Ella Elgar Bird Dumont

Ella Elgar Bird Dumont

“…there were months that I did not see the face of even one woman…”

Ella was born on July 3^rd 1861 in Guntown, Mississippi. Her father died of typhus during the Civil war and her mother remarried soon after. Two years and two children later her stepfather also died.  The little family including children, mother and grandmother migrated west to Johnson County, in the Panhandle of Texas in 1867.

When she was fifteen she met and married James Thomas Bird. They lead a nomadic life traveling in every direction from their base camp hunting buffalo and other game, for several years. It was a solitary existence. Ella was a crack shot, expert skinner and tanner, seamstress, sculptress and later writer which only begins to hint at her talent and abilities. She carved local gypsum rock and made many beautiful statues and vases. 

Ella loved to sculpt and she regretted that she didn’t do more of it, believing she had “buried a talent on those broad and barren prairies of the Texas Panhandle.” Instead, she raised two children and earned extra money by beading, making many fringed and beaded vests of buckskin which sold for $12 each. Beaded gauntlet gloves were $7 each.

Tom died suddenly in 1886, probably from ruptured appendix while out on a roundup.  In 1889 Ella received a letter from an old friend, Augste Dumont pledging his love and asking for her hand in marriage.  Ella replied she would rather remain friends.  They did marry however six years later where they lived in Paducah, Texas on the lower story of the jail in “six nicely plastered rooms”.   Aguste was a deputy sheriff, postmaster and dry goods merchant there.  Ella raised flowers, poultry, and collected cacti boasting of a garden with more than 400 varieties.  She wrote her memoirs and spent thirteen years trying, unsuccessfully to publish them.  They were finally published posthumously in 1898.

Helen Marot

Helen Marot

Helen was born on June 9^th 1865 in Philadelphia to a Quaker family.  She was educated at home and al local Friends’ schools and was raised to be fiercely independent. Her father always told her, “I want you to think for yourself – not the way I do. “

Beginning in 1893 she held several positions in a library in Philadelphia and Wilmington Delaware.  After a few years she opened a small library of her own in Philadelphia for “those interested in social and economic problems.”  This library became a gathering place for liberal thinkers.  Helen described it in an interview, “People of all shades of radicalism come there – Single Taxes, Socialists, Philosophical Anarchists – attracted by the unusual books and periodicals and no less by the opportunity for discussion.”

In 1899 Helen was hired by the U.S. Industrial Commission to investigate the custom tailoring trades in Philadelphia.  She discovered dismal working conditions especially for women and children. This changed her overnight from a peaceful librarian into a militant activist.  In 1902 she traveled to New York City to uncover child labor issues there and this resulted in the formation of the New York Child Labor Committee. The following year she helped push the Compulsory Education Act through the New York Legislature.

In 1906 Helen was elected secretary of the Women’s Trade Union League of New York, a position she held for the next seven years.  During this time she lectured on the benefits of unions and her research helped persuade the U. S. Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of a law limiting working hours for women.  Her work led to the great waist and dressmaker’s strike which brought attention to the workers ‘plight and empowered women beginning a great industrial revolution in the garment industry leading to the formation of the International ladies’ Garment Workers Union. 

Isabel Chapin

Isabel Chapin was born April 17, 1845 in Irasburg, Vermont to Dr. and Mrs. Hayes   She often accompanied her father on his medical calls and assisted at home with farm duties. Her parents were forward thinkers and impressed upon all of their children the value of a good education and the recognition of one’s abilities regardless of their gender, “your mother and I both believe girls should do whatever they’re capable of doing…”     At eighteen she married William Chapin who was a Congregational minister.  Just a few weeks later she boarded the Sydenbam with her husband and beloved cat to begin the five month journey to Bombay.

The Chapins had planned to do missionary work in India for ten years but William soon succumbed to diphtheria leaving Isabel a nineteen year old widow.  She stayed alone for six months in India then returning to the United States to study medicine in order to return to India as a medical missionary.

While studying medicine she fell in love with a patient, Samuel Barrows and they married in 1867. He supported her while she pursued her medical degree after which she supported him while he attended Harvard Divinity School to become a Unitarian minister.  Isabel attended the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children then sent a year abroad at the University of Vienna specializing in ophthalmology.  Meanwhile, Sam took a job in Washington D.C., as stenographic secretary to  Secretary of State, William H. Seward. 

Upon her return to America, Isabel opened a private practice in the capital and taught diseases of the eye at Howard University’s School of Medicine.  When Sam became ill, she stepped into his position with Seward and because the first woman stenographic reporter in Congress, the first woman ever to be employed by the State Department and possibly the only female State Department employee to receive the same salary as a man.