Dr. Henrietta Hyde, biologist

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

Educator, biologist, public health and women’s rights advocate Ida Henrietta Hyde (September 8, 1857, to August 22, 1945) was born in Davenport, Iowa, into a German-speaking immigrant family. Ida Hyde’s Early Life When she was young, her father abandoned her mother and four siblings. In 1871, the Chicago fire destroyed the family home, and as the oldest sibling, she became the breadwinner at age fourteen, working in a clothing factory and as a milliner. During this time, she paid for her only brother’s tuition at the University of Illinois and also took evening classes from 1875 to 1876. During this period, she read The ViewRead More →

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In: 18th Century Women, Motherhood, Science

Laura Maria Caterina Bassi Veratti  (1711 – 1778), an Italian physicist, was the first woman to be named chair of physics at any university. EARLY LIFE Laura Bassi was born in Bologna to a wealthy lawyer, Giuseppe Bassi, and his wife Maria Rosa Cesari. Her paternal grandfather, Giacinto Bassi, had run a chemists shop in Bologna, where natural-based medicines were prepared and sold. Laura was her parents’ only surviving child. They were an enlightened family for the time. As an only child, Bassi was given an extensive education. Starting at the age of five she was taught by her cousin, Father Lorenzo Stegani, Latin, French,Read More →

Ida C. Craddock

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

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 →

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 →

Colonial era black woman

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In: 19th Century Women, Authors, Poets

The women most often forgotten are those who come from times and places where they and their people are outcast and discriminated against. A resident of Hartford, Connecticut, Ann Plato (c. 1823 – ?) is one of these women. Although she was the first African American to publish a book of essays, very little is known about her. Researchers have identified her father, Henry Plato, as Native American, perhaps of the Algonquin, and her mother, Deborah, as African American. What little else we know of her comes from Reverend W. C. Pennington, pastor of the Colored Congregational Church of Hartford and first black graduate ofRead More →

Caroline Dall 19th century author

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In: 19th Century Women, Authors, Literature, Religion, Women's Rights

I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to track down the contributions of those whose histories and work have been forgotten. In 1861, the prolific writer, feminist, and transcendentalist, Caroline Wells Healey Dall, better known as Mrs. Dall, wrote Historical Pictures Retouched: a Volume of Miscellanies. In this volume, Dall wrote studies of over forty women, ranging from those of ancient times to her own contemporaries who were not given the importance they deserved. Such a work of research was to be expected from a woman who wrote such diverse works as the history of Egypt, women’s rights, children’s books, novels,Read More →

Lucretia Mott

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In: Abolition, Education, Women's Rights

The Quaker minister, Lucretia Mott, lived from 1793 to 1880. During that time she fought to reform society in every way she could. She believed that forming organized groups and taking action against social injustice was the way to bring about change. She founded the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society(1833), was the impetus behind the Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention (1948), founded The Female Medical College of Pennsylvania (1850), and Swarthmore College in 1864. In a very busy life time she fought for temperance, peace, equal rights, woman’s suffrage, common schools, improved prisons, and the abolition of slavery. I desire to escape the narrow walls of a particular church, to liveRead More →