Category: Historical (born before 1900) / page 4

Matilda Gage
Matilda J Gage


Matilda Joslyn Gage, suffragist and writer, was born in Cicero, New York, on March 24, 1826. Gage's father provided her early education, which included mathematics, Greek, and biology, after which she attended the Clinton Liberal Institute in New York. She married Henry H. Gage, a merchant, in 1845; they had five children, although one son died in infancy. The couple later moved to Syracuse and Manlius before finally settling in Fayetteville, New York. Gage's activism in women's rights began at the National Woman's Rights Convention in Syracuse in September 1852. […]
Helen Hamilton Gardener
Helen Hamilton Gardener


Helen Hamilton Gardener was an author, suffragist and civil service official. Gardener was born as Alice Chenoweth on January 21, 1853, in Winchester, Virginia, and grew up in Washington, D.C., Indiana and Ohio. She graduated from Cincinnati Normal School in 1873, and worked as a teacher for two years until her marriage to Charles Smart, the school commissioner of Ohio. They moved to New York City in 1880, where she lectured on sociology at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences and wrote for local newspapers under several masculine pseudonyms. […]
Edna Fischel Gellhorn
Edna Fischel Gellhorn


Edna Fischel Gellhorn was a Missouri suffragist, reformer and philanthropist. Born in St. Louis in 1878, Gellhorn became involved in the Missouri suffrage campaign in 1910, serving in the St. Louis and Missouri Equal Suffrage Leagues and helping to organize suffrage demonstrations. In 1919, Gellhorn cast the deciding vote to open up the St. Louis Equal Suffrage League to African Americans. Gellhorn’s most famous accomplishment was a 1916 demonstration known as the “Golden Lane,” where thousands of suffragists, clad in “suffrage yellow,” lined the streets and distracted from the Democratic […]
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman


Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a lecturer, writer, economist and leading theorist of the women’s movement in the United States. Gilman was born on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut. Her paternal great-grandfather was Calvinist preacher Dr. Lyman Beecher and her great-aunts were novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, women's education advocate Catherine Beecher, and suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker. Gilman's father abandoned the family, leaving them in poverty. Although Gilman received little formal education, she did attend the Rhode Island School of Design for two years. In 1884 she married artist Charles W. […]
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman


Emma Goldman was a political anarchist, writer and speaker who advocated for causes such as free speech, birth control, women's equality and worker’s rights. Goldman was born on June 27, 1869, in Kovno, Russia, to a poor Jewish family. Due to her family's poverty, Goldman had to leave school and work. As a teenager, she began studying the ideas of Russian populists and nihilists. In 1885, she emigrated to Rochester, New York, with an older sister to avoid being forced into marriage by her father. Working as a seamstress in […]
Charlotte Forten Grimké
Charlotte Forten Grimké


Charlotte Forten Grimké was an African American teacher, author, abolitionist and suffragist. Born on August 17, 1837, to a family of prominent Philadelphia abolitionists, Charlotte Forten Grimké receive an excellent education from tutors as she was barred from attending a segregated school. At the age of 17, she was sent to Salem, Massachusetts, to be educated further at the Higginson Grammar school and then the Salem Normal School, where she enjoyed great success. After graduation, she found a job as a teacher at Eppes Grammar School. It was in Salem […]
Sarah Moore Grimké
Sarah Moore Grimké


For information on her sister, Angelina Grimké Weld, visit her profile at awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/angelina-grimke-weld-2/ . Sarah Moore Grimké was a nineteenth-century abolitionist, suffragist and orator. Born on November 26, 1792, to a family of wealthy slaveholders in Charleston, South Carolina, Grimké learned the evils of slavery at an early age. As a child, she tried to teach some of the enslaved people how to read on their plantation until her father discovered and forbade her from continuing. After an 1819 visit to Philadelphia with her father where she met several Quaker […]
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper


Frances Ellen Watkins (Harper) was an abolitionist and poet born free in 1825 in Baltimore, Maryland. Harper's mother died before she was three years old, leaving her an orphan. Harper was raised by her uncle, William Watkins, a teacher at the Academy for Negro Youth and a radical political figure in civil rights. Watkins was a major influence on Harper's political, religious and social views. Harper attended the Academy for Negro Youth, and the rigorous education she received, along with the political activism of her uncle, affected and influenced her […]
Ida Husted Harper
Ida Husted Harper


Ida Husted Harper was an author, journalist and suffragist. Harper was born on February 18, 1851, in Fairfield, Indiana. She attended Indiana University for one year, but left to become a teacher and high school principal. She married in 1871 and soon after began her career as a journalist, writing articles for Terre Haute and Indianapolis newspapers under the pseudonym of "Mrs. John Smith." She did not begin using her own name on her work until 1881. For twelve years, she wrote a column for the Terre Haute Saturday Evening […]
Isabella Beecher Hooker
Isabella Beecher Hooker


Isabella Beecher Hooker, woman's rights advocate and suffragist, is best known for her suffrage work in Connecticut and New England. Introduced to suffrage by Caroline Severance, Hooker helped found the New England Woman Suffrage Association and formed the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association, serving as president from 1869 to 1905. She joined the National Woman Suffrage Association, spoke at their conventions, and lobbied and testified before Congress. One of 13 children of the famous Beecher family, her brother was celebrated preacher Henry Ward Beecher, and Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe […]