History of American Women | Page 4 of 111 - Colonial Women - 18th-19th Century Women

Feminists, First Women, Women in Education

Sarah Elizabeth Doyle

June 21, 2020 • Maggie

Pioneer in Women’s Education A thirty-six-year-old Rhode Island high school teacher and principal, Sarah Elizabeth Doyle was a founder of the coeducational Rhode Island School of Design (1877). In the mid-1890s, she became a leader of the Rhode Island Society for the Collegiate Education of Women, which sponsored the establishment of The Women’s College at Brown University. This feminist and education reformer also ardently supported women’s suffrage. Early Years Sarah Elizabeth Doyle entered Providence High School during its initial enrollment in 1843. One of seven siblings, she completed her formal education in 1846 when she graduated from that school, and she dedicated the rest of her life to the advancement of higher education for women. A Life in Teaching Doyle…

Read Article

Women and the gardren

Flora, Goddess of Flowers

June 18, 2020 • Patty

OK, so she is not a real person but Flora certainly had an influence in early Greek and Roman societies and later in the art world. But already I must partially retract the words that Flora was not a real person, because there seems to be some disagreement on this point. The Romans said that Flora was a woman of pleasure, wealthy due to her trade, and left her wealth to the Roman senate on the proviso that the money was used to celebrate her birthday. The seemingly embarrassed senators agreed to this donation (could it be because they were clients?), gave Flora the title of goddess and thereafter held the Floralia on her birthday. True or not it makes…

Read Article

Abolitionists

American Women Abolitionists: Freedom Fighters II

June 15, 2020 • Maggie

1838 Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women By Thursday, May 17, 1838 the mob that had gathered outside Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia to disrupt the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women had become louder and more threatening – encouraged by the city’s policemen who stood by and watched as the violence against the abolitionists and their property escalated.

Women and the gardren

The Hortus Conclusus

June 15, 2020 • Patty

I am continuing the theme of the Virgin Mary and the garden because I feel that the idea of the hortus conclusus should not be left out. The hortus conclusus is a particular type of enclosed garden in the sense that it is tied symbolically to the Virgin Mary. While the hortus conclusus takes the form of a garden in Medieval and Renaissance art it is actually a representation of the Virgin Mary. And yet many of its actual physical attributes are taken from even earlier centuries of garden making. When we look far back to the earliest Oriental gardens of Persia, Egypt, Babylon and Mesopotamia we see walled gardens filled with fruit trees, flowers, water and places to sit….

Read Article

Women and the gardren

The Garden in a Nunnery, Part 2: Radegund of Poitiers

June 12, 2020 • Patty

Radegund of Poitiers, France Radegund of Poitiers was one of the first Frankish women who founded and ruled over nunneries in France. Her life reads like a soap opera. Born around the year of 520, Radegund was the daughter of a Thuringian King, Berthaire. While just a child, her father was murdered by his brother, Hermanfred, who took Radegund and her brother to raise as his own. But in 531 the Franks invaded Thuringia and defeated and destroyed the Thuringian royal family. The children were captured by the invading Frankish King Clothaire I, who claimed them as spoils of war. Radegund lived with Clothaire in Athies when at the age of 18 he moved her to Soissons to be his…

Read Article

Summer (Aestas) from the series The Seasons by Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Women and the gardren

Woman’s Work

June 9, 2020 • Patty

Chores in the field and garden were often divided between men and women by body strength, a strategy that has been passed down through time. It has its benefits, but truly is unnecessary. Most of the time the basest of garden chores were handed down to women; the weeding. In English estates weeding was done almost exclusively by women. English records from Rotherhithe (Surrey) for 1354 list women as weeders. Women employed in the 16 century show rates of pay at 3 d a day to remove convolvulus, dandelions, charlock, cockles, dock, dodder, groundsel, thistles and nettles. The women were paid less than the men, but also seemed to hold less value than many of the garden implements they may…

Read Article

Women and the gardren

The Garden in a Nunnery, Part 1

June 9, 2020 • Patty

“Come, I’ll dispose of thee among a sisterhood of holy nuns” Romeo and Juliet. Monasteries have been around in many forms. In the East men attracted by the hermits life preferred living in isolated cells (room) to the cloistered community. Early monks depended on the alms collected to survive. If these were insufficient then there would have been a need for a garden. Western monasteries appear to have always been cloistered as a community. Gardens were always part of the plan. Some of the earliest gardens were found in monasteries all throughout Europe. The monastic gardens served many purposes. Food for the table, flowers for the altar and herbs for the sick were all grown within the walled grounds of…

Read Article

Women and the gardren

Catharine Parr Traill – (1802 –1899)

June 6, 2020 • Patty

Catharine Parr Traill is important to Canadian history as is her sister Susanna Moodie for authoring a number of books, some which offer the reader a view of early Canadian history. She is not like most women in garden history who tend to be royalty or wealthy with funds at their disposal for grand gardens or greenhouse collections. She is not a plant hunter or a botanist who identifies species and then sends the moverseas to be catalogued and named by men. How then does she fit into a garden history? Catharine is unique and she belongs in garden history because she has seen a world few of us ever will. She immigrated to Canada in 1832 a time when…

Read Article

Abolitionists

American Women Abolitionists: Freedom Fighters I

June 1, 2020 • Maggie

Abolitionist Movement in Philadelphia In the 1830s, female antislavery societies circulated and gathered signatures on antislavery petitions, held public meetings, organized fundraising events, and financially supported improvements in free black communities. Many of these organizations focused on submitting signed petitions to the U.S. Congress as a top priority in their campaigns to end slavery. Women were not yet allowed to vote; therefore, petition drives were one of the few forms of political expression available to female abolitionists. Petition campaigns drew women out of their homes and into their neighborhoods where they conducted massive door-to-door campaigns and then sent the signed documents to the U.S. Congress. Between 1834 and 1850, these women sent thousands of these petitions to Washington DC, causing…

Read Article