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A Message to My Readers

      As those of you have visited other parts of Sunshine for Women know, I am a great fan of nineteenth-century feminist foremother Matilda Joslyn Gage. While studying her life and works, I've learned about many forgotten or only vaguely remembered chapters in American history. The nineteenth century was a time of great change not only in America, but in many places around the world. The industrial revolution, which had been building momentum for centuries, influenced the daily life, for better or for worse, of all Americans.

      Women, at the beginning of the century, by the handful, and, at the end of the century, by the tens of millions, left their assigned sphere, the domestic sphere, for the public sphere and changed women's lives forever. Although poor and working class women had always been a part of the public sphere because they had not choice but to work if they wanted to eat, middle- and upper-class women long aspired to be free of the public sphere to concentrate their energies on creating a home. In the early part of the century, before the industrial revolution really took hold, women were still valued in the home for their ability to prepare herbal remedies for nursing the sick, to care for the aged and to raise their children, to grow wholesome foods in the kitchen garden and to preserve those foodstuff for the winter, to tend the animals in the barnyard, to make candles, and to perform sundry other household tasks which were required to turn a house into a home.

      The enormous amount of energy that went into clothing - growing the fibers, cleaning the fiber, preparing the fiber to be made into thread, spinning thread, dying the thread, weaving the thread into cloth, fulling the woven material, and turning the piece of cloth into an article of clothing or household linen consumed enormous amounts of a woman's time. It is no surprise that the first large-scale product of the industrial revolution was cloth. By the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, at least in the cities, much of the fabric used to make household items was made in a factory and purchased from a store. This one innovation alone freed much of women's time, time which could be used to pursue other interests.

      At about the same time, the second Great Awakening occurred, where religion became popular. Many middle-class women with free time to devote to a cause under the impetus of their new-found religious faith began to enter the public sphere as reformers to end the evils of demon rum, slavery, prostitution, violence against women, and poverty. Time and again, these women found that before they could be effective in the public sphere, they would first have to create a climate in which women as women were welcomed into the public sphere. So the nineteenth-century woman's movement arose along with the other social reform movements, initially as a way of making female reformers more effective activists for their chosen cause. Only by the middle of the third quarter of the nineteenth century did a significant number of women begin to work for woman's rights as their primary issue, and there was a lot of work to be done to aid women. That first generation of the first wave of American feminism broke many barriers, opening doors of opportunity for women of future generations, opportunities which those later women would use to mount ever greater challenges to the system which excluded women. That first generation of women, who were active in their chosen social reform movement first, and the woman's rights movement second, learned fundraising, organization building, and other skills needed to create a successful reform movement which they passed along to future generations of women. Their stories inspire us today: their commitment to righting a moral wrong, their tenacity in the face of adversity, and their struggles on behalf of those less fortunate than themselves hearten us in our on-going struggles against misogyny and other forms of oppression. Their stories remind us, too, of just how far we as a society have come in creating a country where all people are valued regardless of their sex, race, religion, class, and other social stratifications. The struggle to value all of our fellow humans is a long way from complete, but by looking back in time almost two centuries, we can see just how much progress has been made by each generation doing "its mite" to move the movement for human dignity along.

      I am trying a new format this year, partly as a way of saving me some time, partly as a way of introducing you to some of the many reference books on my library shelves. This year I have transcribed, verbatim, entries from some of the reference books in my personal library. I have included complete references for each page. If you find a writing style that you like, you can buy the book for yourself. If you don't like a particular style, you know to avoid that book. Some of the books are nineteenth-century works which are available on the used book market for a reasonable price.

      Matilda Joslyn Gage, my inspiration for this topic, would have known, or known of, most of the women listed here. The circle of reformers was at the same time both large and small - on the highest levels, there were probably several thousand women who ran most of the international, national, and state organizations in an interconnected web. Under them, tens and hundreds of thousands of women worked, often without pay, for the their chosen reform effort.

      As a final note, the nineteenth century women reformers referred to the woman's movement, not the women's movement. They choose the singular 'woman' deliberately over the plural 'women' to signify all women in that same way that eighteenth-century philosophers wrote and spoke of the rights of man, not the rights of men. For them, there was a commonality between all women that enabled them to envision an EveryWoman. Perhaps, if they were with us today, they would be distressed that we speak of the women's movement, as a way of acknowledging the many roles and differences between women. In this series, I will stick with their name for their own movement, the woman's movement as a way of reminding us that there are some things that bind us women together as women.

      The women are listed in no particular, or rather, in the order in which I took the reference books from off my bookshelf. Some of the women I knew of before I wrote this series, others I discovered only by browsing through the book. I hope you enjoy meeting these wonderful women. There are thousands of other women who are as equally deserving a place on this list. To find out more about women in the nineteenth century, visit Women in the Nineteenth Century.

1 Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) Mental Hospitals	Ruth Ashby and Deborah Gore Ohrn, Herstory: Women Who Changed the World [New York: Viking, 1995]
2 Nancy Ward (c. 1738-1824) Cherokee and American Nations	Gretchen M. Bataille (ed.), Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary [New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1993]
3 Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) African American Rights, anti-lynching	No author given Distinguished Black Women 1981-1985 [Washington, DC: Black Women in Sisterhood for Action, 1986]
4 Sarah Emma Edmonds (1842-1898) Military	Malcolm Forbes, Jeff Bloch, Women Who Made a Difference: One Hundred Fascinating Tales of Unsung Heroines & Little-Known Stories of Famous Women Who Changed Their World & Ours [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991]
5 Prudence Crandall (1803-1890) Education and anti-Racism	Beverly E. Golemba Lesser Known Women: A Biographical Dictionary [Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992]
6 Mathilde Franziska Giesler Anneke (1817 - 1884) Education	E. T. James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, Vol 1 A - F [Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971]
7 Mary Jane Patterson (1840-1894) Education	Darlene Clark Hine, Elsa Barkley Brown, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, Vol II M - Z [Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993]
8 Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814) Playwright, Historian, Patriot	Doris Weatherford, American Women's History: An A to Z of People, Organizations, Issues, and Events [New York: Prentise Hall, 1994]
9 Maria Stewart (née Miller) (1803-1879) Abolition and Civil Rights	James Trager, Women's Chronology: A Year-by-Year Record, from Prehistory to the Present [New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1994]
10 Abolitionist Movement 1792-1865	Wilma Mankiller, Gwendolyn Mink, Marysa Navarro, Barbara Smith, Gloria Steinem (eds.), The Reader's Companion to US Women's History [Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998]
11 Sarah Bagley [fl. 1835-1847] Trade Union Movement	Christine Lunardini, What Every American Should Know About Women's History: 200 Events that Shaped Our Destiny [Holbrook, Mass.: Adams Media Corporation, 1997]
12 Doña María del Carmen Calvillo (1765-1856) Rancher	No Author Given, Las Mujeres: Mexican American / Chicana Women (in English and Spanish), [Mary Ruthsdotter, National Women's History Project, 1991]
13 Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) Abolitionist	James Parton, Noted Women of Europe and America [Springfield, Mass.: Bay State Publishing Co., 1884]
14 Clarina Irene Howard Nichols (1810-1885) Journalist and Reformer	No editor or author given, Webster's Dictionary of American Women [New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1996]
15 Mary Grew (1813-1896) Abolition and Woman’s Rights	Phebe Hanaford, Daughters of America or Women of the Century [Augusta, Me: True and Company, 1882]
16 Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis (1813-1876) Abolition and Woman’s Rights	Phebe A. Hanaford, Daughters of American of Women of the Century [Agusta, Me: True and Company, nd - but it was in the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century]
17 Elizabeth F. Lummis Ellet (1812?-1877) Author and Historian	Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman's Record; or Sketches of Distinguished Women, from the Creation to A. D. 1854 Arranged in Four Eras with Selections from Female Writers of Every Age [New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1855, reprinted 1970 by Source Book Press of New York, NY]
18 Frances Dana Barker Gage ('Aunt Fanny', 1808-1880) Abolition and Woman Suffrage	Virginia Blain, Isobel Grundy, Patricia Clements, The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990]
19 Mary Sargeant Gove-Nichols (1810-1884) Allopathic Physician	Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman's Record; or Sketches of Distinguished Women, from the Creation to A. D. 1854 Arranged in Four Eras with Selections from Female Writers of Every Age [New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1855, reprinted 1970 by Source Book Press of New York, NY]
20 Civil War Heroines (1860- 1865)	Lynne Griffin and Kelly McCann, The Book of Women: 300 Notable Women History Passed By [Holbrook, Mass.: Bob Adams, Inc., 1992]
21 Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby (1846-1916) Woman Suffrage	John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, Volume 5, [New York: Oxford University Press, 1999]
22 Caroline Wells Healey Dall (1822-1912) Author and Reformer	Robert McHenry, Famous American Women: A Biographical Dictionary from Colonial Times to the Present [New York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1980]
23 Sarah Parker Remond (1826-1894) Abolition and Civil Rights	Darlene Clark Hine, Elsa Barkley Brown, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, Vol II M - Z [Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993]
24 Helen Maria Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) Native American Rights	Melanie Parry, Larousse Dictionary of Women: 3,000 entries from Eve to Oprah Winfrey [New York: Larousse, 1996]
25 Adelaide Johnson (1859-1955) Sculptor	Brooke Bailey, The Remarkable Lives of 100 Women Artists (part of the 20th Century Women Series) [Holbrook, Mass.: Bob Adams, Inc., 1994]
26 Alice Woodby McKane (1865-1948) Physician, Medicine	Brooke Bailey, The Remarkable Lives of 100 Women Healers and Scientists (part of the 20th Century Women Series) [Holbrook, Mass.: Bob Adams, Inc., 1994]
27 Caroline Maria Seymour Severance (1820-1914)	James Parton, et al., Eminent women of the age being narratives of the lives and deeds of the most prominent women of the present generation. By James Parton, Horace Greeley, T. W. Higginson, J. S. C. Abbott, Prof. James M. Hoppin, William Winter, Theodore Tilton, Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. E. C. Stanton, etc. Richly illustrated with fourteen steel engravings. [Hartford, Conn.: S. M. Betts & Company; Chicago. Ill.: Gibbs & Nichols; [etc., etc.], 1868]
28 Ida M. Tarbell (1857-1944) Journalist	Brooke Bailey, The Remarkable Lives of 100 Women Writers and Journalists (part of the 20th Century Women Series) [Holbrook, Mass.: Bob Adams, Inc., 1994]
29 Biographical Dictionary from the On-Line 19th Century	Samuel G. (Griswold) Goodrich (1793-1860) Lives of celebrated women: by the author of Peter Parley's tales Boston, Brown & Taggard, 1860.
30 Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) Writer, Editor, Transcendentalist	UUHS (Unitarian Universalist Historical Society) Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography, 2001
31 Conclusions

Book notes files on many of the books cited as references on the various pages are available from the Book Notes menu.

Return to Women's History Month 2002 Table of Contents

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Sunshine for Women encourages you to support our feminist sisters by purchasing their books, reading them, disseminating the ideas they contain, but most especially, by making their book available to our sisters, our daughters, and the community at large by requesting your school library, your public library, and area bookstores to carry their books. Remember it is not enough to write literature, history, and theology, we must pass these works on to future generations. Help us to preserve these works for a new generation by putting them on library bookshelves.


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last updated April 2002