Category: Historical / page 11

Mary Safford
Mary A. Safford


Mary Augusta Safford, a Unitarian minister and suffragist, was the leader of a group of female Unitarian ministers known as the “Iowa Sisterhood” that founded Unitarian congregations across the Midwest. Safford was born on December 23, 1851, near Quincy, Illinois. She studied for a year at the University of Iowa before leaving due to illness. She returned to Illinois and worked as a teacher while studying on her own. After speaking at the annual meeting of the Iowa Unitarian Association in Humboldt, Iowa, in 1880, Safford was ordained by the […]
Margaret H Sanger
Margaret H Sanger


Margaret Sanger was proponent for scientific contraception (birth control) and family planning, but also a supporter of eugenics. Sanger was born on September 14, 1884, in Corning, New York, into a Roman Catholic family as one of eleven children. Sanger was greatly influenced by her father's political views in support of women's suffrage and tax reform, although these and other beliefs caused the family to be seen as radical in the eyes of their neighbors. After graduating from Claverack College at Hudson, New York, Sanger took a teaching position in […]
Rose Schneiderman
Rose Schneiderman


Rose Schneiderman was a Jewish suffragist, labor rights activist and orator. Her diminutive stature—she was only 4’9”—flaming red hair, powerful speaking skills and penchant for socialism earned her the nickname “The Red Rose of Anarchy.” Schneiderman was born on April 16, 1882, to working-class parents in Poland. The family immigrated to New York City in 1890 and three years later, Schneiderman’s father died leaving behind three children and a pregnant wife. In 1895, at the age of 13, she had to drop out of school and start working as a […]
Anna Howard Shaw
Anna Howard Shaw


Anna Howard Shaw was an American suffragist who became the first woman minister of the Methodist Protestant Church. Shaw was born February 14, 1847, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland, England. In 1851, Shaw's family immigrated to the United States. To help support her family, at age 15, Shaw worked as a teacher at a frontier school. After the Civil War, Shaw was able to attend high school and then college. She entered Albion College in 1873, but left in 1876 to attend Boston Theological Seminary. She graduated in 1878 as the only […]
May Slosson Gorslin Preston
May Gorslin Preston Slosson


May Gorslin Preston Slosson was a suffragist, educator and prison chaplain. Slosson was born in 1858 in Ilion, New York. She was the first woman to obtain a doctoral degree in philosophy in America and the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from Cornell University. Slosson lived in Wyoming for most of her adult life, teaching at the University of Wyoming. She also organized lectures for prisoners at the Wyoming State Penitentiary and eventually was appointed the chaplain, the first female prison chaplain in the United States. She moved with […]
Margaret Chase Smith
Margaret Chase Smith


Margaret Chase Smith served as a U.S. representative from Maine from 1940-1949 and a U.S. senator from 1949-1973. Smith was the first woman to serve in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and the first woman in Maine to serve in Congress. Smith was also the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for president by a major party. Smith was born in Skowhegan, Maine, on December 14, 1897. After graduating from high school, she worked as a teacher, telephone operator, office manager for a woolen […]
Mary Louise Smith
Mary Louise Smith


Mary Louise Smith devoted more than 60 years to improving the political process at the local, state and national level. A native of Eddyville, Iowa, Smith began working in politics in the 1950s in Eagle Grove. Although she twice ran for and won a seat on the Eagle Grove School Board, she decided that the organizational work of politics most appealed to her. In 1964, Smith was elected as Republican national committeewoman for Iowa and served until 1984. She served as the chair of the Republican National Committee from 1974 […]
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton


Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American leader in the women's rights movement who, in 1848, formulated the first organized demand for woman suffrage in the United States. Stanton received a superior education at home, at the Johnstown Academy, and at Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary, from which she graduated in 1832. While studying law in the office of her father, Daniel Cady, a U.S. congressman and later a New York Supreme Court judge, she learned of the discriminatory laws under which women lived and determined to win equal rights for […]
Rowena Edson Stevens
Rowena Edson Stevens


Rowena Edson Stevens was born on April 25, 1852, near Columbus, Wisconsin. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Iowa State College (now Iowa State University) in 1873, a member of Iowa's State first graduating class. She taught school in Iowa and Nebraska from 1873 to 1876, then married John Stevens, a 1872 graduate of Iowa State. The Stevens family lived in Ames from 1876 to 1893, then moved to Boone, Iowa. Stevens was a strong supporter of women's suffrage. She served as president of the Political Equality Club in Ames […]
Maria W. Stewart
Maria W. Stewart


Maria W. Stewart was a African American teacher, lecturer and activist. She was one of the first American women of any race to speak to a "mixed" audience of men and women and the first African American woman to publish a political manifesto. Stewart was born in 1803 in Hartford, Connecticut, to free African American parents. Orphaned by age 5, she served as an indentured servant to a minister until age 15, receiving no formal education. Between ages 15-20, Stewart supported herself as a servant, eventually moving to Boston. She […]