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FUN FABULOUS FEMALE FACTS

“make the puddings and carry the baby while I ply the pen”

(To unmarried, non-mom and best gal pal Susan B. Anthony)

 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, super smart, greatly gifted and tremendously talented, was raised with privilege, education, and the knowledge that she would NEVER be treated equally because of her gender.  Her father was a judge, a congressman, an Associate Justice to the Supreme Court -  and - a sexist.  One of five girls born into a wealthy New York family, her mother Margaret suffered through eleven pregnancies and bore five sons, four of whom died in childhood.  Elizabeth began to understand the subordinate role of girls and women when her twenty-year-old brother died suddenly at the age of twenty.  The apple of her father’s eye, he was the only surviving son and only one to legally inherit the family fortune (women could not own property).  

Her grief – stricken father told her “I wish you were a boy” to which she replied, “I will try to be all that my brother was”.  And try she did, to get her father to say, “Well, a girl is as good as a boy”. Instead, he said, “Ah, you should have been a boy”. Surrounded by law, she learned early on its power.  One story has young, determined, naïve Elizabeth planning to take a scissor and cut the unfair laws out of her father’s law books after witnessing a procession of  “weeping women” coming to her home begging Judge Cady for help.  Her father explained the legal process involved in changing laws, and a seed was planted that grew into the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls.  She refused to have the word “obey” in her marriage vows, and just added her husband’s name to hers, setting that trend, and had her seventh child at the age of forty-three.  She spent her life being discriminated against for being a woman and fought – many times alone – first for abolition and then tirelessly for the right to vote for  “all citizens” - not just male citizens - introducing the concept of gender bias to the legal world. She never stopped fighting for women’s rights.  

Her partner in all of this was Susan B. Anthony, who would come over and take on some of the domestic drudgery so Elizabeth could write the fabulous speeches that Anthony would give. The two of ‘em really shook things up, trailblazing though the eighteen hundreds. At the age of eighty-three, her groundbreaking and controversial book “The Woman’s Bible” was published, accusing religion of keeping woman down.  After her brother’s death she thought “the chief thing to be done in order to equal boys was to be learned and courageous”.   Was she ever.

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FUN FABULOUS FEMALE FACTS

Lucy Stone  1818-1893
“…women suffer taxation, and yet have no representation, which is not only unjust to one half of the adult population, but is contrary to our theory of government.”

I’m A Lucy Stoner.  Are you?

She was the first gal to get hitched and keep her own name. From then on, any gal that kept her maiden name was known as a Lucy Stoner. And she waited until she was thirty-seven years old before she even took the plunge with Henry Brown Blackwell, whose sister Elizabeth Blackwell, was America’s first female doctor. Lucy was also the first gal in America to get arrested for civil disobedience - for refusing to pay her property tax unless she was allowed to vote. The “morning star” of the women’s movement, Lucy was the eighth of nine kids and the story goes that her mother milked eight cows the night before she gave birth to Lucy. Luckily, they had a farm, and Lucy had lots and lots of farm chores, including  making nine pairs of shoes a day.  Imagine.  Like many of her suffragist sisters, Lucy saw her mother slaving away and DID imagine - a different, better life. But no matter how hard she worked she still could not get her father to pay for her to go to college.  “What is the child crazy?” he asked. When he died, he left all of his property and money to his sons and $200 each to his daughters.  What a guy!  Well, it took her nine years to save for college but she did it and in 1843 at the age of twenty-five she entered Oberlin – which was the ONLY college open to the gals. She was the first female in the state of Massachusetts to get a college degree. Oh – and she founded and edited the Woman’s Journal – a weekly suffragist newspaper she started with her dear hubby.

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FUN FABULOUS FEMALE FACTS

Prudence Crandall  1803-1890

Another great gal goes to jail.  Her crime?  Educating black girls.

A lucky educated Quaker teacher who wanted to share the gift of schooling, dear Prudence opened a private school for girls; The Canterbury Female Boarding School in 1831, in Connecticut. It was a gutsy move, as historically, education was denied to females, as they were considered intellectually inferior with tiny brains (and an oversized pelvis – there were actual drawings by medical doctors!) and belonged in their “domestic sphere”.  The school had a great reputation and enjoyed success – until dear Prudence admitted twenty-year old Sarah Harris, an African American girl who wanted to become a teacher. 

 

Well!  The town of Canterbury went ballistic, with many white parents withdrawing their daughters and basically closed the school down.  Undaunted dear Prudence re-opened but this time just for “young ladies and little misses of color”.  She had the support of many nationally prominent abolitionists, including famed William Lloyd Garrison and the entire Anti-Slavery Society, but that did not stop the citizens of Connecticut from showering the school with mud, eggs and stones, and ultimately passing “The Black Law” prohibiting black students from attending school in their fair state. 

 

Poor Prudence was attacked by a mob, arrested twice and even had her home partially destroyed.  Who could blame her for leaving town?  She moved with her hubby to Illinois where she continued advocating for women’s rights. The state of Connecticut tried to make it up to her by sending her $400 a year until her death in 1890. Today you can visit the Prudence Crandall Museum, a National Historic Landmark, observe Prudence Crandall Day and in 1995 she was declared Connecticut’s State Heroine.

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Augusta Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace 1815 - 1852
“If you can't give me poetry, can't you give me "poetical science?"

Noble English mom, and math whiz, she was the daughter of Lord Byron (who she never knew but is buried next to).  She showed signs of her genius as a child.  Her mother, a big math fan herself, had a huge influence on Ada’s life and the direction it took.  Married briefly to the nomadic, aristocratic and incredibly flirty Lord Byron, she took Ada away from her famous dad when Ada was just five weeks old. Fearful that Ada would follow in her famous father’s footsteps, her mom steered her away from studying the dangerous subjects of literature and poetry and guided her intellectual studies toward math and science. Still in her teens, she became fascinated with the inventor Charles Babbage, and his Difference Engine. 

 

He became her mentor, helped her to study math at The University of London, and when he created the Analytical Engine, at the age of twenty-eight, this enchantress of numbers, as she was called, wrote the plan for how engines might calculate numbers - regarded by many as the first computer program.  She published this historical work under the initials A.A.L., as women were not accepted as intellectuals.  At the age of twenty, she had married a King – a William King - and when he became an Earl (of Lovelace) she became a Countess, but unfortunately after she published her now famous work, it was all down hill from there.

 

This “poetic mathematician” hung out with lots of famous people including Charles Wheatstone, inventor of the telegraph and microphone, Sir David Brewster, inventor of the kaleidoscope and Charles Dickens, but her own letters describe a tortured life of illness, gambling and debt, who battled drug addiction and wanted to flourish in a man's world. She has. The United States Department of Defense developed a software language and in 1979 and named it “Ada” after her.

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FUN FABULOUS FEMALE FACTS

 

Fabulous Fun Female Fact - Julia Ward Howe  (1819 -1910)
 “Any religion which sacrifices women to the brutality of men is no religion”

 

Poet, Writer, Activist and Mother of six, was the recipient of many awesome honors including being on a postage stamp.  Raised religiously to fight against slavery and for women’s rights, this busy, busy mom was the very first woman elected in 1908 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.  Yes, she wrote a pretty famous song – well a poem actually - written in 1861, that was set to the tune of “John Brown’s Body”.  Inspired by an invitation from President Lincoln to visit an army camp, “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (you know it…”Mine eyes have seen the glory of the…”) was the poem for which was paid a whopping five dollars by The Atlanta Monthly.  Mothers For Peace was a movement she started – and personally funded - issuing in 1870 the “Mother’s Days Proclamation”, an annual celebration that fizzled out when she stopped funding it. 

Some confuse this with Mother’s Day, which is credited to Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker.  Julia Ward Howe’s activism and writings inspired many fans. Her husband was not one of them.  According to her diary she “had never known her husband to approve of any of the activities that she herself valued”.  Yikes!  Her diary also said her dear hubby was a violent, controlling and adulterous man who mismanaged HER paternal inheritance. Sounds like she had her hands full with him. In those days, divorce resulted in mothers losing their children, so she hung in there continuing to defy tradition by studying languages and philosophy, writing and enjoying a very public life while raising her four children (two died) who led successful professional lives, preserving their mother’s legacy.  A beloved American, social reformer, and Queen Victoria look-a-like, Julia had 4,000 people attend her funeral.
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FUN FABULOUS FEMALE FACTS

Fabulous Fun Female Facts – Anne Hutchinson  June  2009
 “We do not mean to discourse with those of your sex”


Mother Of The First Amendment
ANNE MARBURY HUTCHINSON (1591-1643) Nurse, Midwife, Pioneer, Mother - of twelve or fifteen with nine or eleven surviving – (sources differ) was not your average, quiet, submissive housewife and mother of the Colonial period. The daughter of a minister and Cambridge scholar, the family, and others, followed the preaching of John Cotton, a Protestant minister. They had issues with the Catholic Church, corruption being one, and disillusioned, embraced a new kind of “puritanical” religion. When she shared her dissenting views on religion with other people – specifically female people - she inadvertently inspired one of the most important conflicts of the entire seventeenth century – known as the Antinomian Controversy. Preaching – just to women - was a big no-no.

It started out innocently enough.  She went to church and afterwards, she liked discussing the sermons.  Everyone did.  Thing was, the women were excluded from “certain meetings of religious discourse”. Being excluded from “certain meetings of religious discourse” that only the MEN could attend, Anne felt left out.  Who wouldn’t?  So she started what could be called the first “Girl’s Night Out” with weekly women only meetings.  No one minded at first, but then she got a little carried away, starting her OWN religious sect and got into a LOT of trouble.  She certainly endured one of the most famous (and god-awful – pun intended) trials in American history. She was convicted of heresy (an opinion or belief that contradicts established religious teachings) and sedition (actions or words intended to provoke or incite rebellion against government authority) and banished!  From the colony!  To Rhode Island!  Like Ralph Kramden’s Alice, Anne Hutchinson had a BIIIIIG mouth.  Her steadfast desire for freedom of speech and freedom to assemble absolutely contributed to the foundation for The First Amendment..

Daughter's Day
- HOW ONE DEVOTED DAUGHTER BROUGHT US MOTHER'S DAY

100 years ago on the second Sunday in May, one daughter prepared to go to church to celebrate Mother's Day on the fourth anniversary of her mother's death.  As ordinary as this seems today, this daughter - Anna May Jarvis - was still in the act of creating and single-mindedly promoting the idea of Mother's Day, to commemorate all mothers and to memorialize her mother's death and good works.   Her mother, Mrs. Anna Reeves Jarvis had died four years earlier and had inspired her daughter to make it her life's work to bring about a national holiday - Mother's Day. 

On this day, 100 years ago, there were only two Mother's Day celebrations in America, both in churches where Mrs. Jarvis had taught Sunday school -in Philadelphia, and Grafton, West Virginia.  Both events had been organized to honor all mothers, in memory of Mrs. Jarvis.  For these local celebrations, Anna May had to pay for the carnations herself that were handed out to all mothers and children in attendance.  Because carnations were her mother's favorites, Anna May established the tradition of wearing a colored carnation to honor a living mother and a white carnation to honor a deceased mother.

 

Since Mrs. Jarvis' death, Anna May had worked tirelessly to create the national holiday.  In Philadelphia, she had approached John Wannamaker for help.  On his advice she wrote hundreds of letters to church and business leaders, newspaper editors, and members of Congress.   She wrote directly to President Theodore Roosevelt about the need for a special holiday to honor mothers which prompted him to issue a personal homage to his mother in a May press release, but not to directly support the holiday proposed.
No mother has an easy time [and] most mothers have very hard times.  - Theodore Roosevelt

 

Mrs. Jarvis had conceived the idea of a Mother's Day, and had even worked toward the goal with an ally, Julia Ward Howe of Battle Hymn of the Republic fame to establish a Mother's Day for Peace in the Civil War era.  That effort hadn't been adopted.  Mrs. Jarvis frequently voiced the wish for a Mother's Day to consider and honor the mothers in our lives - their contributions to society, church, and family.   Among her own contributions, Mrs. Jarvis had spent many Sundays during the Civil War entering the camps on both sides of the conflict, where she asked young soldiers to give her any remembrance they could for their mothers - a letter, a flower wrapped in a son's handkerchief.  Mrs. Jarvis promised to get these tokens delivered to their mothers many of whom waited, worried and wondered if their sons would return from war.  Mrs. Jarvis had herself turned to good works to relieve her grief over lost children. 

 

By the time Anna May was born, one year after the Civil War ended, Mrs. Jarvis had shifted her work, to help bring peace in the many households in where brothers and cousins had fought on opposite sides of the war.  She begged them to put their differences aside now and remember their mothers. 

Anna May was hoping, even expecting that 1909 would be the first national Mother's Day and her goal would be achieved.  One year prior she had persuaded Senator Elmer Burkett (R-NE) to propose a resolution for a national celebration for mothers in Congress.  Certainly Sen. Burkett imagined this would be a very popular resolution among his colleagues and hoped it would give his new senatorial career a head start.   It had not occurred to either of them that it would meet instead with condemnation and mockery.  Senator Burkett defended his support for the tribute saying he felt it was well-deserved and would have an overall positive effect on society. 

 

He urged Congressmen to allow Mother's Day to remind "boys from the country who are in the cities and among strangers" to think of "the old homes they left behind and the mothers who gave them birth." 

Anna May suggested the yearly acknowledgment would "make us better children by getting us closer to the hearts of our good mothers."
Instead the idea of Mother's Day was scorned:

• Our own Senator John Kean (R-NJ) suggested the following amendment to Burkett's resolution:  that everything after the word "Resolved" be deleted, and that the Fifth Commandment - Honor thy father and thy mother - be inserted thereafter. 
• Added Sen. Charles Fulton (R-OR), "There are some thoughts that are so sacred that they are belittled by movements of this character."
• Sen. Jacob Gallinger (R-NH) felt that the very idea of a Mother's Day was an insult, as if the memory of any mother, especially his own dear, departed mother, "could only be kept green by some outward demonstration on Sunday, May 10th." 
• Others felt simply that it was not the business of the federal government - "It is not a proper subject for legislation," affirmed Sen. Weldon Heyburn, (R-ID). 

As of this moment in time, Anna May had to content herself with the memory of her own hardworking and generous mother, and the hope that sometime in the near future she would manage to turn the tide of opinion for Mother's Day.  From where we are today, it is clear that she succeeded - Mother's Day was signed into law by Woodrow Wilson in 1914, after nearly ten years of concerted effort on the part of Anna May Jarvis.  

Today as you celebrate, and perhaps even curse Mother's Day - with its long line at restaurants, sloppy breakfast-in-bed offerings, mawkish greeting cards, awkward gifts and unspoken expectations - consider what it took one daughter to bring us this day of homage.  Anna May nurtured this holiday into existence through sheer will, love for her mother, and commitment to the promise she had made to fulfill this dream.  Despite her herculean effort to give her mother the mother of all Mother's Day gifts, Anna May did not approve of the commercializing of Mother's Day, and even sued various advertisers who promoted gift giving, flower delivery and cards "that are not as appreciated as the letter you're too lazy to write,"  she reproached in later editorials.

We can celebrate and appreciate the gift of Mother's Day due to the ambitious efforts of Anna May Jarvis.  But we can also honor her desire for our gifts and attentions to be sincere, simple, and give our mothers precisely what she recommended:  honor, a hug, a handpicked dandelion, a heartfelt letter on simple paper.  We can perhaps allow ourselves to have a happy Mother's Day - no obligations we don't embrace, no last minute gift buying, card signing or frantic search for the perfect restaurant.  Send your mother a loving email.  Spend some time on the phone, via Skype, on facebook, or even in person with your mother, and let her know that something, everything she did for you mattered.  That will matter more than anything a card could say.

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FUN FABULOUS FEMALE FACTS

Seneca Falls Convention 1848

                                                        
 
Waterloo, New York - A sleepy little suburb in upstate New York where timing, geography and a tea party brought a bunch of ovary acting mamas together to make history. Hostess Jane Hunt, MaryAnn McClintock, Martha Coffin Wright - sister of the visiting Lucretia Mott - considered the Mother of the women’s movement - whose impending visit served as the catalyst for the fateful tea party. Also attending - another key mama - Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who lived nearby in dusty secluded Seneca Falls. Stanton and Mott had met in 1840 when they were booted out of the world antislavery meeting in London to which Mott was invited. Why the boot?

Those darned ovaries! Banished in sisterhood, they walked around London “arm in arm” as Stanton told it, bemoaning their banishment and vowing to form their very own movement. Which they did. Eight years later at that tea party. Stantons’ impassioned speech confessing to being worn out by domestic drudgery, exhausted from mothering and nursing three little boys through bouts of malaria and suffering from what she called mental hunger, hit a collective nerve and a meeting was planned. Her desire not to schlep her three little boys inspired the Seneca Falls locale. So like any smart and tired mama, Stanton had them come to her. A sign was posted in the local paper; “Women’s Right’s Convention – A convention to discuss the social, civil and religious condition and rights of woman will be held....in the Wesleyan Church in Seneca Falls.” Modeled on The Declaration of Independence, and like the founding fathers eighteen grievances against King George, THE DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS – with its eighteen grievances including “all men AND WOMEN are created equal -was born.

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FUN FABULOUS FEMALE FACTS

Bella Abzug  1920-1998

 

Big mouthed funny hat wearing New Yorker who grew up working in her family’s store – “The Live and Let Live Meat Market”.  Ran for congress at the age of fifty with the campaign slogan: “A Woman’s Place IS In The House”.  She meant The House of Representatives. Ever hear of the Pentagon Papers?  They were “secret” documents about the Vietnam War and SHE got Nixon’s administration to give ‘em up. She was rejected by Harvard Law School on account of her having a pair of ovaries (an annoying and recurring theme in women’s history). Lotsa firsts – including being the first member of congress asking for Nixon’s impeachment, being the first Jewish woman elected to Congress, and she presented the first bill trying to get equal rights for homosexuals. Wonder what she’d say today about Prop 8.  Probably a lot and in a loud voice. She ran for President in 1972 along with Shirley Chisholm, and Patsy Mink. She said (among many many other things) “I began wearing hats as a young lawyer because it helped me to establish my professional identity. Before that, whenever I was at a meeting, someone would ask me to get coffee”.

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FUN FABULOUS FEMALE FACTS

Victoria Woodhull 1838-1927
                                                   
Wow what a story!  What a life!  What a shame!  That no one knows who she is. She was…. the FIRST WOMAN TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT.  Yes, in 1872, this often-married thirty-four-year-old mother of two (one with special needs) who eloped at the age of fifteen – ran (against Ulysses S. Grant) for president. Victoria Claflin Woodhull pulled her self out of poverty and up by her bra straps. Gorgeous, charismatic and smart, she spent her life bent on improving it, through education and association with smart powerful men – like Cornelius Vanderbilt, and women – like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony who left her out of the history books for being so controversial. 

Susan B. Anthony

Dates: (February 15, 1820 - March 13, 1906)

Also known as: Susan Brownell Anthony

Also see: Susan B. Anthony Quotations, and, at bottom of this biography: links to Susan B. Anthony articles, writings, and images and to related articles on this site

Image of Susan B. Anthony - Courtesy Library of Congress

Susan B. Anthony was raised in New York as a Quaker. She taught for a few years at a Quaker seminary and from there became a headmistress at a women's division of a school. At 29 years old Anthony became involved in abolitionism and then temperance. A friendship with Amelia Bloomer led to a meeting with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was to become her lifelong partner in political organizing, especially for women's rights and woman suffrage.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, married and mother to a number of children, served as the writer and idea-person of the two, and Susan B. Anthony, never married, was more often the organizer and the one who traveled, spoke widely, and bore the brunt of antagonistic public opinion.

After the Civil War, discouraged that those working for "Negro" suffrage were willing to continue to exclude women from voting rights, Susan B. Anthony became more focused on woman suffrage. She helped to found the American Equal Rights Association in 1866, and in 1868 with Stanton as editor, became publisher of Revolution. Stanton and Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, larger than its rival American Woman Suffrage Association with which it finally merged in 1890.

In 1872, in an attempt to claim that the constitution already permitted women to vote, Susan B. Anthony cast a test vote in Rochester, New York, in the presidential election. She was found guilty, though she refused to pay the resulting fine (and no attempt was made to force her to do so).

In her later years, Susan B. Anthony worked closely with Carrie Chapman Catt, retiring from active leadership of the suffrage movement in 1900 and turning over presidency of the NAWSA to Catt. She worked with Stanton and Mathilda Gage on a History of Woman Suffrage.

In her writings, Susan B. Anthony occasionally mentioned abortion. Susan B. Anthony opposed abortion which at the time was an unsafe medical procedure for women, endangering their health and life. She blamed men, laws and the "double standard" for driving women to abortion because they had no other options. ("When a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is a sign that, by education or circumstances, she has been greatly wronged." 1869) She believed, as did many of the feminists of her era, that only the achievement of women's equality and freedom would end the need for abortion. Anthony used her anti-abortion writings as yet another argument for women's rights.

Some of Susan B. Anthony's writings were also quite racist by today's standards, particularly those from the period when she was angry that the Fifteenth Amendment wrote the word "male" into the constitution for the first time in permitting suffrage for freedmen. She sometimes argued that educated white women would be better voters than "ignorant" black men or immigrant men.

In the late 1860s she even portrayed the vote of freedmen as threatening the safety of white women. George Francis Train, whose capital helped launch Anthony and Stanton's Revolution newspaper, was a noted racist.

In 1979, Susan B. Anthony's image was chosen for the new dollar coin, making her the first woman to be depicted on US currency. The size of the dollar was, however, close to that of the quarter, and the Anthony dollar never became very popular. In 1999 the US government announced the replacement of the Susan B. Anthony dollar with one featuring the image of Sacagawea.

DESCRIPTION OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Susan B. Anthony dedicated her life to "the cause," the woman suffrage movement. The accomplishments of Susan B. Anthony paved the way for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 (14 years after her death) which gave women the right to vote. Her accomplishments include the following:

• Founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association in 1869 with life-long friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Together they worked for women's suffrage for over 50 years.
• Published "The Revolution" from 1868-1870, a weekly paper about the woman suffrage movement whose motto read, "Men their rights and nothing more, women their rights and nothing less.
• First person arrested, put on trial and fined for voting on November 5, 1872. Unable to speak in her defense she refuse to pay "a dollar of your unjust penalty."
• Wrote the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in 1878 which later became the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.
• Helped found the National American Woman's Suffrage Association in 1890 which focused on a national amendment to secure women the vote. She served as president until 1900.
• Compiled and published "The History of Woman Suffrage (4 vols. 1881-1902) with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage.
• Founded the International Council of Women (1888) and the International Woman Suffrage Council (1904) which brought international attention to suffrage.
• An organization genius -- her canvassing plan is still used today by grassroot and political organizations.
• Gave 75-100 speeches a year for 45 years, traveling throughout the the United States by stage coach, wagon, carriage and train.
• Led the only non-violent revolution in our country's history -- the 72 year struggle to win women the right to vote.