History, Natural History & the Arts
On a cold, snowy January evening in 1874, Anna Elizabeth Dickinson became one of the first women of national prominence to speak on women’s suffrage in Clinton County, NY. Those gathering to hear her at the Palmer Hall, located upstairs at 60 Margaret Street in downtown Plattsburgh, were described as the most intellectual and cultivated in the community.
The crowd that night would have known her reputation. [Read more…] about Anna Elizabeth Dickinson: ‘America’s Civil War Joan of Arc’
Berlin, May 1915. Three feminists on an historical mission — Jane Addams and New York native Alice Hamilton from the United States, and Aletta Jacobs from the Netherlands — meet Wilbur H. Durborough. The American photographer and filmmaker had traveled to Berlin with his cameraman, Irving G. Ries, to shoot footage for his war documentary On the Firing Line with the Germans (1915). [Read more…] about Jane Addams, Alice Hamilton & The Hague Women’s Congress
On March 31st, 1817 the New York State Legislature decided that enslavement within its borders had to come to an end. Final emancipation would occur on July 4th, 1827. Coincidentally, the date of choice was almost exactly two centuries after the Dutch West India Company’s yacht Bruynvisch arrived at Manhattan on August 29th, 1627. [Read more…] about Sojourner Truth: How An Enslaved Dutch Speaker Became A Black Liberation Icon
The Silent Sentinels, or Sentinels of Liberty, organized by Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, were a group of over 2,000 women demanding women’s suffrage by silently protesting in front of the White House during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency beginning on January 10, 1917. About 500 were arrested, with at least 168 serving jail time – many of them from New York State, a birthplace of the suffrage and women’s rights movements.
Over the two and a half year long protest many of the women who picketed were arrested, harassed and abused by local and federal authorities, most notably being tortured while in local jails. Among the most horrific of these acts occurred during the night of November 14-15, 1917, known as the Night of Terror. [Read more…] about Womens Rights History: ‘The Night Of Terror’
The Washington County Historical Society and the Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation (OPRHP) have announce the dedication of a new historic marker to be placed at the Susan B Anthony Childhood Home at 2835 State Route 29 in Battenville (Town of Greenwich) on Saturday, June 18th. [Read more…] about Susan B. Anthony Childhood Home Historic Marker Dedication
In the new book Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement (NYU Press, 2022) Wendy L. Rouse of San Jose State University reveals that the suffrage movement included individuals who represented a range of genders and sexualities. However, owing to the constant pressure to present a “respectable” public image, suffrage leaders publicly conformed to gendered views of ideal womanhood in order to make women’s suffrage more palatable to the public. [Read more…] about A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement
In 2020 we marked the centennial of woman suffrage and the passing of the 19th amendment. Although the intervening 102 years can make that struggle feel like the distant past, the story of the many people who fought and marched and pushed for the right to vote is very much alive.
Marguerite Kearns keeps one such story before our eyes in her book An Unfinished Revolution (SUNY Press, 2021). [Read more…] about Women’s Rights: An Unfinished Revolution
The invention of the wheel has been celebrated as a hallmark of man’s drive for innovation. By the 1890s, Europe and America were obsessed with the bicycle. The new two-wheel technology had a profound effect on social interactions. It supplied the pedal power to freedom for (mainly white) women and created an opportunity for one of the first black sporting heroes.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, bicycle racing as a sporting event reached feverish popularity both amongst the public and within artistic circles. In the early twentieth century racing developed as a distinct facet of modernity. The bicycle was the pre-eminent vehicle of the avant-garde. [Read more…] about The Black Cyclone & The Unbearable Whiteness of Cycling
The city of New Rochelle has a relevant place in the founding history of the United States. It was here that in 1689 a small community of French Protestant refugees would settle.
Known as Huguenots, they exercised considerable influence on America’s course towards self-determination. George Washington descended from a Huguenot refugee on his mother’s side. [Read more…] about Huguenots & New Rochelle’s Spirit of Liberty
This week on The Historians Podcast, Kimberly Hess discusses A Lesser Mortal: The Unexpected Life of Sarah Cochran (Books Fluent, 2021). Cochran lived in Pennsylvania and headed companies that processed coal and coke. A distant ancestor of Hess, Cochran advocated for women’s suffrage and was a philanthropist. [Read more…] about The Coal Queen of Western Pennsylvania