Category: Historical (born before 1900) / page 7

Lucretia Mott
Lucretia Mott


Born Lucretia Coffin on January 3, 1793, in Nantucket, Massachusetts, Lucretia Mott was a women's rights activist, abolitionist, and religious reformer. A child of Quaker parents, Mott grew up to become a leading social reformer. At the age of 13, she attended a Quaker boarding school in New York State. Mott stayed on and worked there as a teaching assistant. While at the school, she met her future husband James Mott. The couple married in 1811 and lived in Philadelphia. By 1821, Mott became a Quaker minister, noted for her […]
Emily Murphy
Emily Murphy


Emily Murphy was a Canadian equal rights activist, jurist and author. Murphy was the first female magistrate in Canada and the British Empire, and helped to repeal discriminatory legislation against women in Canada. However, her legacy is disputed, with her contributions to feminism weighed against her racist views and her advocation of eugenics. Murphy was born on March 14, 1868, in Cookstown, Ontario. Due to her family’s wealth and influence in society, Murphy was educated in private schools throughout her early life. In 1887, she married Arthur Murphy and had […]
Clarina Nichols
Clarina H Nichols


Clarina Howard Nichols was an American journalist, lobbyist and public speaker involved in the temperance, abolition, and the women's rights movements. Despite her prominence in her time, she has been largely overlooked by historians until recently. Nichols was born on January 25, 1810 in West Townshend, Vermont. After graduating as class valedictorian, she attended an advanced school in West Townshend for further education, then taught for a year or two before marrying Justin Carpenter, a recent law school graduate and member of a prominent local family; the couple moved to […]
Leonora O'Reilly
Leonora O'Reilly


Leonora O’Reilly was a labor leader, trade union organizer and suffragist. O'Reilly was born February 16, 1870, in New York City to working class Irish immigrant parents. Her father died when she was one year old, and her mother supported the family by working long hours as a garment worker and taking in boarders. As a child, O'Reilly attended union meetings with her mother. At age 11, she was forced to leave school to work in a factory as an assistant to a seamstress, and at 16, she became a […]
Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst


Emmeline Pankhurst was a political activist and leader of the suffrage movement in Great Britain. Though often criticized for her strongly militant tactics, her contributions toward achieving women's suffrage in Great Britain are well-recognized. Pankhurst was born on July 15, 1858, in Manchester, England, to politically active parents. Despite being academically gifted, she did not receive the same education as her brothers. Although her parents supported women's suffrage and the general advancement of women in society, they believed that the most important part of a girl's education were the skills […]
Alice Paul
Alice Paul


Alice Paul was one of the main leaders in the U.S. women's suffrage movement. Paul was born on January 11, 1885, in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, a descendant of William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. Paul’s parents supported gender equality and social reform, and Paul attended women’s suffrage meetings with her mother. Paul graduated from Swarthmore College, a Quaker school co-founded by her grandfather, in 1905 with a bachelor's degree in biology. She received a Master of Arts in 1907 and a doctorate in 1912 from the University of […]
Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins


Frances Perkins served as the U.S. secretary of labor from 1933-1945 and was the principal architect of the New Deal. She was the first woman to hold a U.S. cabinet position and the first woman to enter the presidential line of succession. As secretary of labor, she was largely responsible for the adoption of social security, unemployment insurance, federal laws regulating child labor and the federal minimum wage. Perkins was born on April 10, 1880, in Boston, Massachusetts. She earned a bachelor's degree in physics from Mount Holyoke College in […]
Jeannette Rankin
Jeannette Rankin


Jeannette Pickering Rankin was the first woman to hold federal office in the United States, with her 1916 election to the U.S. House of Representatives by the state of Montana. In 1940, she was elected to a second House term. A lifelong pacifist, she was one of 50 House members (and six senators) who opposed the war declaration of 1917, and the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Rankin was born on June 11, 1880, near Missoula, […]
Sarah Parker Remond
Sarah Parker Remond


Sarah Parker Remond was a free-born African American lecturer, abolitionist and physician. Remond was born on June 6, 1826, in Salem, Massachusetts. Her parents, also free born, were successful businesspeople and activists. Remond became an anti-slavery lecturer, delivering her first lecture in 1842 at the age of 16. In 1853, Remond was forced to leave a theater and pushed down a flight stairs after she refused to sit in a segregated section. She sued for damages and won, and the court ordered the theater to integrate its seating. From 1856 […]
Felisa Rincón de Gautier
Felisa Rincón de Gautier


Felisa Rincón de Gautier was a Puerto Rican suffragist and the first female mayor of San Juan. Rincón de Gautier was born on January 9, 1897, in Ceiba, Puerto Rico. She was active in the campaign to win Puerto Rican women the right to vote, which finally succeeded in 1932. She was one of the first women to vote in Puerto Rico and was later elected the first female mayor of San Juan, serving from 1946-1969. Her social programs were widely supported and were focused on childcare programs, centers for […]