EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1800; MARIA MITCHELL P/32

 

In this post I will continue to share the story of a woman named Maria Mitchell. She lived from 1818 - 1889. On 1 October 1887, Maria was sweeping the sky from the roof of the Pacific Bank on Main Street, where her father was the head Cashier and where they lived as a result of his position. Maria spotted a small blurry object that did not appear on her charts. She had discovered a comet!

After achieving her fame, Maria was widely sought after and went on to many notable accomplishments. She resigned her post as the Atheneum in 1856 to travel throughout the US and Europe. 

In 1865, Maria became Professor of Astronomy of the newly founded Vassar College. She was a founder of the Association for the Advancement of Woman. 

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1800; MARIA MITCHELL P/31

 

In this post I will begin to share the story of a woman named Maria Mitchell. She lived from 1818 - 1889. Her father was William Mitchell and her mother was Lydia Coleman Mitchell. Her parents were Quakers. Maria was an avid learner. The Quaker tradition taught that both boys and girls should be educated and Maria received an education at local schools and from her father's schools and home tutoring. Her father was a great influence on her life; Maria developed her love of astronomy from his instruction on astronomy, mathematics, surveying and navigation. 

At age 12, Maria helped her father calculate the position of their home by observing a solar eclipse. By age 14, ship captains trusted her to rate their ship's chronometers for their long whaling journeys.

Maria pursued her love of learning as a young women, becoming the Nantucket Atheneum's first librarian. She and her father continued to acquire astronomical equipment and conduct observations, working for the US Coast Survey among other entities. 

WOMEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1800; GRACEANNE LEWIS P/30

 

In this post I will continue to share the story of a woman named Graceanna Lewis. She lived from 1821 - 1912. In 1871, Graceanna sold family land and used the proceeds to finance her further research. She taught at the Foster School for Girls of Clifton Springs, New York, from 1883 - 1885.

In 1893 Graceanna received a commission from the Pennsylvania Forestry Commission to paint a set of 50 watercolour illustrations of representative leaves of trees for display at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

In addition to her direct action against slavery as part of the secret network which aided escaped African-American slaves in their fight to freedom in the years prior to the American Civil War, Graceanna was active in several other social movements of her day, in accordance with her Quaker religious beliefs, including being active in the movement for the granting of the right to vote to women. She presented a paper on "Science for Women" at the Third Congress of Women n Syracuse, New York in October 1875.

Graceanna died in 1912, at the age of 90. 

WOMEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1800; GRACEANNA LEWIS P/29

  

In this post I will continue to share the story of a woman named Graceanna Lewis. She lived from 1821 - 1912. Following the completion of her studies in 1842, Graceanna entered the teaching profession, which was one of the few career fields open to educated women in that day, taking a position as a teacher of botany and chemistry at a boarding school in York, Pennsylvania, run by her uncle Bartholomew Fussel.

During the 1850s Graceanna moved to Philadelphia, where she worked closely with a small circle of Quakers who were active in the natural sciences. She met one of America's leading ornithologists, John Cassin of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, in 1862 and studied ornithology at an advanced lever under his tutorship for the next half decade. 

From the middle of the 1860s Graceanna began to give private lectures on the field of ornithology in Phildelphia. Her area of interest and expertise gradually spread throughout her life to include the broad spectrum of natural history, including plants, animals and mineral. 

WOMEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1800; GRACEANNA LEWIS P/28

 

In this post I will begin to focus on a woman named Graceanna Lewis. She lived from 1821 -1912. Her father was a farmer named John Lewis and her mother was Esther Fussel. Her parents were Quakers. Graceanna's father died when she was three years old leaving her mother to raise her alone. Her mother had been a school teacher prior to marriage and was instrumental in developing a keen affection for science in Graceanna.

Graceanna's mother served as a role model in social activism by housing fugitive slaves as part of the Underground Railway to freedom in Canada. Following her mother's death, Graceanna made her own home available for this purpose, secretly providing overnight accommodation for as many as 11 runaway slaves at one time. 

Graceanna attended Kimberton Boarding School for Girls in neighbouring Kimberton, Pensylvania, at which she received instruction in many of the natural sciences including astronomy, botany, chemistry and zoology. Graceanna also showed great aptitude as a painter of natural subjects. 

 

 

WOMEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1800, MARY ANN SHADD CARY P/27

 

In this blog I will continue to story of Mary Ann Shadd Cary. She lived from 1823- 1893. In 1874, Mary Ann  and a group of women addressed the House Judiciary Committe regarding women's right to vote (today it is once again an important topic). 

She continued to support Canada's suffragists as well, attending a rally in 1881. Despite her boundary-pushing contributions to the pursuit of justice and equity for all people, Mary Ann's legacy largely went ignored in the decades following her death in 1893.

Shadd Cary gave to the world a hundred instances of female heroism, any one of which is sufficient to rescue her name from oblivion and place it in the category of similar characters like Grace Darling, Dorothy Dix, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman or Florence Nightingale," wrote the unknown author of "The Foremost Coloured Canadian Pioneer in 1850," one of the many documents contained in the Moorland-Springarn Research Center's Mary Ann Shadd Cary Collection 

WOMEN IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1800; MARY ANN SHADD CARY P/26

 

In this blog I will continue the story of a woman named Mary Ann Shadd Cary. She lived from 1823 - 1893. Mary Ann's husband, Thomas Cary, died in 1860, leaving her a widow with two children. She continued to struggle financially until her friend and fellow abolitionist Martin Robinson Delany offered her a job as a Recruiting Officer for Black men in the Union Army, making Mary Ann the first Black woman to actively recruit troops. After the Civil War, she remained in Washington D.C.

Mary Ann taught and attended classes at Howard University School of Law, where she was Howard's first Black female law student and one of the first Black women to earn a law degree. Mary Ann then joined the women's suffragette movement. 

To say that Mary Ann was ahead of her time would be an understatement: While Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed the 19th amendment on the grounds that it gave Black men the vote before white women, Mary Ann both spoke in support of the amendment and criticised it for not giving women to right to vote. Furthermore, when even abolitionists were wary of integrated education, Mary Ann opened and taught at a racially integrated school.