of mixed Native American, black, and white descent. Although Garnet’s great-grandmother had established a school that her father attended, little is known about Garnet’s own early schooling other than that she was taught by her father. However, she was a teacher’s assistant at age fourteen with a salary of $20 per year while she studied at various normal schools in the Queens County area. By 1854 Garnet (known as Sarah) was teaching in the private African Free School in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. In 1863 she became the first African-American principal appointed by the New York Public School System, serving at the all-black P.S. 80 from her appointment until her retirement in 1900....
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Gougar, Helen Mar Jackson (1843-1907), suffragist, temperance reformer, and lecturer
Carol Lasser
Gougar, Helen Mar Jackson (18 July 1843–06 June 1907), suffragist, temperance reformer, and lecturer, was born near Litchfield in Hillsdale County, Michigan, the daughter of William Jackson and Clarissa Dresser, farmers. After attending the preparatory department of Hillsdale College from 1855 to 1859, she moved to Lafayette, Indiana, to teach in the public schools in order to help support her family. There she joined the Second Presbyterian Church, where she met John D. Gougar, a promising young lawyer, whom she married in 1863. The couple, who had no children, made their home in Lafayette for the rest of their lives....
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Gram Swing, Betty (16 March 1893–01 September 1969)
Pamela Swing
Gram Swing, Betty (16 March 1893–01 September 1969), militant suffragist and women’s rights advocate, was born Myrtle Evelyn Gram in Omaha, Nebraska, the fifth of seven children of Danish immigrants Andreas Peter Gram and Karen Jensen. When their family farm proved unprofitable around 1905, the Grams moved to Portland, Oregon, where Andreas ran a small grocery store and taught Myrtle Danish folk songs that were the foundation of her lifelong love of singing and music....
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Howland, Emily (1827-1929), educator, suffragist, and philanthropist
Mamie E. Locke
Howland, Emily (20 November 1827–29 June 1929), educator, suffragist, and philanthropist, was born in Sherwood, New York, the daughter of Slocum Howland, a wealthy merchant and landowner, and Hannah Tallcot. Her ancestors were members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), and it was in that strict tradition of speech, dress, and conduct that Emily was raised....
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Johnson, Grace Allen (9 September 1871–17 January 1952), suffragist, educator, and peace activist
Barbara F. Berenson
Johnson, Grace Allen (9 September 1871–17 January 1952), suffragist, educator, and peace activist, was born Grace Allen Fitch in Maples, Indiana, the daughter of Appleton Howe Fitch, a Civil War Union Army veteran and manufacturer, and Elizabeth Harriet Bennett, a former schoolteacher. Grace lived in Maples and then Kalamazoo, Michigan, until she was fourteen, when her father became manager of his mother’s farm in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. She graduated from Hopkinton High School in ...
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Malkiel, Theresa Serber (1874-1949), trade union leader, woman suffragist, publicist, and educator
Thomas Winter
Malkiel, Theresa Serber (01 May 1874–17 November 1949), trade union leader, woman suffragist, publicist, and educator, was born in Bar, Russia. In 1891 she emigrated with her parents to the United States.
Soon after her arrival, Theresa Serber became a pioneer in the Jewish workers’ movement and socialist labor agitation in New York City. Employed in the garment industry, she joined the Russian Workingmen’s Club in 1892. In October 1894 she was among a group of seventy women who founded the Infant Cloak Makers Union (ICMU). Although it was a depression year, she and her associates decided not to accept wage cuts and deteriorating labor conditions any longer. Their action was front-page news. Eventually the ICMU became part of the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance. In 1896, Serber was among the delegates to the first convention of the latter alliance; in 1899, along with many others, she broke with labor leader ...
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Malone, Maud (1873–7 February 1951), suffragist and librarian
Dan Meharg and John Harlan Warren
Malone, Maud (1873–7 February 1951), suffragist and librarian, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Dr. Edward Malone and Annie Flynn Malone. Her Irish immigrant father and his brother, Father Sylvester Malone, worked for the causes of emancipation, Irish freedom, ballot reform, and anti-poverty crusades, animated by a strong but ecumenical religious faith. On Sundays after mass Dr. Malone took his three sons and three daughters to attend political meetings at Cooper Union in Manhattan. There, Malone witnessed the raw, raucous politics of the day....
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Mills, Harriet May (9 Aug. 1857–16 May 1935), suffragist, political party activist, and educational reformer
Karen Pastorello
Mills, Harriet May (9 Aug. 1857–16 May 1935), suffragist, political party activist, and educational reformer, was born in Syracuse, New York. Her parents, Harriet Ann Smith and Charles de Berard Mills, bestowed her middle name “May” on her to honor Unitarian preacher and noted abolitionist ...
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Mills, Harriet May (9 August 1857-16 May 1935)
Corp author Bain News Service
In
Harriet May Mills, by unknown photographer
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540
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Rutherford, Mildred Lewis (1851-1928), southern educator
Carolyn Terry Bashaw
Rutherford, Mildred Lewis (16 July 1851–15 August 1928), southern educator, was born in Athens, Georgia, the daughter of William R. Rutherford and Laura Rootes Cobb. Her father, a professor of mathematics at the University of Georgia, was also a slaveholder and master of a plantation in Crawford County, Georgia, at which the family spent part of each year. One of Rutherford’s uncles, ...
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Sewall, May Eliza Wright (1844-1920), suffragist and educator
Allison L. Sneider
Sewall, May Eliza Wright (27 May 1844–23 July 1920), suffragist and educator, was born in Greenfield, Wisconsin, the daughter of Philander Montague Wright, a schoolteacher and farmer, and Mary Weeks Brackett. Sewall was taught at home by her father and in local public schools. She graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, with the degree mistress of science in 1866 and master of arts in 1871. She went on to pursue a career in teaching in Corinth, Mississippi, Plainwell, Michigan, and Frankfort, Indiana. In 1872 Sewall married Edwin W. Thompson and moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, where both taught high school; they had no children. Following Thompson’s death in 1875, she continued to teach, and in 1880 she married Theodore Lovett Sewall, a graduate of Harvard College and founder of a classical school for boys in Indianapolis; they had no children. In 1882 she and her husband founded the Girls’ Classical School of Indianapolis, where Sewall continued as principal for twelve years after the death of her husband in 1895....
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Sewall, May Eliza Wright (1844-1920)
In
May Wright Sewall. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-97897).
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Smith, Abby Hadassah
See Smith, Julia Evelina
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Smith, Julia Evelina (1792-1886), suffragists and translators
Susan J. Shaw
Smith, Julia Evelina (27 May 1792–06 March 1886), and Abby Hadassah Smith (01 June 1797–23 July 1878), suffragists and translators, were born in Eastbury and Glastonbury, Connecticut, the daughters of Zephaniah Hollister Smith, a pastor and attorney, and Hannah Hadassah Hickok, a linguist, astronomer, poet, and gentlewoman farmer. Born into a family of educated parents who refused to be bound by the contemporary constraints of the nineteenth century placed on women’s opportunities to learn, both girls were given access to the study of mathematics, music, astronomy, languages, philosophy, and politics. They were sent to the only available private classes for women of the day, and Julia was hired by ...
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Stantial, Edna Lamprey (22 February 1897–10 March 1985), suffragist, archivist of the women’s suffrage movement, and women’s rights activist
Kathryn Allamong Jacob
Stantial, Edna Lamprey (22 February 1897–10 March 1985), suffragist, archivist of the women’s suffrage movement, and women’s rights activist, was born Edna Frances Lamprey in Reading, Massachusetts, the daughter of Frank and Mollie McClelland Stantial. She grew up in nearby Melrose, graduated from Melrose High School in ...
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Ueland, Clara Hampson (1860-1927), teacher, suffragist, and civic leader
Barbara Stuhler
Ueland, Clara Hampson (10 October 1860–01 March 1927), teacher, suffragist, and civic leader, was born in Akron, Ohio, the daughter of Henry Oscar Hampson, an unsuccessful businessman, and Eliza Osborn. Her father, discharged in 1863 from the Union army because of unspecified ailments, died a year later, leaving his impoverished widow with two small children. The trio of Hampsons sought refuge with Eliza’s sisters, initially in Faribault, Minnesota, and then in Minneapolis. They finally settled in a small apartment over a hardware store in an area of the city that prompted Maud Conkey Stockwell, a schoolmate, friend, and later a fellow suffragist, to comment, “I can remember thinking how incongruous she was with all the saloons around that district. She was dark and slim, a beauty beyond compare” (B. Ueland, “Clara,” p. 16). Despite her surroundings and continuing poverty, Clara was happy in school and a well-adjusted young woman. It says something about her character that she refused other invitations to a junior class dance to go with the only African-American boy in the school, because she felt he needed friendship and support....
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Valentine, Lila Hardaway Meade (1865-1921), proponent of public schools, public health, and woman suffrage
Peter Wallenstein
Valentine, Lila Hardaway Meade (04 February 1865–14 July 1921), proponent of public schools, public health, and woman suffrage, was born in Richmond, Virginia, the daughter of Richard Hardaway Meade, a businessman, and Kate Fontaine. Largely self-taught, she read widely. She married Benjamin Batchelder Valentine, a poet and businessman, in 1886. Beginning in 1888, with major surgery after the stillbirth of their only child, her physical health remained always precarious....
