Nineteenth Century Heroines: Making Sure the Ayes Have It

I am always on the lookout for nineteenth century history near me, which can sometimes be challenging in the Pacific Northwest, especially in the wilds where I live. That’s why discovering a house on the National Register of Historic Places less than two miles away was such a thrill, as was learning about the lady behind it.

Washington State had a rocky road to confirming the right of women to vote. Seattle founding father Arthur Denny tried to convince the territorial legislature in 1854, but the measure lost by a narrow margin. The lawmakers rallied, however, and passed another measure some years later, only to have a territorial court shoot it down! Because “woman’s suffrage” was not specifically included in the title of the law, the court reasoned, the male legislators might not have realized what they were approving. Undaunted, they changed the title and passed the measure again. Women voted in Washington Territory beginning in 1883. Unfortunately, another legal challenge upended the law, and fears that the federal government would find women voting so offensive it would never give the territory statehood kept the idea out of the state constitution in 1889. By the turn of the twentieth century, suffragists in Washington State were entirely disheartened.

Enter Emma Smith DeVoe. Born in Roseville, Illinois, in 1848, she had supported woman’s suffrage since the day she heard Susan B. Anthony speak. She was only eight at the time. Since then, she’d campaigned for women’s rights in Dakota Territory (although women couldn’t vote there until 1918), Idaho Territory (where she helped win the right in 1896), and Oregon State (where the first measure lost, with women winning the vote in 1912). She had also helped with campaigns in another 25 territories and states. When she moved to Tacoma with her husband in 1905, she promptly set to work on campaigning in Washington.

There were, apparently, several philosophies among the suffragists. One group held that large rallies and sit-ins were the order of the day. Others, notably in England, went so far as to smash windows on abandoned buildings to draw attention to their cause. The ladylike Emma was certain there was a more effective way. By being good-natured and cheerful, women might persuade their male counterparts one-on-one. Her goal was to have women ask every voter in the state to support the suffrage movement. She also sent out postcards and put up posters. She even published a cook book, with Votes for Women on the back cover. When the National American Woman Suffrage Association met in Seattle in 1909, she organized a “Suffrage Special” train, with notable ladies giving speeches from the rear platform at stops along the way. That same year, Seattle hosted the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, and she set up a Suffrage Day. That was when a group of suffragists climbed Mt. Rainier to raise awareness of the cause.

In 1910, the all-male Washington State legislature voted by nearly two-thirds to extend the vote to women, 10 years before the nation would follow suit. Emma had a little something to do with that too. For her work in the state as well as at the national level, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2000. She died in 1927, at the age of 79, in her lovely home near me.

And if you’d like to read about a fictional Washington State pioneer, you might want to grab an ebook copy of The Perfect Mail-Order Bride, on sale for the first time this week for only 99 cents.

When a beautiful mail-order bride jilts her groom on the way to meet him, her plainer sister Ada Williamson decides to continue the journey and tell him the truth. Yet one look at Thomas “Scout” Rankin, and the truth never comes out. Thomas can buy anything he wants, including the perfect mail-order bride. But past betrayals left him wary, so he notices Ada is not what she claims. When a stranger tries to take advantage of Ada’s secret, and his, can they discover the truth, about their enemy, about their pasts, and about the love they both yearn to share?

Reading is My Superpower called it “swoony, sweet, and full of heart.” 

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Nineteenth Century Heroines: Reaching for the Top

When I was researching for A View Most Glorious (lovely, lovely research), one of the first people that popped up was the first woman to reach the top of Mt. Rainier. That in itself is an amazing feat! But it was only one of many for Evelyn Fay Fuller.

Fay was born in 1869 in New Jersey, though her family later moved to Chicago. Her family moved again in 1882 to settle near Tacoma, Washington Territory. Her father edited a number of newspapers there, starting with the Evening News and going on to the Tacoma Ledger, Every Sunday, and The Tacomian. Fay fell in love with the grandeur of the area. She made her first visit to Paradise Park, at the 5,000-foot level on the mountain, when she was 17 and managed to make it to nearly the 9,000-foot level. She vowed then and there to reach the summit.

Fay graduated from high school at age 15 and began a career as a teacher. She and a group of young women also banded together for exercise, including calisthenics and rifle drills. But still the mountain called her. In August 1890, a couple of months shy of her twenty-first birthday, she was once again at Paradise Park at the invitation of Philemon Van Trump, who, with Hazard Stevens, had been the first white men to reach the summit. They were intent on making another trip, and they invited her to join them. They didn’t have to ask twice.

Accompanied by three other men (one a minister), but refusing their aid, she reached the summit at 4pm on August 10, having overnighted at Camp Muir. Bad weather forced the party to spend a second night on the mountain, this time on the summit in ice caves near steam vents to keep warm.

Fay returned to fame. The report of her climb crossed the nation, and a local photographer took a picture that would become iconic (see above), careful to disguise the fact that she had been wearing bloomers at the time. Scandalous! She quit teaching and joined her father as a reporter. Her “Mountain Murmurs” column would inspire countless others to attempt the climb or at least dream of doing so.

Fay was a founding member of the Washington Alpine Club in 1891, the Tacoma Alpine Club (now gone) in 1893, and the Mazamas (Portland, Oregon) in 1894. She made her second ascent of Rainier in 1897, having reached Paradise with more than 200 members of the Mazamas and taken 57 of them with her to the summit. Besides climbing, she advanced to city reporter for her father, walking all over Tacoma to cover the waterfront, equity courts, and the markets. She was sent to report on the World’s Fair in Chicago and St. Louis. She also served as the first female harbormaster.

In 1900, she left to explore beyond Washington, taking up reporting jobs in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York City. She was in her thirties when she married an attorney named Fritz von Briesen, who appears to have been fairly well off. They had three children, one which didn’t live to see her first birthday. The von Briesens later moved to California.

Fay died at age 88 in Santa Monica, California, having reached heights few still have ever attained.

You can catch a glimpse of the view of Paradise that so inspired her below.

Nineteenth Century Heroines: Taking Command

I recently read The Great Clippers by Jane D. Lyon, who mentions a young wife who took command of a sailing ship as it rounded the Horn in a storm. Of course, I had to learn more! I give you Mary Patten, a true nineteenth century heroine!

Born in Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1837, Mary Ann Brown married at the tender age of 15 to a dashing sailing ship captain named Joshua Patten who was nine years her senior. He was a rising star among captains, so it wasn’t surprising for him to be offered command of an extreme clipper, a more than 1,600-ton sailing ship with massive amounts of canvas, within two years of their marriage. Neptune’s Car was built by Page and Allen of Portsmouth, Virginia, for the line of Foster and Nickerson in New York. Under Patten’s command, she had broke records for the time from Boston around the Horn to San Francisco.

And Mary came along. In her first 17-month journey, she saw the coasts of South America, San Francisco, China, England, and New York. But she was no idle passenger. She used the time to learn navigation and the role of a captain aboard a sailing ship.

In 1856, they started out on another long voyage to San Francisco, racing several other clipper ships. Mary was 19 years old and pregnant with her first child. The trip began much like the previous, with more than some $300,000 of cargo in the hold and a valiant crew, but things began to worsen fairly quickly. For one thing, the first mate proved inept, sleeping through his watches and failing to let down the sails to catch the wind. There was some speculation he had bet on one of the other ships reaching California first. After attempting to reason with him, Joshua relived him of duty and clapped him in irons, then took on the duties of the first mate himself.

Tragedy struck just as they reached Cape Horn. Joshua came down with brain fever and was insensible. (Some accounts say it was tuberculosis.) With the first mate unreliable and the second mate unable to navigate, Mary Patten assumed command. She is credited with being the first female captain of a sailing ship.

It couldn’t have been easy. The Horn is notorious for its gales. Besides ordering the work of the crew, Mary had to devote herself to caring for her sick husband. She studied the medical books aboard to gain ideas of how to ease his suffering. When the first mate tried to instigate a mutiny, she stood up to the crew and rallied them to her cause. They reached San Francisco ahead of all but one of their competitors, and Mary herself piloted the ship into port.

She and Joshua returned home to Boston via another ship, a steamer, but her beloved husband never recovered. It’s likely he didn’t know Mary had given birth, to a son she named Joshua. Having heard of her heroism, the New York Daily Tribune tried to interview her, but she was too humble. The reporter said she was “of medium height, with black hair, large, dark, lustrous eyes, and very pleasing features.”

Sadly, Mary caught consumption and died four years later. She was 23. She has been the inspiration for a novel, and the U.S. Merchant Marine academy named its hospital after her.

One of the most touching things I learned about Mary, however, was the stone she put on Joshua’s grave. It reads, “Are there seas in heaven, Joshua? And is there such a vessel as our Neptune’s Car? If there is, wait for me. And we shall explore the vast and boundless reaches of eternity.”

Now, there’s a nineteenth century heroine.

And I will be so bold as to draw your attention to another nineteenth century heroine, this one fictional. The Unflappable Miss Fairchild, the first book in my Uncommon Courtships series, is available for free through June 16. The ever-practical Anne Fairchild knows the proper way to seek a husband. So why is it one moment in the presence of the dashing Chas Prestwick, and she’s ready to throw propriety to the wind? Chas excels at shocking Society with his wild wagers and reckless carriage racing. But his bravado masks a bruised and lonely heart. Can the sweet-natured Anne convince him to take the greatest risk of all—on love?

You can find her at fine online retailers such as

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Treasures from the Past

Used bookstores. Is there anything better than an afternoon spent hunting through the shelves and stacks in one? As delightful as a new bookstore is, visiting a used bookstore is a trip into unknown, mysterious waters: who knows what treasures might be found on the shelves?

One treasure I found in a used bookstore (and I can’t even remember which one, now) several years ago is Maud, edited by Richard Lee Strout and published in 1938. It’s the diary of a Miss Isabella Maud Rittenhouse (who generally used her middle name), a comfortably middle-class young lady from Cairo, Illinois, down at the very bottom of the state where the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers meet (which made for a very watery city—it did, and still does, flood regularly.) She kept it between 1881, when she was sixteen and a junior in high school, to just before her marriage in 1895 at age thirty. And oh, what a diary!

Maud paints herself as small and ugly, but she was evidently extraordinarily charming, based on the number of friends and admirers she had. She was also quite energetic, and not only went to art school in St. Louis, but also maintained an art studio, acted and sang in local amateur theater, and became a frequent contributor of stories and articles to national magazines.

Her writing talent is clear in her amazing diary. Some entries run thousands of words long and describe outings to New Orleans and the Chicago Worlds’ Fair, or boating on the spring floods, or the dresses she makes and the china she paints, or the people who come to life from her pen. The prose has a remarkably fresh, modern, alive feel to it, even as the people and events it describes are very 19^th century. What's most remarkable, though, is that the story of her younger years actually has a plot: she has many beaus and suitors and falls in love several times, but keeps coming back to one young man to whom she doesn't feel much connection but respects enormously for his integrity and honesty...until mere weeks before their wedding, it's revealed that he has embezzled thousands of dollars from his former employer. Poor Maud is devastated but meets a new sweetheart and becomes engaged...until her new fiancé breaks the engagement. Five year later, he proposes again...and this time Maud and her handsome doctor get to live happily ever after.

I see that used copies are available online (check Abebooks, for one, and eBay.) If you should ever run across a copy at your favorite used bookstore, I highly recommend it!

Nineteenth Century Heroines: Recognized in Any Country

Heroines with unusual names always intrigue me, and Etheldred Benett is an excellent example. Etheldred was born in either 1775 or 1776, the oldest daughter of a wealthy family in Wiltshire. Unlike Mary Anning, no likenesses exist of her other than a proprietary silhouette. Like Mary Anning, she discovered early on a fascination with fossils and began collecting them by the time she was twenty-three.

Etheldred had a number of places she could go. There were quarries in the area, where the stratigraphy lay bare. She took such careful note of it that she was later able to map that area of Wiltshire. She also spent holidays on the Dorset Coast, what today is known as the Jurassic Coast, where she might have collected fossils as readily as Mary Anning did.

And she wasn’t shy about sharing her knowledge, or her specimens. Her “curiosity cabinet” in her home in Wiltshire was a must-see for anyone studying geology of the area. She corresponded with many of the premiere geologists of the time and sent duplicate specimens to museums and other collectors. In fact, she sent some unknown specimens to them, hoping to have them named, but the fossils were ultimately returned to her on their deaths, still unnamed for scientific purposes.

Sir Richard Colt Hoare, a Wiltshire archaeologist and historian, urged her to publish her studies in a catalog, which she did in 1831. She dedicated it to the vice-president of the Geographical Society, calling him her “friend.” In the first pages, she writes that she had intended to do so earlier, but “unforeseen circumstances” and “ill health” conspired to delay the publication.

Tsar Nicholas I was so impressed with her work that he made her a member of the Natural History Society of Moscow and granted her an honorary doctorate in civil law from St. Petersburg University at a time when no woman was admitted. It seems her name confounded the Tsar, and he thought her a man!

Etheldred passed away in 1845, and most of her collection of thousands of specimens was purchased by an American who donated it to the Natural History Museum of Philadelphia. She is widely recognized as the first female geologist. 

Even in Russia.

Nineteenth Century Heroines: Still No Bones About It

I originally posted this in November 2009, but I recently ran across a few more interesting facts and thought it a good time to update. And so, I give you anew, Mary Anning, fossil collector.

Mary was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast of England, not far from my spa town of Grace-by-the-Sea. Her father Richard was a cabinetmaker by trade, but he loved to spend his free time collecting fossils, and he took Mary and her older brother Joseph with him. The cliffs near Lyme Regis are riddled with remains from the Jurassic period—the area is now called the Jurassic Coast. But those cliffs are also legendary for landslides and sink holes. Mary spent her youth clambering over these dangerous cliffs and collecting “curiosities” that her father sold to tourists in front of his shop on Bridge Street. Jane Austen even visited. Here’s a sketch.

Sadly, Richard Anning died of consumption when Mary was only 11, and the family struggled to eke out a living by selling the fossils they found. That same year, Joseph uncovered a massive head of what he thought was a fossilized crocodile. Between tides and the weather, it was another year before the children could get back to it, and it was Mary who uncovered the entire skeleton: the first complete ichthyosaur!

Now, you’d think such a find would attract considerable attention, but Mary only earned £23 when she sold the fossil to the Lord of the Manor of Colway. He in turn exhibited it in William Bullock’s Museum of Natural History, and it wasn’t until 1814 that the Royal Society (the premiere scientific organization in England at the time) published a description in its Transactions (with little mention of Mary, thank you very much). The Annings were doing so poorly, in fact, that a professional fossil collector, Lieutenant-Colonel Birch, auctioned off his collection and donated the proceeds to them. The total amount raised was £400 (enough for a family of three to live on for a year or two). 

By the time Mary was in her twenties, she was the head of the family’s fossil collecting business. In 1824, she discovered the skeleton of a plesiosaurus. She sold it for over £100 to the Duke of Buckingham himself. That discovery put her on the map, so to speak, but many scientists were skeptical that Mary was the person making these spectacular finds. For one, she was a woman, and for another, she had only attended school a short period in her life. Yet when they came to talk to her, they could only scratch their heads at her vast knowledge of the creatures she was uncovering. One of her visitors credited her skills to divine providence. 

Even though Mary discovered a pterodactyl in 1828 and an even larger ichthyosaurus in 1832, it wasn’t until 1838 that the scientific community was willing to grant her any official standing. That year the British Association for the Advancement of Science awarded her an annuity. In 1846, she was made an honorary member of the Geological Society (honorary because women were not admitted until 1904). She died in March 1847 from breast cancer. Only after her death did the Royal Society acknowledge her, by donating a stained-glass window to her memory to the Parish Church at Lyme Regis.

It’s never easy being a nineteenth century heroine, no bones about it.

Real-Life Heroines: Caring for Family

Our heroine this time wasn’t born in the nineteenth century, but her efforts and attitude have recently inspired me, and I thought they might inspire you too. Because she is still alive, I couldn’t find a picture that wasn’t proprietary, but you can find the painting that made me want to learn more about Joanna Boatman here (scroll down and click to read thoughts from the artist). 

Joanna’s family arrived in the United States in the late 1800s and settled around the turn of the century in Kalama, Washington. She still lives in the house in which she and her mother were born. She attended school in Kalama, graduating from Kalama High School, then went on to graduate from Emanuel Hospital School of Nursing in Portland, Oregon.

Joanna is an incredibly industrious woman. She started working at age 12 at a downtown soda fountain. She was a member of the County Civil Defense Team in World War II, keeping watch for enemy plans. Shortly before she graduated nursing school, she complained about some civic work on her street, and her brother-in-law challenged her do so something about it. She ran for City Council and won. Then she ran for mayor and won, at age 28. She was the second woman in Washington history to serve as a mayor. She was re-elected, serving a total of 5 years. She also served as chair for the Cowlitz County Planning Council.

As a nurse, Joanna worked at Cowltiz General Hospital in Longview, about 11 miles to the north, for 18 years. But caring for the sick all day wasn’t enough for her. She’d return home and care for those in the area who were ill, as many as 30 hours a week. She provided hospice care, dealt with prescriptions, cared for wounds, and offered a respite for those with sick children. They still talk about the Columbus Day Storm of 1962 in our area (see example of damage right). Joanna helped her neighbors afterward to such an extent that the Washington State Patrol gave her an award.

She moved to Seattle and worked at Virginia Mason for more than 30 years. There she joined the Washington State Nurses Association. She would go on to serve as its president, the first staff nurse to do so. Not content to govern from Seattle, she drove all over Washington to listen to the concerns of her sister nurses. Those nurses reciprocated her respect by voting to change the bylaws so she could serve a second term as President. She also served as delegate to the American Nursing Association convention and delegate to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. She was appointed to the Washington State Nursing Care Quality Assurance Commission and, you probably guessed it, was elected Chair of that commission, two things no staff nurse had ever done before. She also served as president of the Seattle Chapter of Operating Room Nurses. She was such an advocate for nurses that she served as picket captain when the nurses went on strike at Virginia Mason in 1976. She was inducted into the Washington State Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 2000.

I’ve seen multiple dates for when Joanna was born. Near as I can figure, she’s now in her late 80s or early 90s. And she hasn’t slowed down one wit. She still serves as Commissioner on the board for the local cemetery. She recently told a reporter that she considers it “caring for family.”

We should all be so fortunate as to have a woman like Joanna in the family.

Nineteenth Century Heroines: Standing in No One’s Shadow

I have written about Ezra Meeker before. He’s something of a hero in my neck of the woods, or at least he was when I was a girl. So I was delighted recently to learn that he wasn’t the only exceptional person in the family. His wife Eliza Meeker deserves as much recognition.

Eliza Jane Sumner Meeker was born in 1833. She and Ezra were childhood sweethearts in Indiana, their parents’ farms being located nearby. Where Ezra appears to have been the visionary, Eliza was the practical one. Ezra told her he wanted to be a farmer, and she agreed to marry him when she was only 18 so long as he agreed to own the land. That proved difficult for the young couple, who had little money. In less than a year, they decided to head west for Oregon Territory. A tiny woman just over four feet tall, she carefully prepared and packed their food for the trip. Unlike many on the Oregon trail, they never ran out, and nothing spoiled in their six-month journey. And Eliza started out the trip with an infant only 7 weeks old.

Ezra was nothing if not mobile. The couple settled first in St. Helens, Oregon, but staked their first claim across the Columbia River in what would become Kalama. But Ezra wanted more, better, and so they headed north, settling on McNeil Island across from the town of Steilacoom. Still not good enough. He sold their claim, which would eventually become the site of the McNeil Island Correctional Facility. He bought land in the south end of Tacoma, what is called the Fern Hill area today but went by the charming name of Swamp Place back then. Eliza managed the garden and orchard he put in. Still not enough. He had the brilliant idea of growing hops for beer, choosing a claim in the Puyallup Valley. And he made a fortune.

That was enough for Eliza. She asked for half the proceeds of the sale of their last land claim and used the money to build herself and their six children a house, in her name. Not just any house. The Meeker Mansion, which still stands today, cost an astronomical $26,000 then and took 3 years to build. Eliza allowed an Italian painter to live with them for a year while he painted the murals on the ceilings. The house was wired for electricity long before Puyallup had any. Eliza even picked out and arranged for the furniture to be shipped, some all the way from Europe. The year the house was finished, in 1890, she donated their old cabin and land for a city park and served as the first “first lady” of Puyallup when Ezra became the first mayor.

While Ezra was busy running things, Eliza championed the first Puyallup library and was an avid supporter of the suffragette movement. She even attended national meetings. Then a blight went through the hop fields, and they lost everything. Ezra decided to seek his fortune in the Yukon. Eliza had a better idea. She dried 30,000 pounds of vegetables, which Ezra took north to sell in Dawson City. To protect her beloved mansion from being sold to pay their debts, she sold it instead to her daughter Caroline and husband, with the provision that she and Ezra be allowed to reside in the house until their deaths.

Eliza died in 1909, leaving behind a family and a legacy that would not be soon forgotten.

Nineteenth Century Heroines: Highly Accessible

Some of you know that I was once and occasionally still am a writer of technical documents. That’s why I was particularly thrilled when I discovered this nineteenth century heroine. Jane Marcet may be one of the first technical writers, a person with some education and access to scientists who could translate their lofty ideas into something for everyone to marvel at. Her work is credited with influencing countless young ladies as well as the famous chemist, Michael Faraday, who read one of her books when he was a teen and decided to go into science.

Jane certainly didn’t start life in a way that would suggest she would follow that path. She was born in 1769, one of a dozen children of a wealthy Swiss banker and his wife. She was educated at home along with her brothers. Her mother died when she was only 15, and she became the manager of the household and her father’s hostess at the parties he liked to throw. On a trip to Italy when she was 27, she decided she liked painting and was tutored by no less than Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Lawrence, two of the foremost portrait painters of the day (my Lady Emily is insanely jealous of the fact).

But Jane didn’t become a painter. She was 30 when she married a Swiss physician living in London. Her husband was one of the Grand Amateurs I’ve written about before—a man of letters who dabbled in chemistry. He and Jane conducted experiments together at home. When their four children were old enough, Jane involved them as well. She also took care of her father, who lived with her until he died in 1817, leaving her an inheritance. Based on that income, her husband quit his medical practice and became a full-time researcher. 

Meanwhile, Jane had decided that she would write a book. Her idea turned into a series of books. The first to be published was Conversations on Chemistry in 1805. She wrote it as a fictional dialogue between a teacher and two students. What was remarkable at the time was that both the teacher and the students were female. Not so remarkable? Though she wrote and illustrated it, it was published anonymously. She would not be credited with the work until 1832. The work was widely plagiarized in America, where it was claimed by a number of different male authors.

The work was an instant sensation. Like any good piece of technical writing, it made science accessible to those who were unfamiliar with it, perhaps experiencing it for the first time. Governesses used it, girls’ schools used it. Even boys’ schools used it. She went on to write Conversations on Natural Philosophy, Conversations on Plant Physiology, and Conversations on Political Economy. She continued to issue new editions, the last of which was published with she was 84. Her books were translated into German, Dutch, Spanish, and French.

Jane died in London when she was 89, but her works continued to be used as textbooks, for boys and girls, until after the turn of the century.

Now, that’s accessibility.

Nineteenth Century Heroines: Never Just Crewel

Lady Emily Southwell, the heroine in my Lady Emily Capers, dreams of being an artist. That was a nearly impossible goal for a young lady in nineteenth century England. Even the few female painters of the day were barely recognized by their peers, much less the public. That’s one of the reasons I was so delighted to discover a lady who not only spent her life as an artist but commanded the attention of royalty in several countries!

You would not have thought Mary Linwood would become an artist. Her father died when she was young, and her mother ended up starting a private girl’s school, where Mary would teach until a year before she died at the ripe old age of ninety. But Mary’s passion wasn’t teaching. Like many young ladies of that age, she embroidered. But what she embroidered surpassed nearly anything of its time.

You see, from the tender age of 13, Mary created “paintings” with her embroidery. By varying her stitches, she made each one look like a brush stroke. She used crewel wool on painted silk and copied old masters so well that one of her copies sold for more than the original!

She was toasted by the aristocracy, courted by royalty. Queen Charlotte invited her to Windsor to display her work. In 1803, Napoleon invited her to France, where he awarded her the Freedom of Paris for artistry. She displayed her paintings in Russia, met Catherine the Great and the Tsar. She amassed a collection of more than 100 pictures, many of which she displayed for years in a long gallery at Savile House on Leicester Square from 1809 to 1845. Charles Dickens even toured the place. She completed her final piece at age seventy-eight.

Quite a stitch in time.

If you’d like to see some of her paintings in detail, try the Story of Leicester website. 

Nineteenth Century Heroines: Designing Love

Valentine’s Day is approaching. My sweetie and I are trying to determine how to celebrate. Millions of people from school-agers to senior citizens will be purchasing or making cards to share with loved ones. To a large part, this nineteenth century heroine made that possible.

Esther Howland was born in 1828 in Worcester, Massachusetts, into a family that owned a prosperous book and stationery store there. She graduated Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1847. After receiving a valentine from an associate of her father’s, she decided she could do better.

And she did.

Now, there were Valentine’s Day cards made before Esther started, but she was the first to create them on a commercial scale in America. She used lace, gold, and colored prints to bring her creations to life. For those who might not be able to express themselves sufficiently, she even published a valentine writer with suggested verses. (We covered those here.) 

Her work was so in demand she had to start her own business and hire friends, creating an assembly line. She designed, her employees copied, and together they produced valentines that were considered elegant, refined, and of the highest quality. Simple cards went for 5 cents each. The most elaborate, with secret pockets for engagement rings or personal messages, cost as much as $50 dollars!

She trained hundreds of women through the years, most of whom worked from home for reasonable wages. Esther herself worked from a wheelchair the last 15 years she was in the business. She died in 1904, unmarried but highly successful, having grossed more than $100,000 a year many years (an amount close to $3 million in today’s dollars). She is known by many as the Mother of the American Valentine.

She simply loved her work.

Nineteenth Century Heroine: Putting on a Good Face

I’m researching a new series (lovely, lovely research!), and my first heroine is slated to be a cavalry officer’s widow. I wanted her to be well traveled—having followed him to Egypt, Flanders, and Portugal. I’ve seen the Sharp movies. I know the infantry’s enlisted men had ladies in the barracks and in their tents on occasion. So I wondered: Could an officer’s wife have followed him? Could she have bunked with her husband while on campaign? I found several sources that talked about army regulations and traditions, encouraging men 1) not to marry and 2) not to bring their wife and children with them.

And then I discovered this post’s nineteenth century heroine.

We know little about her, not even her name. She was the wife of a British infantry officer during the War of 1812, and she accompanied him to Canada with their infant daughter. She left behind a memoir that could well have been turned into a novel (or a movie!), though she only sent it to a trusted friend whose papers were provided to a museum on his death. Here’s what she said about arriving in Kingston on Lake Ontario:

“…we took possession of our tent by the light of a brilliant moon -- can you imagine anything more delightful or novel than there being at the end of a long day's journey in a very crowded waggon. I could not tear myself away from the door of my tent for hours. The encampment was on a quiet delivity sheltered from the winds by a green hill covered by a magnificent forest and before was the calm expanse of water in the Harbour, reflecting in the moonbeams, and all around us the snow white canvas tents with the bustling soldiers assembling their campfires for cooking their suppers, or resting on the grass, or posting sentinels. It was a beautiful scene and I enjoyed it thoroughly, fortunately without any presentiment of the change which was approaching.”

Ooo, the plot thickens. It seems her dear husband had been chosen for special duty, namely sailing upriver on a secret mission. If he succeeded, he could return to her. If not, the ship would continue to Niagara. Either way, she and their baby daughter Tilly would be left alone in a strange land. What was a lady to do?

Work out a way to go along, of course. She even convinced her husband to agree with the mad plan. He and his men went aboard, while she stayed on shore, waiting for her chance. She was shocked to find the ship a tiny thing with no sleeping accommodations. But she refused to give up.

“Our travelling bags were already on board and with Tilly in my arms I followed at a short distance, not wishing to make myself conspicuous as I would have been had I kept with the party. This, thought I, is one of the consequences for which I thought myself quite prepared. The moment was approaching when I must either be separated from my Husband or take my chances with him in actual perilous mission. It is exactly what I expected and wished and I tried to think it very exhilarating and kept up my spirits and my courage by talking to Tilly and telling her as we walked what a Hero and Heroine she had for a Papa and Mama and what a fearless girl she ought to be with such an example of valour.”

 At last, she made her way aboard, walking boldly past men and crew. No one seemed to notice her. Not even her husband!

“I suppressed the momentary conviction to ‘turn the white feather’ and putting my plaid mantle closely round little Tilly I quickly stept on board without raising any objections from any one so that the first glance of my Husband looking for us found me seated very comfortably in a corner of the deck upon a pile of greatcoats which I had arranged for my own accommodation.”

But alas, all was for naught! The officer in charge noticed her and demanded that she leave.

“I now thought to try the aspect of my pretty face which I have sometimes found a very powerful ally when all other means failed so I thereon gave the old gentleman the full benefit of my most insinuating smile while I pleaded for permission to stay where I was.”

Unfortunately, her attempts failed. The lady was put ashore. And what happened next? I would love to know! Only a piece of her memoir is available online, and for that we are thankful!

You can find the full snippet at the War of 1812 website, courtesy of Access Heritage.  

Nineteenth-Century Heroine: Taming the Frontier(sman)

One of the things I’ve enjoyed in my Frontier Bachelors series is discovering (or rediscovering) real-life heroes and heroines in my own backyard. We’ve talked about the irascible Doc Maynard, who some consider the rightful father of Seattle. That's him on the right. But that venerable gentleman was brought to heel by the powers of love, and Catherine Broshears Maynard is to blame. 

Catherine was born in 1816 near Louisville, Kentucky. She was 16 years old when she married her first husband, a dashing Mississippi river boat pilot. Israel Broshears gave up the river for her and turned to farming. In 1850, they joined a wagon train for Oregon, along with family members on both sides. Tragedy struck when the train reached Nebraska in the form of cholera. Catherine lost her husband, mother, and brother-in-law that day. But she gained a devoted follower.

Doc Maynard came upon the ailing party and tended the ill, even to the point of helping Catherine bury her family. Despite his work, several more died in the days that followed. He stayed with Catherine, helped her drive her team all the way to The Dalles on the Columbia River.

Doc had intended to continue to California. Instead, he followed Catherine to Olympia, where her brother had a business. In 1850, she was one of a handful of unmarried white women on Puget Sound, was pretty, and had an engaging personality. I wish I could have found a picture of her, but all were copyrighted.

Dark-haired, with a round, winsome face and maidenly curves, she was besieged by suitors, but she told her family she would marry Doc Maynard, or no one. One story says her family threatened to shoot him if he showed up at the door again.

See, there was a little problem. Doc was already married, though unhappily. He petitioned the territorial legislature to grant him a divorce, which they did in 1852. Unfortunately, no one told Lydia, his first wife. Without her consent, the divorce wasn’t legal. Catherine may not have known that, or she might not have cared, for she married her gallant doctor in January 1853 and never looked back.

Over the next 20 years, Catherine had many adventures. She made friends with Chief Seattle’s daughter, travelled by canoe up the Black and Green Rivers, and was nurse at Seattle’s first hospital. When Doc was sent to Port Madison to serve as Indian Agent, she lived without even a tent for shelter for some months. And when some of the Native Americans rose up in protest against the unfair treaties of 1855, Catherine and several Native American women canoed across Puget Sound to warn Seattle of the coming danger.

Afterward, Doc too attempted to become a farmer, building Catherine a fine clapboard house on Alki Point. Alas, he proved a much better doctor than farmer. Catherine liked to joke she was the only farmer she knew who was always starving. Legend has it she planted the first dandelions in the area, as a medicinal plant. My dear husband would have a few words to say to her about introducing that plant.

Doc passed away in 1873, leaving Catherine a grieving widow once more. But that didn’t stop her from contributing to the community she so loved. She opened a free public library in her home. During her later years, in her 60s and 70s, she rode astride over Snoqualmie Pass many times to visit family in Ellensburg, where she opened another hospital, birthed babies, sewed up gun-shot cowboys, and even amputated a man’s leg to save his life.  

Catherine died in Seattle in 1906 at the age of 90. Her funeral was one of the largest ever held in the City. She is remembered as a grand pioneer lady, who tamed not only the frontier, but the legendary Doc Maynard.

And speaking of legendary, next week we celebrate a legend in the making--10 years of Nineteen Teen! Join us for a very special blog birthday, with presents for you.

Nineteenth Century Heroines: Seeding the Future

Lilacs are a lovely flower—the scent, the color, the way they hang like plump grapes. It was a love of flowers and growing things in general that led this nineteenth century heroine to become a renowned hybridizer, developing more than 14 varieties of lilacs still treasured around the world.

Hulda Klager was born in 1863 in Germany. She was a toddler when her family immigrated to America, eventually settling in Woodland, Washington, about a half hour north of Portland, Oregon, along the I-5 corridor. They owned a farm, and Hulda grew up to marry a farmer. After reading a book by Luther Burbank about hybridizing and decided to experiment with apples. She hated having to peel so many of them to make a pie. She crossed a Wolf River apple with a Bismark and discovered a larger, delicious apple. She tried dahlias and roses as well. A couple years later, she started working with lilacs, developing deeper colors, bigger blooms, more hardy plants. By 1910, she had 14 commercial varieties to her credit, though at one time she had named as many as 100.

In 1920, she began opening her home and gardens each spring to share her lilacs with others. Her open houses were so beloved that towns around the area requested that she name new varieties after them, including the City of Longview, City of Kalama, City of Gresham, and City of Woodland. She was honored by Washington State and Harvard, among others, for her work. The death of her husband in 1922 made her rethink her work, but her family encouraged her to continue.

What happened next is best told in the words of the website dedicated to her work: 

“The spring of 1948 brought another great adversity when the swirling waters of the Columbia River swept across her property, wiping out her lilac gardens and nearly every other shrub on the place. Only the big trees withstood the flood but undaunted and at the age of 83, she set about rebuilding her garden. Many people who had purchased her lilacs in the past returned starts to her so she could replace her losses.

It took two years and a great deal of work but in 1950 she was able to open her gardens for Lilac Week once again — a practice she continued until her death in 1960.”

The seeds Hulda planted continue to bear fruit. Now a state and national historic landmark, Hulda Klager’s home and gardens continue to open each spring to share her legacy. Her life forms the basis for Jane Kirkpatrick’s Where Lilacs Still Bloom. 

Nineteenth Century Heroines: Schooling the Others

As many of you know, my most recent series, Frontier Bachelors, involves a number of heroines who were Mercer Girls, ladies who came with Asa Mercer to help settle Seattle after the Civil War. My fictional heroines are among the real-life second batch of approximately 60 ladies Mercer brought in 1866. His earlier trip in 1864 netted him a 11 women, all of whom married and helped civilize the frontier. All, that is, but one. 

I first started researching the Mercer Belles when I was in high school. At the time, one of the reports I found stated something along the lines of the following: “I always wondered why Lizzie Ordway never married. Then I saw her picture.” I thought the comment unkind then. Now I know it’s untrue on every level.

Mary Elizabeth “Lizzie” Ordway, was born on July 4, 1828, in New Hampshire. Perhaps arriving into the world on such an auspicious day imbued her with a certain spirit of independence. Certainly no one would have expected a small woman with somewhat protruding gray eyes and dark hair to be quite so outspoken, but Lizzie was no shrinking violet.

The oldest of Mercer’s group at 34, she came West to be a schoolteacher. Though gentlemen came calling as she stayed with Seattle pioneer Henry Yesler and his wife, Lizzie wanted to work. As her comrades were wooed and wed, she taught at Coupeville on Whidbey Island, then returned to Seattle as the first teacher at the newly built Central School. When more than 100 children showed up the first time she rang the bell, she “sent the youngest home to ripen” and convinced the school board to hire another teacher. After serving in other schools around the area, she ran for Superintendent of Schools for Kitsap County, a remarkable feat for a woman in those days. One of the regional newspapers even ran an editorial claiming that putting a woman in such a position only served to diminish the role. Lizzie was elected nonetheless.

Her other accomplishments are no less impressive. She joined with Susan B. Anthony to found the Female Suffrage Society in Seattle and lobbied in the state capitol for women’s rights. She was part of the County Education Board, examining and certifying teachers. She helped prepare Washington State’s educational exhibit for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.

Lizzie passed away at 69. She is said to have called herself “The Mercer Girl who reserved her affections for her students.” Aptly, an elementary school on Bainbridge Island across from Seattle is named for her.

Nineteenth Century Heroines: A Beacon to All

It’s been a while since we talked about a real-life heroine of the nineteenth century, but I hope you agree that Flora Augusta Pearson Engle fits the bill. Flora was one of the Mercer Belles, those ladies who traveled west with Asa Mercer to help civilize Washington Territory. Her sisters and father came on Mercer’s first trip in 1864. Flora, her mother, and her brother came on the second trip that brought my heroines Allegra Howard (The Bride Ship), Catherine Stanway (Would-Be Wilderness Wife), Rina Fosgrave (Frontier Engagement), Maddie O’Rourke (Instant Frontier Family), and Nora Underhill (this month’s A Convenient Christmas Wedding). Flora was only 16 at the time. I wish I had a picture I could post, but you can see one at Find-A-Grave.

Born in Rollinsford, New Hampshire, Flora was the daughter of Daniel Pearson and Susan Brown Pearson. Daniel worked as a supervisor in the local cotton mill until the Civil War interrupted. By 1864, he was unemployed and in poor health, so travelling west must have looked good. The plan was for him and Flora’s sisters Georgie and Josie to move out first, and then to send for Flora, her brother Daniel, and her mother once they were settled.

Right away fate intervened. Georgie and Josie were immediately assigned to teach school on Whidbey Island, in the town of Coupeville, but Josie died suddenly walking home from class one day. Daniel, who had been working across the Sound, moved to Coupeville to be near Georgie. He was appointed keeper of the Red Bluff Lighthouse, what is now known as Admiralty Head. Georgie, then 17, became his assistant lighthouse keeper, the first woman to do so in Washington Territory.

By the time Flora arrived, however, Georgie had a serious suitor. They were married in the lighthouse parlor less than a year later, and Flora stepped into her sister’s shoes as assistant to her father. She earned approximately $625 a year for the post.

For the next ten years, Flora kept the lighthouse log, recording incidents both important and trivial, and sending a report to Washington, D.C., every month. It wasn’t hard for her. She had kept a diary for years, including chronicling the voyage that had brought the Mercer Belles to Washington. She was a society reporter for the local newspaper and later wrote many articles about local history. Legend has it she spelled the town of Coupeville without the middle e, and it took the government to change the name back years later.

According to Lighthouse Friends, Flora occasionally joked in the log, as in this notation from 1875, right before she was married: “By order of Lt. Commander Louis Keurpoff (inspector): Be it hereby known, to whom it may or may not concern: All light keepers, either principal or assistant, in this domain of our beloved Uncle Samuel, are expressly forbidden to depart from the Territory of Single Blessedness and take up their abode in the populous State of Matrimony unless said departure be permitted and sanctioned by the Lighthouse Inspector.”

Sounds to me like Flora had a few suitors herself.

I'm not sure what Flora was looking for in a husband. At that time, she could have taken her pick. In 1876, when she was 26 years old, however, she married a local farmer, William Engle, nearly 20 years her senior. They had a lovely honeymoon in San Francisco. But even the birth of her son, Carl Terry Engle, a year later didn’t stop her from reporting to work. He was born at the lighthouse, and she noted it in the log. She continued working at the lighthouse until her father’s retirement in 1878, staying on one more month to help the new lighthouse keeper get oriented.

Flora and William moved to his farm, but that wasn’t the end of her contributions to the community. She championed the building for the first board sidewalks in Coupeville and led efforts to restore the Davis Blockhouse, a fortified cabin built around 1855. She appears to have been a member of the Ladies of the Round Table, a local club I’m eager to learn more about (future book, perhaps?). When her mother died in 1890, she took in her father until he died seven years later.

Flora lived until she was 85. Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren remembered her as a woman of indefatigable energy. She may have made a name for herself as a lighthouse keeper, but I think it was her light that shined the brightest.

Nineteenth Century Heroines: One for the Ages

It’s been a while since I discovered another nineteenth century lady worthy of being part of our ongoing series, but a friend recently gave me the book I Married Adventure, and I simply had to include Osa Johnson as a real-life woman who could have been a romance heroine.

Osa Leighty Johnson is a part of the nineteenth century only because she was born in 1894. Raised in a conventional family in Chanute, Kansas, a twist of fate brought her in contact with one of the celebrities of the day, Martin Johnson. Martin had already distinguished himself as an adventurer, having sailed partway around the world with famed author Jack London. Then sixteen-year-old Osa and twenty-six year old Martin had a short and sometimes rocky courtship, but they married in 1910 and set about promoting the pictures he’d taken on his adventures.

Though Osa initially thought Martin had decided to settle down, she soon learned that her husband simply could not stay in one place for long. Martin was a photographer at heart. Nothing made him happier than taking pictures of strange peoples and strange animals in strange places. From cannibals in Borneo to pygmies in Africa, Osa journeyed beside her famous husband into places no white person, and certainly no white woman, had ever dared venture.

And she didn’t just journey. Oh, she was the first to admit she liked pretty dresses and a proper kitchen. But Osa worked right beside Martin in the field. She learned to work the big motion picture cameras. She learned to shoot both pistol and rifle, bringing down even a rhino that charged her husband while he was filming, saving Martin’s life. She hiked up mountains, forded flooding rivers in massive transports, crawled through gorilla trails in the dense jungle. She learned to fly and took her airplane, Osa’s Ark, cross the entire continent of Africa.

 

Always, Martin and Osa were a pair, her making sure his life was as healthy and easy as possible given their unconventional vocations, him being devoted to her safety and comfort.

Tragically, Martin was killed in a commercial plane crash in 1937, a crash that severely injured Osa. She could easily have retired to Chanute and lived out her life on speaking fees alone. But she didn’t. Instead, she wrote books about her experiences; took a huge safari with her into Africa to shoot portions of the motion picture Stanley and Livingstone, starring Spencer Tracey; and designed real-life-looking stuffed animals for the National Wildlife Federation.

Osa Johnson died at age 58 and was buried alongside her beloved Martin. Her family started the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum in her honor. 

Now that’s a heroine for the ages.

Nineteenth Century Heroines: With Liberty and Justice for All

A few weeks ago I blogged about The Family Nurse, a wonderful look into family medical practices in early nineteenth century America.  I promised to tell you more about its author, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, who to me epitomizes many of the traits of a true nineteenth century heroine.

Maria, as she liked to be called, was born in 1802 in Medford, Massachusetts, one of six children.  Like many a romance heroine, she lost her mother just as she was nearing adolescence and was sent to live with her older sister.  Though she attended school, it was her older brother who introduced her to such writers as Homer, Milton, and Sir Walter Scott.  With such a background, it shouldn’t be surprising that she decided to write a novel.

She was only twenty-two when her first book was published.  Heralded as the first New England historical novel, Hobomok scandalized the literary elite by portraying a girl who ran off with a Native American and had a child.  The public adored it.  She followed with a historical novel about the days leading up to the Boston Tea Party, which was another success.  Buoyed by the accolades, she started the first monthly magazine in the U.S. devoted to literature for children, serving as editor for eight years.

But Maria was deeply concerned about the injustices she saw around her.  She felt that women, Native Americans, and African Americans should be given equal rights with the white male establishment.  Her husband David Child, who she married in 1828 when she was 26, had no business sense and would prove to be a poor breadwinner, but he believed in her causes just as strongly.  The next few years of her life would be dedicated to writing books she felt where highly needed: 

• The Frugal Housewife, Dedicated to Those Who Are Not Ashamed of Economy, sought to inform wives who could not afford servants how to run their households as if it were their profession 
• The Mother’s Book encouraged women to educate their daughters so they could financially support themselves
• An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans laid out the history of slavery and called for its immediate abolition.

That last book so offended some of her readers that subscriptions to her children’s magazine, which had been supporting her family, all but dried up.  That didn’t stop her from publishing The History of the Condition of Women, in Various Ages and Nations, which described the status of women all over the world from the days of the bible until Maria’s own time and made a subtle case for equality.

Over the next few decades, Maria continued to publish fiction and nonfiction books, short stories, and poems that challenged readers to see those minimalized by society as deserving a place.  At times, she was denounced for her opinions.  At others, she was praised and courted.  But she lived to see the slaves freed and major strides taken for women’s rights. 

Though many of her books trained her generation and inspired the next generation of rights activists, one of Maria’s poems is perhaps the best known, even though few realize who authored it.  Lydia Maria Child wrote “Over the River and Through the Woods,” the musical version of which is still often sung in the U.S. around Thanksgiving. 

  

With liberty and justice for all.

Nineteenth Century Heroines: Lighter Than Air

Some of you will remember a series I did a while ago at QNPoohBear's suggestion of real-life nineteenth century ladies who were inspiring enough to be heroines in a book.  We talked about Caroline Herschel’s stargazing, Ada Byron’s mathematical computing, and Mary Anning’s dinosaur hunting.  I recently stumbled upon another lady I simply had to add to the list:  the commander of Napoleon’s balloon army, Sophie Blanchard.

You wouldn’t think ballooning would be a career for a lady in the late eighteenth, early nineteenth century, much less leading a squadron of armed forces for a major power.  Sophie was one of a handful of women who ventured up in balloons, and one of the only ones skilled enough to go up alone.  Born in 1778 in France, Sophie was a nervous girl who disliked riding in carriages and startled at loud noises.  We don’t know a great deal about her early life, but somewhere between the ages of 16 and 26, she married one of the premiere balloonists of the day, Jean-Pierre Blanchard. 

Jean-Pierre was a showman who had already toured Europe and America, helped pioneer the parachute, and set records around the world.  Unfortunately, he hadn’t a lick of business sense and was always in debt.  In hopes of recovering, he added Sophie to his act, and the two were popular sights for coronations, royal birthdays, the opening of major buildings, and the like.  Sophie was undaunted by the dangers of balloon flight, claiming at one point that she’d rather sleep in a balloon than on land.  She flew high enough that she nearly passed out from lack of oxygen, she risked freezing at the cold temperatures aloft, and once she almost drown when her balloon landed in a swamp. 

She performed so many times for Napoleon, both with her husband and solo, that he made her the Aeronaut of Official Festivities.  Determined to reach England by any way possible, he also appointed her the Chief Air Minister of Ballooning and asked her to draw up plans for how he could fly his army over the Channel to attack.  Sophie is reported to have had little faith in the venture.  Balloons at that time had few ways to control them, and she recognized, even if Napoleon did not, that the wind generally blew the wrong way.

Tragedy struck the couple in 1809 when Jean-Pierre had a heart attack while performing and fell from his balloon to his death.  Sophie, however, continued to perform.  Despite the fact that she was afraid of loud noises, she perfected an act in which she lighted fireworks and tossed them by parachute from her balloon to the delighted crowds below.  Her vehicle of choice was a hydrogen-filled balloon with a tiny basket below.  She flew to celebrate the marriage of Napoleon to Marie-Louise of Austria in 1810 and on Napoleon’s 42nd birthday in 1811.  She flew over Paris and threw down leaflets proclaiming the birth of Napoleon’s son.  She also performed in Germany, Rome, and the Alps.

I wish I had a happy ending for you.  Unfortunately, it seems Sophie and Jean-Pierre had no children, or at least none that survived beyond infancy.  In July 1819, Sophie was performing at the Tivoli Gardens in Paris when her balloon caught fire and she too fell to her death, entangled in the cords of her basket.  All proceeds from the event were used to build her a monument in a Paris cemetery. 

But Sophie wasn’t forgotten.  Jules Vernes mentioned her in Five Weeks in a Balloon, proving that, nearly 50 years after her death, her amazing accomplishments lived on.