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[Portrait of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton]
Stanton and Anthony first met in 1851 at an anti-slavery meeting in Seneca Falls. Stanton was one of the leading philosophers of suffrage and human rights, while Anthony organized volunteers and directed the campaigns. When their efforts to have women’s suffrage included in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments failed, they established the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. In this portrait Stanton is wearing a dress with a pattern of chains, a powerful symbol that was adopted by both the anti-slavery and women’s suffrage movements. -
[Virginia Woolf’s writing desk]
Writer, printer, and feminist Virginia Woolf was at the center of the Bloomsbury Group during the first half of the twentieth century and was one of the leading figures of modernist literature. Woolf commissioned this oak writing desk while she was in her teens and used it until she was around thirty years old. She specifically requested a standing desk. In 1929, Woolf gave the desk to her nephew, Quentin Bell, an artist and member of the Bloomsbury Group. His wife Anne Olivier Bell, the editor of Virginia Wool’s diaries, cut six inches off the legs to make it a sitting desk. Quentin Bell painted Cleo, the muse of history, on the sloped top in the style of the Omega Workshops. -
Madame Restell!: her secret life-history from her birth to her suicide: full details: showing how she became rich: who her victims were, and how she held them in her power: her tricks and devices: what she did and how she did: all about her: "the most terrible being ever born"
English immigrant Anna Trow Lohman, known as Madame Restell, became notorious and financially successful by performing abortions. New York had outlawed abortion unless necessary to save the mother’s life, but abortion practitioners continued to work in the state. Restell was entrepreneurial. She sold patent medicines for birth control and abortion, provided housing for pregnant women, and facilitated adoptions. In 1847, her husband, the radical printer Charles M. Lohman, published a medical companion under the name A. M. Mauriceau. It went through at least nine editions. The book advertised Restell’s patent medicines, as well as condoms. Their business flourished, with branches opening in Philadelphia and Boston. In 1873, the Comstock Law to suppress the circulation of obscene materials was enacted, and in 1878 Restell was personally arrested by Anthony Comstock. Anna Restell committed suicide the morning she was to face charges in court. -
[Portrait of Emma Goldman]
Russian immigrant and anarchist Emma Goldman dedicated her life to combatting inequality, repression, and the exploitation of workers. She believed in direct action to bring about revolutionary change. Following the failed attempt on the life of Henry Clay Frick by her partner, Alexander Berkman, she abandoned her support of violence, embracing the tactics of civil disobedience, strikes, and boycotts to achieve political and economic equality. This is the only known copy of this image. -
[Portrait of Martha Maxwell from “Mrs. M.A. Maxwell’s Rocky Mountain Series”]
Naturalist Martha Maxwell brought Western fauna into public view through her skills at taxidermy. She defined the art of creating natural history dioramas with animals displayed in their natural habitats. An aspiring scientist, she left Oberlin College for lack of money and journeyed west to join the Gold Rush. Maxwell corresponded with the Secretary of the Smithsonian, Spencer Fullerton Baird, sending him bird specimens. Today a few of those specimens survive and are the only examples of her work and evidence of her two Rocky Mountain Museums in Denver and Boulder, Colorado. In 1877, a subspecies of the Eastern Screech Owl, Megascops asio maxwelliae, was named in her honor. To support her work and her family, Maxwell established a museum and charged admission. Her Rocky Mountain Museum first opened in Boulder in 1874 and moved to Denver the following year. Maxwell was invited to show her work in the Colorado Building at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. Her display was one of the most popular at the internationally attended event. So many people asked whether the displays could have been done by a woman that she put up a sign reading “Woman’s Work.” Maxwell shot, trapped, and prepared all her own specimens, noting that “The world demands proof of woman’s capabilities.” -
Madame Restell’s Mansion on Fifth Avenue [stereoview]
English immigrant Anna Trow Lohman, known as Madame Restell, became notorious and financially successful by performing abortions. New York had outlawed abortion unless necessary to save the mother’s life, but abortion practitioners continued to work in the state. Restell was entrepreneurial. She sold patent medicines for birth control and abortion, provided housing for pregnant women, and facilitated adoptions. In 1847, her husband, the radical printer Charles M. Lohman, published a medical companion under the name A. M. Mauriceau. It went through at least nine editions. The book advertised Restell’s patent medicines, as well as condoms. Their business flourished, with branches opening in Philadelphia and Boston, they and were able to purchase a mansion on Fifth Avenue. In 1873, the Comstock Law to suppress the circulation of obscene materials was enacted, and in 1878 Restell was personally arrested by Anthony Comstock. Anna Restell committed suicide the morning she was to face charges in court. -
[Coal barons at the Savage Mine, Virginia City, Nevada]
Marie-Louise (Louise) Hungerford Bryant Mackey and Theresa Rooney Fair were among the few to find fortune in the Virginia City, Nevada, mining settlement. Both women came from humble circumstances. Theresa Rooney was the daughter of Irish immigrants and married Irish immigrant James Fair. Louise Bryant, after the death of her first husband, supported herself and her children by working as a seamstress and teaching French at the Daughters of Charity convent school. She was almost destitute when she met and married Irishman John W. Mackey in the 1860s. In 1867, the Mackeys and Fairs literally struck gold when their company discovered the biggest bonanza in the famed Comstock Lode. The Mackeys were generous patrons to the local Catholic parish and convent. Louise donated the land for the Daughters of Charity hospital. Theresa Fair also made the Daughters of Charity hospital her most important philanthropy. -
Woman's Rights Commensurate with Her Capacities and Obligations: A Series of Tracts
This volume gathers together important speeches and essays from the early women’s rights movement in the United States. Most of the texts were read at Women’s Rights Conventions in Worcester (1850) or Syracuse (1852). Contents include the Declaration of Sentiments from Seneca Falls, and speeches by important leaders in the movement such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Angelina Grimke, and Paulina Davis. This copy has evidence of women’s ownership, with a small inscription on the first page, “Miss Diana James Book.” -
Simple directions in needle-work and cutting out: intended for the use of the National Female Schools of Ireland: to which are added specimens of the work executed by the pupils of The Female National Model School
The National Female Schools of Ireland were founded in 1835 to teach girls from poor families respectable trades and skills. This book was intended as a teaching aid for courses on sewing, darning, knitting, and embroidery. The descriptive text, arranged by level of difficulty, is followed with hand-sewn examples of thirty-five techniques by the students. Simple Directions was published in several editions starting in 1835.Tags 1800s -
[Anti-slavery dessert service]
In Great Britain and the United States, women organized anti-slavery bazaars throughout the North to raise money and awareness for the cause. Members of female anti-slavery societies sold tokens, pottery, quilts, books, prints, and needlework. Some items were commercially produced, others made by hand. This dessert service is likely Staffordshire pottery transfer-ware. The images of two iconic elements of the visual vocabulary of the abolitionist movement—a black man kneeling in chains, and a black woman cradling a child—as well as the surrounding biblical passages were meant to evoke sympathy for the cause. The collection holds ten pieces, including a footed compote. -
Census directory for 1811: containing the names, occupations, & residence of the inhabitants of the city, Southwark & Northern Liberties, a separate division being allotted to persons of colour: to which is annexed an appendix containing much useful information, and a perpetual calendar
The most significant woman bookbinder of the early American Republic, Jane Aitken ran the bindery at her father’s printing office. Her first imprint appears in 1796. In 1808 she printed and bound Thomson’s Bible (also in the collection), the first English translation of the Septuagint, the earliest Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. Aitken was the first American woman to print a Bible (Thomson's Bible, also in the collection.) Upon her father’s death in 1802, Aitken inherited the printing works and bookshop along with significant debt that had been incurred not by the shop but by her late brother-in-law. In 1813, all her equipment was sold, and Jane Aitken was imprisoned for debt. After her release, she continued to work as a bookbinder, but by 1815 her career as a printer was over. The Census Directory for 1811 is the first published census to include African Americans. It lists names, home addresses, and occupations for all Philadelphia inhabitants, as well as for local businesses, organizations, and professions, such as the Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Peale’s Museum, churches, midwives, and “layers out of the dead.” -
[Creamer with an image of the Ladies of Llangollen]; [Ladies of Llangollen figurine]
In the late eighteenth century, aristocrat Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the young orphaned daughter of Chambre Brabazon Ponsonby, abandoned their lives in Ireland and made a home for themselves in Llangollen, Wales, to the disapproval of both their families. Known as the Ladies of Llangollen, they appeared to have understood their relationship as a marriage. They were part of an emerging culture of relationships between same-sex couples. In the nineteenth century there was a thriving industry producing and selling objects commemorating the Ladies of Llangollen. Their images graced Staffordshire transfer-ware pottery, popular prints, and multitudes of ephemera. -
Our Nig; or, Sketches from the life of a free Black: in a two-story white house, North, showing that slavery's shadows fall even there
Our Nig is the first novel written by an African American and published in the United States. Wilson wrote it to raise funds to care for her sick son George and published it anonymously. The story recounts the oppression of free blacks as indentured servants in the north. Wilson herself had been indentured until the age of eighteen as a house servant. Our Nig was the only novel she wrote. Later in life, she was active in the spiritualist community as a medium.Tags 1800s -
Geography for beginners, or, The instructer's assistant in giving first lessons from maps in the style of familiar conversation, accompanied with an atlas: being intended as the first, or introductory book, to a series of geographical works, by William C. Woodbridge, and Emma Willard, of which, the second book is entitled "The rudiments of geography," the third book, "Universal geography"
Following her husband’s financial losses, historian, educator, and writer Emma Willard established a boarding school in her home in Middlebury, Vermont. In 1821 she opened the Troy Female Seminary, offering women a college preparatory education on par with that available to men. The curriculum included science, mathematics, geography and philosophy. The school remains open today as The Emma Willard School. -
The reason why the colored American is not in the world's Columbian exposition: the Afro-American's contribution to Columbian literature
Journalist, editor, and co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper, Ida B. Wells was a singularly influential African American woman. Her incendiary articles denouncing racism were reprinted in more than two hundred black weeklies. She led an international campaign against lynching, using documentation and photographs that confronted her readers with lynching’s stark horrific reality. In 1913, she founded Chicago’s Alpha Suffrage Club, the first suffrage organization for black women. This pamphlet, published by Wells, protests the exclusion of African Americans from the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago and urges a boycott of the Fair’s “Colored People’s Day.” Frederick Douglass contributed the introduction. -
History of Pennsylvania Hall Which Was Destroyed by a Mob On the 17th of May, 1838
Abolitionists had difficulty finding a place to meet in Philadelphia, and so they raised funds to build a building of their own. It was one of the largest and grandest structures in the city. In 1838 the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women met twice in the building, insisting that their meetings be attended by black and white participants. This was the second national meeting to be held by women in America. The first, the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, was held in New York in 1837, eleven years before the Seneca Falls Convention. Four days after the ceremonies dedicating Pennsylvania Hall, following a speech by Lucretia Mott, a mob burned the building to the ground. -
Telescope teachings: a familiar sketch of astronomical discovery: combining a special notice of objects coming within the range of a small telescope, illustrated by the author's original drawings: with a detail of the most interesting discoveries which have been made with the assistance of powerful telescopes, concerning the phenomena of the heavenly bodies, including the recent comet
Irish naturalist and artist Mary Ward wrote and illustrated bestselling books on astronomy, microscopy, and entomology. Her exceptional illustrations were admired by some of the leading male scientists of the day, who helped her gain access to equipment and commissioned her to illustrate their publications. She made time for her scholarly work after her children were in bed. Her publications provided critical income for the family. Telescope Teachings includes Ward’s detailed description of Donati’s Comet. -
Fanaticism: its source and influence, illustrated by the simple narrative of Isbella, in the case of Matthias, Mr. and Mrs. B. Folger, Mr. Pierson, Mr. Mills, Catherine, Isabella, &c. &c.: a reply to W.L. Stone, with descriptive portraits of all the parties, while at Sing-Sing and at Third street, containing the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
Feminist and abolitionist Sojourner Truth was one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century America. She was born into slavery in 1797 on a rural farm in Ulster County, New York. At age thirty, she drew strength from her Christian faith and found the courage to escape with her infant daughter. A spiritualist, in 1843 she had a vision and changed her name from Isabella Baumfree to Sojourner Truth. In 1842, she came under the influence of a self-styled prophet, Robert Matthews, who established his “Kingdom of Matthias” on an estate in Sing Sing, New York. It was a questionable enterprise. Isabella was attracted by Matthias’ spiritualism and the promise of egalitarianism, which was unfulfilled. The community disbanded after a trial for murder and sexual impropriety. -
[Poems and illustrations]
This lovely hand-bound manuscript was made by Mary B. Tuckey and others in Cork, Ireland, to be sold at the Boston Anti-Slavery Fair to raise money for the abolitionist cause. The beribboned floral page dedicated to Maria Weston Chapman was drawn by Mary Mannix, the secretary for the Anti-Slavery Societies of Cork. Chapman, organizer of the fair and a Garrisonian abolitionist, wrote Right and Wrong in Massachusetts and edited the annual the Liberty Bell. Frederick Douglass’ acclaimed visit to Cork is commemorated in the volume with a poem in his honor. The strong international bonds of the Abolitionist movement are made evident in this small book. -
I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance [cabinet card]
Feminist and abolitionist Sojourner Truth was one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century America. She was born into slavery in 1797 on a rural farm in Ulster County, New York. At age thirty, she drew strength from her Christian faith and found the courage to escape with her infant daughter. By the 1860s, Sojourner Truth had moved to Battle Creek, Michigan. Between 1863 and 1875, Truth had at least fourteen different photographic portraits made. She sold them to provide income for herself. These cartes-de-visite and cabinet cards were portable and far cheaper to produce than copies of her Narrative. She controlled every aspect of the way she is depicted in these images—genteelly, in cap and shawl, often with her knitting, a book or photograph in her lap, obscuring her disabled right hand.
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