Sharlot Mabridth Hall

She was born on October 27, 1870 in Barbour County, Kansas, “When I was twelve my parents moved from Barbour County, Kansas (in which state they had been among the earliest pioneers), to Yavapai County, Arizona.  We started on the third day of November with two covered wagons drawn by four horses each.  I rode a little Texas pony and drove a band of horses.

We followed the old Santa Fe Trail nearly all the way.  In many places the deep ruts worn by the old caravans could still be seen; rock cliffs were marked by names, painted or cut into the stone, and all along the roadside were sunken graves, mostly unmarked and nearly obliterated. Often I would slide out of my saddle, as I drove the band of young horses behind the wagons, and try to read and brace up with rocks some rotting bit of board that once told who rested there.”

The family settled on lower Lynx Creek, just outside of Prescott Arizona. Her education was informal but her mother taught her to love literature.  She began writing poetry when she was twelve and progressed to short stories and historical articles. When she was 30, she became editor of Out West Magazine.  

In 1909 she became the first woman to hold public office in the Arizona Territory, serving as Arizona’s historian. In 1928 she purchased the Old Governor’s Mansion in Prescott and moved in with her extensive collection of Arizona artifacts opening it as a museum.  She also traveled extensively giving lectures on Arizona history. Her dream, The Sharlot Hall Museum continues as a state institution.  In 1981 she was named to the Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame for her contribution to the literature and history of Arizona.

 

Mary Church Terrell

Mary Church Terrell was born September 23, 1863 in Memphis Tennessee.  Her father was a former slave who opened a saloon after her was freed by his master, who was also his father.  During the yellow fever epidemic of 1878-79 he invested all his money in real estate as people fled the city becoming the South’s first black millionaire.  When she was six her parents divorced and she was sent to board with a family in Ohio.

She attended Oberlin College majoring in the classics.  She took the four year curriculum of men’s courses rather than the suggested two year “ladies’ curriculum.  She received her bachelor’s degree in 1884; one of the first African American women awarded a college degree.  She then studied in Europe for two years becoming fluent in French, German and Italian.

In 1891 she married Robert Heberton Terrell one of the first black graduates of Harvard. They settled in Washington D.C. where she began a long and illustrious career in community service; as high school teacher and principal for eleven years served on the District of Columbia Board of Education, the first black women to hold such a position.  Mary was also president for life of the National Association of Colored Women. She joined the suffragist cause and lectured at the 1898 convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.  Beginning in the 1920’s Mary served as an advisor to the Republican National Committee, assisting black women with their newly won right to vote.

She had a thirty year career as lecturer on such topics as racial injustice, black history and culture, and the black woman’s advancement since Emancipation.  She wrote for newspapers and magazines, resulting with the publication in 1940 of her autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World.

At the age of eighty seven Mary staged a sit in at a Washington restaurant in an attempt at desegregation.  Her efforts failed, so she sued and took her case all the way to the Supreme Court, where she was victorious.

Florence Augusta Merriam Bailey

Florence Augusta Merriam Bailey was born in Locust Grove, New York on August 8, 1863.  Her interest in nature began in her early childhood and when she entered Smith College she was specializing in ornithology.  Florence published her first book, Birds Through a Looking Glass in 1889. Several years later she headed west in hoping that a milder climate would help her tuberculosis.  The next three years were spent travelling through Utah, Arizona, and finally California observing western birds.  Upon returning home she turned her experiences in the west into three more bird books.  Her travels did result in an improvement in her health and eventually resulted in several other books. Her experiences in Utah, Southern California, and Arizona were chronicled in My Summer in a Mormon Village (1894), A Birding on a Bronco (1896), and Birds of Village and Field (1898).  

In 1899 she married Vernon Bailey who worked for the U.S. Biological Survey where her brother was director.  They traveled to New Mexico for Vernon’s work but Florence took great advantage of the time and published the classic Handbook of Birds of the Western United States in 1902.

The Baileys spent more than thirty years walking and riding through the Dakotas, the Southwest, the Pacific Northwest and Texas collecting and identifying specimens. Florence was the first woman to receive the Brewster Medal of the American Ornithologists Union and then in 1933 she was given an honorary L.L.D. degree from the University of New Mexico.

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.

Women's History Month

We are in March and it is the annual celebration of Women's History Month.
Women have moved in this world in remarkable ways.  The other evening we celebrated with an amazing audience - there must have been seventy or eighty? - we lost count.  We were hosted by the Cortez Cultural Center.  They are always so welcoming.  We truly appreciate them.
Teri Helm presented Betty Pellett or as she was often referred to, That Pellett Woman!  What a beautiful character she shared with us!  Betty was a legend in her own time and Teri really brought that out!  I could have listened all night.

Ann Bassett, Queen of the Rustlers, arrived with Midge Kirk.  A pretty feisty woman who ruled her ranch in Brown's Park with an iron hand and lots of drive and hard work.  She also romanced many of the outlaws who visited, particularly Butch and Sundance.  Not necessarily a role model, but certainly an exciting character who could rope, ride and shoot better than most men by the age of 9 and as she said, "I only got better with age!"

Then the character of Lizzy Knight was brought to us by her great, great, great granddaughter, Marsha Bankston.  HerStory welcomed her as a guest to tell the tales of Lizzy who was herself a rancher, entrepreneur, blacksmith and many other things in the heart (which she created) of Disappointment Valley.
We thank Marsha for joining us for a great evening.


I think a good time was had by all.