Fannia Mary Cohen

“Our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, never crossed the threshold of a non-union shop” 

Fannia Mary Cohn was born in Minsk, Russia in April 1885.  She and her four siblings were well educated and encouraged to aspire to a career.  In 1903 she immigrated to America, alone, at the age of nineteen. She worked for a year as a representative of the American Jewish Women’s Committee on Ellis Island and then pursued a career in the trade union movement taking a job in a garment factory.

In 1909 she was elected to the executive board of the Wrapper, Kimono, and House Dress Makers, Local 41, of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.  In 1914 she attended the National Women’s Trade Union League’s Training School for Women’s Organizers in Chicago and in 1915 led the first successful strike of dress and white goods workers.

On this reputation she was soon elected the first female vice president of the ILGWU in New York City.  It was her hope that other women would be inspired to take leadership roles in this male dominated business.  In 1917 she was appointed executive secretary of the union’s Education Department.  Her vision was that education would bridge the gap between workers and management and awaken a social conscience.  When funds dwindled for education she turned to organizing.  There were forty five thousand dressmakers employed in New York City under miserable sweatshop conditions.  She worked tirelessly for over thirty years with marked success.

Grace Espy Patton

“Men like to dictate to their wives, and their wives – many of them- seem to like to be dictated to: There is no responsibility in having someone other than self to do one’s thinking.”

Grace was born on October 5, 1855 in Hartstown, PA. At the age of ten the family moved to Fort Collins, CO., where her father became mayor.  In 1885 she graduated with highest honors from state agricultural college and immediately began a career teaching English and sociology.   Her own studies continued during this time and she earned her M.S. in 1885.  She frequently wrote political articles for newspapers in Denver and Fort Collins as well as beginning her own magazine, The Tourney (name changed to the Colorado Woman in 1895), which focused on the intellectual energy of the West and Colorado in particular.  Her goal was to promote an independent public opinion.  She used her magazine as a political forum and gained recognition and influence. Women gained the vote in 1893 in Colorado and she was elected president of the Colorado Woman’s Democratic Club.   Later she served as State Superintendent of Public Instruction (1896) winning the election handily by a large margin. She also served ex-officio as State Librarian.  During her administration she raised qualification standards for teachers, established kindergartens, voc ational training programs and libraries.  She was often called a “new woman”  because of her  can do attitude and the “Little Woman” because of her petite and youthful appearance.

She did much for the State of Colorado but upon marrying Lt. Warren Hayden Cowles of the U.S. Army, her name disappeared from  political records here as she traveled with him to his various military assignments. She passed away on the 22^nd of July, 1904 in Assiniboine,  Montana. 

Anna Morgan

Anna Morgan, born in Fleming, NY on February 24, 1851. She attended the Hershey School of Music in Chicago, IL studying elocution, where she quickly gained a reputation as a dramatic reader appreciated for her natural style as well as her interesting mixture of reading material.  She had become known as “Miss Anna Morgan, Chicago’s Favorite Reader.” She toured the US from 1880 to 1883 and then accepted a position as drama teacher at the Chicago Opera House Conservatory.  In 1899 she established her own school, the Anna Morgan Studios, where she presided until her retirement in 1925. Anna was a pioneer in set design in addition to premiering the works of numerous European playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw and Maurice Maeterlinck.  She declined offers to teach in New York, Paris, London and Florence in order to remain at her school and active in the Chicago dramatic scene.  

Amy Lowell

Amy Lowell was born February 9^th 1874 in Brookline Ma.  She spent a somewhat solitary childhood and loved to read.  She confided to her diary as a teen, “I should like best of anything to be literary.”  And literary she was.  She was frequently published in Atlantic Monthly and published four volumes of poetry between 1916 and 1921, edited three anthologies of imagist poetry and wrote two volumes of critical analysis. Her last work was a biography of Keats.  She became a literary celebrity.  She was quite eccentric; a short, overweight, flamboyant, spoke in a loud voice, kept her hair in a bun, wore a pince-nez and constantly smoked cigars.  She was the center of attention wherever she went and in great demand as a lecturer.  The story is told that once when her motor car broke down somewhere in Boston she informed the police officer assisting her that her brother, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, would be responsible for removing and fixing her auto.  When called, at Harvard, where he was president, he said he was not sure it was his sister and asked the officer for a description.  He said she was wearing high boots, foot propped up, sitting on a stone wall smoking a cigar.  Lowell, taking a deep breath and rolling his eyes, said yes,  that certainly had to be his sister!

Eartha Mary Magdalene White 

Born November 8, 1876 in Jacksonville, she was an African-American vocalist, educator, administrator and humanitarian. She was raised by Clara White and graduated from Stanton School and moved to New York City where she attended Madame Thurber’s National Conservancy of Music.  She joined the Oriental American Opera Company, the country’s first black opera company.  Eartha toured as a lyric soprano in American, Europe and Asia with the company but returned frequently for Jacksonville for visits.

On one visit she met and fell in love with James Jordan a railway worker and their wedding was set for June 1896 but while she was still working on the tour in May she received news of his death. She ended her singing career and returned to Florida where she taught at Bayard for a number of years.   In 1901 she began to buy real estate at low prices and selling at a profit.  By 1905 she had saved enough for a dry goods store and several other businesses.  She reinvested her considerable wealth in the black community, establishing Boys and Girls clubs, recreational centers and parks.  She operated the only orphanage for black children in the state of Florida. She was the most proud of the Clara White Mission, named for her adoptive mother, which offered food and shelter to the homeless and destitute.  She became an influential force in Jacksonville’s social welfare, focused in prison reform and established an orphanage for African-American children. She created a home for unwed mothers, a nursery for children of working mothers, a tuberculosis rest home and in 1902 a nursing home for elderly African-Americans.

In 1971 she was the guest of President Richard M. Nixon and was referred to as “an institution in Jacksonville” and even when confined to a wheel chair she remained active.   She received numerous honors and awards and or the last years of her life, her birthday we celebrated in the city’s civic auditorium.  She died in January 1974 at the age of ninety seven. 

Annie Smith Peck

"I decided in my teens that I would do what one woman could do to show that women had as much brains as men and could do things as well if she gave them her undivided attention."

Born October 19, 1850 in Providence RI.  She graduated from RI State Normal School and taught in Providence for a while then took a position of preceptress of the Saginaw, Michigan high school.

While traveling abroad in 1885 she became very interested in mountain climbing after seeing the Matterhorn. As a child she was often in fierce competition with her three older brothers resulting in great courage, stamina and daring all of which she employed climbing.  Her first climb was Mount Shasta in California then in 1895 she climbed the Matterhorn achieving instant acclaim, not only because she was a woman but for her climbing costume of knickerbockers, long tunic and a felt hat with a veil.  In 1897 she climbed an 18,314 foot peak in Mexico the highest peak ever climbed by a woman.  “I often wonder what Wilbur Wright would have thought had he known that I had climbed higher on my two feet than he had in his airplane!”

                                                                                 

She was petite, attractive, extremely feminine always taking audiences by surprise during lectures about her climbs which were illustrated with stereopticon slides made from her own photos.

After conquering the mountains of Europe Annie moved on to parts of South America in her quest to reach “some height where no MAN had previously stood.”  In 1904 she broke her previous record when she mastered the 21,300 foot Mount Sorata in Bolivia. 

At sixty one she was the first woman to climb Mount Coropura in Peru where as a statement for women’s suffrage she planted a “Votes for Women” pennant on its summit.  Her last climb was Mount Madison in New Hampshire at the age of eighty two.  She died in 1935.

Ellis Reynolds Shipp  “I do not wish to make too many resolutions lest I shall not be enabled to execute them, but I believe it is better to make them and break them than do nothing.”

Born January 20^th 1872 in Davis County Iowa but at the age of five traveled with her family to the new Mormon settlement in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake.  She met Brigham Young in 1864 and he invited him into his larger family and school where she resided until 1866 and her marriage to Milford Bard Young and others  disapproved of Shipp because he was eleven years her senior and twice divorced but  Ellis ignored advise of family and friends and Milford gradually took on three more wives.

In 1873 Young delivered a sermon urging women “to come forth as doctors in these Valleys.” Within two years Ellis’s sister-wife Maggie and she were sent off to the Woman’s Medical College in Philadelphia. She worked hard and graduated with honors despite being pregnant her final year.  She returned to Salt Lake establishing a private practice with special focus on Obstetrics, diseases of women and minor surgery.  She also opened her own School of Obstetrics and nursing while training others women for service in the western Mormon Community. She practiced and taught well into her eighties and was called “Grand Old Lady of Utah.” She delivered more than 5,000 babies during this fifty year career in addition to having ten of her own!  She did much to educate women in first aid, sanitation and disease prevention.  When she died at ninety-two, a renowned doctor wrote that she was the “outstanding woman of the last one hundred years, and I believe it will be another one hundred years before Utah produces another woman whose service to mankind exceeds that which she had rendered.”