Maggie, Author at History of American Women

First American Women Painters

November 13, 2015 • Maggie

First Professional Women in Art In the nineteenth century, women artists signed their work with a first initial and last name to conceal their gender. Not until the second half of the 19th century did women artists make significant progress. In the United States, women gradually became a force on the American art scene, winning prestigious commissions and awards. Image: Kaaterskill Clove by Harriet Cany Peale This deep gorge in New York’s Catskill Mountains inspired the Hudson River School of Art, our nation’s first artistic style. Harriet Cany Peale Harriet Cany Peale (1800-1869) was born in Philadelphia, where she studied with well-known portrait and historical genre painter, Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860). In 1840 she married Peale and exhibited for the first…

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Activists, Civil War Women

Richmond Bread Riot

November 9, 2015 • Maggie

Civil Unrest and Activism in the Confederate Capital Image: North Carolina Emigrants: Poor White Folk, by James Henry Beard During the Civil War, refugees like these traveled to Richmond hoping for a better life, but they only added to the overcrowding and lack of provisions that already existed there. A group of working-class women gathered in Belvidere Hill Baptist Church in the Oregon Hill section of Richmond, Virginia on the evening of April 1, 1863. A few had traveled from the outskirts of the city to attend this meeting of working class women. One of the leaders, Mary Jackson, was a peddler and another woman sewed tents to support her family. The women decided to meet the following morning and…

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Civil War Women, Famous Wives, Women in Business

Elizabeth Jarvis Colt

October 30, 2015 • Maggie

Woman Who Ran the Colt Firearms Factory When firearms manufacturer Samuel Colt died in 1862, majority ownership in the Colt Fire Arms Company passed to his wife, Elizabeth Jarvis Colt. Called the Grande Dame of Connecticut, she worked tirelessly to preserve her husband’s accomplishments and safeguard his legacy. The company continued to thrive under her leadership for almost forty years. Image: Elizabeth Jarvis Hart Colt With her son Caldwell Portrait by Charles Loring Elliott Early Years Elizabeth Hart Jarvis was born October 5, 1826 in Saybrook, Connecticut to Episcopal Minister William Jarvis and Elizabeth Jarvis, the eldest of five children in an affluent and socially prominent family. Samuel Colt, born July 19, 1814, was an inventor and arms manufacturer in…

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First Women, Native American Women, Poets and Writers

Betsey Guppy Chamberlain

October 24, 2015 • Maggie

Native American Mill Girl During the 1830s and 1840s, Betsey Guppy Chamberlain (daughter of an Algonquian woman) worked in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts and wrote stories for two workers’ magazines. A brave and pioneering author, Chamberlain wrote the earliest known Native American fiction and some of the earliest nonfiction about the persecution of Native people. Image: Betsy Guppy Chamberlain, right With another Lowell Mill girl Early Years Betsey Guppy was born December 29, 1797 in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. She was the daughter of William Guppy and Comfort Meserve Guppy. She was of mixed race: American and Algonquian Indian. Betsey married Josiah Chamberlain on June 25, 1820, and they had two children; he…

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Civil War Women, Civil War Women Working

Women Working at the Treasury

October 20, 2015 • Maggie

Women at the U.S. Treasury Department Image: Lady Clerks Leaving the Treasury Department at Washington This illustration was published February 18, 1865, in Harper’s Weekly. During the Civil War, the Department of the Treasury in Washington, DC hired women workers to fill clerical positions vacated by men who had left to fight with the Union Army. Until that time, clerking was strictly a male occupation. Believing women were particularly well-suited for the task, the Treasurer of the United States assigned them to hand-cut paper money, usually printed in amounts of four bills per sheet. Backstory Prior to 1790, the ground now covered by magnificent public and private buildings and known as the City of Washington, was part of a Maryland…

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Abolitionists, Slavery in America, Underground Railroad

Underground Railroad in New Jersey

October 15, 2015 • Maggie

Saving Slaves from Bondage in the South Tens of thousands of fugitives from the slave states of Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina found refuge in New Jersey. Most of them arrived here by crossing the Delaware River under the cover of darkness. Slaves and the courageous people who aided them on their journey risked their lives for freedom. Quaker Abigail Goodwin was one of the figures whose work was instrumental in the success of the Underground Railroad in New Jersey. Image: Stations on the NJ UGRR Backstory New Jersey’s path to abolition for all of its citizens was a rocky one. In 1804 New Jersey passed its first abolition law, An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery….

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Civil War Hospitals, Civil War Women

Chimborazo Hospital

October 10, 2015 • Maggie

Largest Military Hospital in the World Image: Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia A man with a crutch looks out upon the long white buildings of Chimborazo Hospital on the hill above in a photograph taken just after the city had fallen to Union forces in April 1865. Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia essentially functioned as a village, complete with bathhouse, soap factory, morgues, and a bakery. Phoebe Yates Pember was one of the first women to serve as a hospital matron during the Civil War. Her memoirs describe in vivid detail her experiences as one of the first women to enter the previously all-male field of medicine in the Confederacy. A Hospital on a Hill Several million men went off…

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Women in Art

Mary Blood Mellen

October 5, 2015 • Maggie

19th Century Landscape and Marine Artist Image: Taking in the Sails By Mary Blood Mellen In recent years, Mary Blood Mellen has emerged as one of the most talented women artists in the years immediately preceding the Civil War. She was an American landscape and marine artist who collaborated with her mentor, American Luminist master Fitz Henry Lane. Mellen was one of the few women painters associated with the Hudson River School – a group of artists working in nineteenth-century New England. She is known for her renderings of nostalgic landscapes and seascapes in the Gloucester, Massachusetts area. Early Life While information about her life is always somewhat sketchy, Mary Blood Mellen was likely born in 1817 in Sterling, Massachusetts,…

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Activists, Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Adaline Weston Couzins

October 1, 2015 • Maggie

Civil War Nurse in St. Louis, Missouri Union Nurse: Adaline Weston Couzins Adaline Weston Couzins was a Union nurse in Missouri. She was one of the Civil War Nurses on Hospital Ships that traveled up and down the Mississippi River, risking her life helping wounded soldiers. A Minie ball struck her in the knee in 1863, but she kept on nursing throughout the war and afterward. She was a woman of great courage and compassion for her fellow men and women. Early Life Adaline Weston was born August 12, 1815, in Brighton, England. At the age of eight, she came to America with her parents. In 1834, Adaline eloped with John Edward Decker Couzins, a carpenter and builder by trade….

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