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The Women of Kew – Royalty

• Patty

Kew Gardens in England is one of the world’s most renowned botanical gardens. Kew has a very long history and has seen and undergone many changes in its time. It is a place that has been farmed on, built upon, designed, land added to and removed, re-designed, re-built, over and over again by its various owners. It has been graced by the designs of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and others of equally great import and reputation. While men deservedly bear the majority of the honors there are many women in Kew’s history that deserve more recognition. I will present this in two parts. The list is long, so let us begin.

Maria Sibylla Merian, illustrator and naturalist

• Patty

A few summers ago I was in New York city enjoying the artwork of the Frick Museum. I always like to check out the museum store afterward and this time I came upon a small book of illustrations by Maria Sibylla Merian titled Insects & Flowers. A wonderful little book with large and colourful illustrations of exotic flowers surrounded by creepy crawlers of all sorts. I had to have it. Little did I know that this Renaissance artist had regained popularity in the last few decades. Her story is one you will admire.

Romantic Friendship

• Maggie

Women Living Happily With Women A romantic friendship is a very close but non-sexual relationship between same-sex friends who often shared a degree of physical closeness like kissing, hugging, holding hands, and sharing a bed. Such friendships offered emotional support and companionship in a society where women had few freedoms. Many of these women later left the romantic friendship and married men. Women in romantic friendships usually lived together, in a world where women had few choices as to where they must live. As long as they remained single and had no other arrangements, they were forced to live with a male family member – father, brother, uncle, nephew, cousin. As they aged, they were often shuttled from household to…

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Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania

• Maggie

Pennsylvania Conductors Led Slaves to Freedom Abolition of slavery was the great moral issue of the nineteenth century, especially after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which allowed owners to capture their slaves in free northern states and return them to the South. The Underground Railroad (UGRR) was a loose grouping of people who risked home and safety to help runaways escape bondage. The penalties for their actions were severe. If caught, a stationmaster on the UGRR could be jailed and fined $20,000, a huge sum at that time. The Constitution of the United States had a fugitive slave clause that Congress implemented with the first Fugitive Slave Law in 1793, placing a fine on anyone rescuing,…

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Matilda Hoffman

• Maggie

Washington Irving’s One and Only Love Though she died very young, Matilda Hoffman made such a deep impression on the young American author Washington Irving (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) that he mourned her passing for the rest of his life. Decades later, the mere mention of her name left him speechless. Sarah Matilda Hoffman was born in 1791, daughter of Josiah Ogden and Mary Colden Hoffman. Matilda, as she was known, grew up in Manhattan and Albany, New York. Her mother died when she was six years old and her father married Maria Fenno five years later and began a second family. Maria was only ten years older than Matilda.

Diaries of Civil War Nurses

• Maggie

Volunteer Nurses: Forgotten Heroes of the Civil War At the beginning of the war, women in all walks of life saw the need for nurses and simply showed up at military hospitals. A few of the more famous nurses kept a written record of their experiences, including Hannah Ropes, Jane Stuart Woolsey, Kate Cumming and Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Some are merely names on lists in dusty government archives; others we will never know. Backstory In April 1861, Dorothea Dix and a hastily assembled group of volunteer female nurses staged a march on Washington, demanding that the government recognize their desire to aid the Union’s wounded. Secretary of War Simon Cameron quickly named Dix to superintend the women nurses assigned to…

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History of American Women Abolitionists

• Maggie

19th Century Anti-Slavery Activists Image: The Underground Railroad, 1891 painting by Charles Webber, depicts Catharine and Levi Coffin leading a group of fugitive slaves to freedom on a winter morning. The setting of the painting may be the Coffin farm in Cincinnati. White Women Abolitionists The increase in religious revivals known as the Second Great Awakening of the 1820s and 1830s led abolitionists to see slavery as a sin against humanity. By the 1830s, thousands of American women were involved in the movement to abolish slavery, and some became prominent leaders in the abolition movement. They wrote articles for abolitionist papers, circulated pamphlets and delivered petitions to Congress calling for abolition. Since the days of William Penn, Quaker practice had…

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Women in Publishing

• Maggie

American Women Newspaper Publishers In the eighteenth century, women often worked alongside their husbands and brothers to publish a newspaper as a family business. In some cases, the wife became the publisher after her husband took ill or died, usually until a son could take over the paper. The influence of these women in publishing as active participants in the business is an enduring feature of newspaper history to the present day. Image: Elizabeth Timothy, America’s first female newspaper publisher, 1738 The South Carolina Gazette, Charleston, South Carolina 18th Century Women Publishers In the 1700s, women edited approximately 16 of the 78 small, family-owned weekly newspapers circulating throughout the American colonies. Even if they did not run the printing operations,…

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Harriot Kezia Hunt

• Maggie

First Woman to Apply to Harvard Medical School Harriot Kezia Hunt (1805-1875) was the first American woman to practice medicine professionally. Though she did not have a medical degree, she achieved considerable success by applying the simple principles of good nutrition and exercise. In the 1850s she became involved in the burgeoning women’s rights movement and fought to open the medical profession to women. Childhood and Early Years Harriot Kezia Hunt was born in Boston, Massachusetts on November 9, 1805, the daughter of Jacob and Kezia Wentworth Hunt. The Hunts were deeply involved in Boston’s liberal religious community and reform culture, and they educated their two daughters at home. Her father died in 1827, when Harriot was twenty-two, and she…

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Lydia Pinkham

• Maggie

Businesswoman and Feminist in the Civil War Era Lydia Pinkham concocted a patent medicine tonic – Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound – to treat menstrual and menopausal symptoms. She began selling her home-brewed herbal remedy to make ends meet after her wealthy husband went bankrupt, and developed a patent medicine empire. In an age when women were second-class citizens, Lydia Pinkham not only succeeded in a man’s world, she was one of the most successful American businesswomen of the 19th century. In the field of marketing, she is considered a pioneer and an innovater. Lydia Estes was born February 9, 1819 in Lynn, Massachusetts, the tenth of the twelve children of William and Rebecca Estes, radical Quakers. William Estes was a…

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