03 Feb | Herstorical.Reflections

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Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson (03 Feb 1737 – 23 Feb 1801 | Horsham PA – Philadelphia PA) poet, author, commonplace book writer.

Amelia Ball Coppuck Welby (03 Feb 1819 – 03 May 1852 | St Michael’s MD – Louisville KY) poet.

Anna Campbell Palmer (03 Feb 1854 – 18 Jun 1928 | Elmira NY – Elmira NY) novelist, aka Mrs. George Archibald.

Alice Locke Park (03 Feb 1861 – 18 Oct 1961 | Boston MA – Palo Alto CA) pacifict, suffragist, feminist, peace / women’s rights activist, WILPF leader, founded Palo Alto Women’s Peace Party, organized American Union Against Militarism [later the American Civil Liberties Union].

Gertrude Stein (03 Feb 1874 – 27 Jul 1946 | Allegheny PA – Neuilly-sur-Seine FR) poet, novelist, lesbian, playwright, language innovator.

02 Feb | Herstorical.Reflections

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Delia Salter Bacon (02 Feb 1811 – 02 Sep 1859 | Tallmadge OH – Hartford CT) poet, playwright, literary scholar, short story writer, Shakespearean theorist / researcher.

Sarah Marshall Boone (02 Feb 1832 – 1904 | near New Burn NC – New Haven CT) inventor, dressmaker, seamstress, patented wooden ironing board.

Sarah Ann Hackett Stevenson (02 Feb 1841 – 14 Aug 1909 | Buffalo Grove IL – Chicago IL) author, educator, physician, humanitarian, first female American Medical Association member, co-founded Illinois Training School for Nurses.

Effie Brooks [Theodate] Pope Riddle (02 Feb 1867 – 30 Aug 1946 | Salem OH – Farmington CT) one of first registered US female architects, survivor of the sinking of RMS Lusitania, founded / designed Avon Old Farms School, member of American Society for Psychical Research.

Anne Bauchens (02 Feb 1882 – 07 May 1967 | St Louis MO – Woodland Hills CA) film editor, Academy Award for Film Editing, first woman to win an Oscar for film editing.

01 Feb | Herstorical.Reflections

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Johanna Graham Bethune (01 Feb 1770 – 28 Jul 1860 | Fort Niagara ON – New York NY) author, memoirist, social activist, leader in Sunday school education movement, founded Orphan Asylum Society and Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Children.

Hannah Harrison Cohoon (01 Feb 1788 – 07 Jan 1864 | Williamstown MA – Hancock MA) Shaker visionary artist, music composer, created Tree of Life iconic ‘gift painting’.

Harriet Ann Jacobs (01 Feb 1813 – 07 Mar 1897 | Edenton NC – Washington DC) former slave, pen name: Linda Brent, autobiographical author, Civil War relief worker, co-founded two schools for freed slaves.

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (c. 01 Feb 1818 – c. 01 May 1907 | Dinwiddie County Court House VA – Washington DC) former slave, memoirist, First Lady’s seamstress, businesswoman. 

Lucy Wheelock (01 Feb 1857 – 01 Oct 1946 | Cambridge VT – Boston MA) author, lecturer, translator, one of first US kindergarten education pioneers, founding director of Wheelock Kindergarten Training School.

1827 | Beers

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Ethelinda [Ethel Lynn] Eliot Beers (13 Jan 1827 – 11 Oct 1879 | Goshen NY – Orange NJ) US Civil War poet.

All quiet along the Potomac to-night. Ice-cold, like a waxen thing, the quiet sleeper lies.

It was even so. When a printed word had the quiet pulse of a reader stirred, she had found

her voice. They walk beside us everywhere – in quiet glen, in crowded street, wherever

hearts are borne about by busy human feet. Pale, quiet faces pass us by. Her voice was

wondrously quiet the summer-day long; fair, quiet, and pale, she was pining. Rest on your

oar and quiet lie: we’re floating now till the Pilot calls us by and by. Quiet lives just close

beside us shine upon the ended days. No index tells the worth of baby’s quiet breath. Had

we hither come for quiet? The seals are broken slowly, then closed with sober, quiet care.

Far down in the quiet valley I’ll tarry & people its quiet with forms loved before. The bird

in the maple was quiet — silent as the quiet shade.

Beers, Ethel Lynn. All Quiet Along the Potomac and Other Poems. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1879. https://archive.org/details/cu31924021985084

1825 ~ Robinson

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Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson (08 Feb 1825 – 22 Dec 1911 | Boston MA – Malden MA) poet, author, mill girl, bobbin doffer, social activist, suffragist leader.

The sonnet sonnetized: The sonnet is mechanical in part, and part ideal. The cube root

of song, conceive your thought, then build the verse along in true Petrarchan style. With

rhythmic art to all the fourteen lines a grace impart. Ten-syllable the verse, the rhymes

be strong; within the octave only two belong, and in the sestet three. And here the heart

of all the sonnet lies. Con-centred fast, your thought, developed through each separate line,

here breaks the bounds and struggles to be free, through hampering bars of rhyme; and

when the last is reached, away it soars — a breath divine– in charmèd flight towards

immortality. One of the most curious phases in the life of New England, is its sudden

intellectual blossoming, seeds of which came as if blown from far-off lands. Some found

a resting-place in this little corner, where gathered daughters who felt  impelled to write.

Robinson, Harriet Jane Hanson. Loom and Spindle, or, Life among the Early Mill Girls, with a Sketch of ‘The Lowell Offering’ and Some of Its Contributors. New York: T. Y. Crowell, c1898. https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/women-working-1800-1930/catalog/45-990022084580203941