A member of a prominent activist and religious family, Catharine Esther Beecher was a nineteenth century teacher and writer who promoted equal access to education for women and advocated for their roles as teachers and mothers. Embracing traits associated with femininity such as nurturance, Beecher argued that women were uniquely suited to the moral and intellectual development of children, either as mothers or as educators.
Amelia Jenks Bloomer was an early suffragist, editor, and social activist. Bloomer was also a fashion advocate who worked to change women’s clothing styles.
Poet, Sarah Josepha Hale is best known for creating the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” However, her work extends far beyond her writing. Her influence can be seen in historic sites and a famous national holiday still widely celebrated today.
Mattie was considered an important witness in prosecuting polygamy. Not only was she in a polygamist marriage herself, but as a doctor, she often delivered the babies of polygamist wives. To the federal government, a baby delivered to a polygamist wife was proof a polygamist marriage. The prosecutors had a warrant out for Mattie to testify. She did not want to be responsible for a man getting arrested, leaving so many children without support. She decided to leave so that she would not have to testify. For the next two years, she and her young daughter Elizabeth moved around in England and the eastern U.S., until the warrant for her had expired.
On September 6, 1870, 70-year-old Louisa Ann Swain, a grandmother with white hair peeking out from beneath her bonnet, stepped up to the ballot box in Laramie, Wyoming and cast her vote in the general election. In doing so, she became the first woman to legally cast a ballot since 1807, the year New Jersey took away a woman’s right to vote.
Lillian D. Wald helped to bring health care to the residents of New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century. As a “practical idealist who worked to create a more just society,” Wald fought for public health care, women’s rights, and children’s rights while running the Henry Street Settlement.
Writer, lecturer, abolitionist and suffragist, Julia Ward Howe not only authored the Civil War anthem “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” but she also co-founded the American Woman Suffrage Association.
In the early 20th century, at a time when matters surrounding family planning or women’s healthcare were not spoken in public, Margaret Sanger founded the birth control movement and became an outspoken and life-long advocate for women’s reproductive rights. In her later life, Sanger spearheaded the effort that resulted in the modern birth control pill by 1960.
Even though Sarah Moore Grimké was shy, she often spoke in front of large crowds with her sister Angelina. The two sisters became the first women to speak in front of a state legislature as representatives of the American Anti-Slavery Society. They also became active writers and speakers for women’s rights. Their ideas were so different from most of the ideas in the community that people burned their writings and angry mobs protested their speeches. However, Grimké and her sister would not let that stop her from making a difference for women and African Americans.
Mercy Otis Warren was a published poet, political playwright and satirist during the age of the American Revolution—a time when women were encouraged and expected to keep silent on political matters. Warren not only engaged with the leading figures of the day—such as John, Abigail, and Samuel Adams—but she became an outspoken commentator and historian, as well as the leading female intellectual of the Revolution and early republic.