Once called America’s only Coal Queen, Sarah B. Cochran was a coal industry leader and philanthropist in an era when American women couldn’t universally vote or serve on juries. By choosing to go out into the world and do the unexpected, she was able to support women’s suffrage and education, and was the first female trustee of Allegheny College.
The daughter of former slaves, Mary Jane McLeod Bethune became one of the most important black educators, civil and women’s rights leaders and government officials of the twentieth century. The college she founded set educational standards for today’s black colleges, and her role as an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave African Americans an advocate in government.
Maria Feodorovna was Empress consort of Russia as the second wife of Tsar Paul I, and the founder of the Office of the Institutions of Empress Maria, an imperial government charitable agency. The institutions, many of which the Empress founded, managed orphanages, care for invalids, the blind and the deaf, education for women and children, poor houses and hospitals. She also gave political counsel to her children, who respected her greatly.
Amy Julia Green-Armytage was a novelist, historian and philanthropist and an expert on the local history of Bristol (United Kingdom). Together with her life-long friend, Rose Mabel Lewis (1853-1928), Amy wrote three books under the pen name Lewis Armytage: Out of Tune (London, 1887); The Blue Mountains: And Other Stories for Children (London: W.H. Allen and Co, 1890); Spindle and Shears: A Welsh Story (London, W.H. Allen and Co., 1891). She also wrote Maids of Honours: sketches of distinguished single women (Blackwood and Sons).