Women in Ohio History

(1.) Florence Allen (2.) Alice and Phoebe Cary (3.) Nancy Currie (4.)Victoria Claflin Woodhull (5.) Mary Owens Jenkins (6.) Sharon Ann Lane (7.) Toni Morrison (8.) Annie Oakley (9.)Judith Resnik (10.) Harriet Beecher Stowe (11.) Maya Ying Lin (12.) Florence Kenyon Hayden Rector (13.) Alice Robie Resnick (14.) Phebe Temperance Sutliff (15.) Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke (16.) Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson (17.) Alice Schille (18.) Lillian Gish (19.) Jerri Mock (20.) Betsy Mix Cowles (21.) Lillian Wald (22.) Malana Ann Walling Harris (23) Emily St. John Bouton

1. Florence Ellinwood Allen - Lawyer and Judge
   Florence Allen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1884. Her father had been a professor at Western Reserve College in Cleveland, Ohio, before moving his family to Utah. Florence was educated at home by her parents where she studied Greek and Latin and learned to play the piano, violin and cello. After her early schooling, Allen attended the Salt Lake Academy. She also attended the New Lynne Institute in Ashtabula County, Ohio and graduated with honors from Western Reserve College in Cleveland in 1904. She applied to law school at Western Reserve College, but was refused because she was a woman. Instead, she attended the Chicago University Law School and then entered the New York University Law School. After finishing her studies, she received the first law degree ever granted a woman. Allen became a lawyer and became interested in women's rights and the law. After becoming successful as an attorney, she became the first woman assistant prosecutor for Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Later, she became a judge on the Court of Common Pleas. In 1922, Allen was elected as the first woman to serve on the Ohio Supreme Court. Twelve years later, President Roosevelt appointed her as a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals - a position she held for 25 years. She died in 1966.
   
   
2. Alice and Phoebe Cary - Authors
   Alice Cary and her sister Phoebe were Ohio farm girls who became noted poets and writers of the mid-nineteenth century. Alice was born in Mt. Healthy, Ohio, near Cincinnati, in 1820. As was the practice of the time, the sisters did not receive much formal education but both were avid readers and writers from an early age. Alice published her first poems in a Cincinnati newspaper when she was 18. Soon she and Phoebe were at work on a book of poems named The Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary and it was printed in 1849. Alice moved to New York City to pursue a career as a writer and Phoebe soon followed. The two became regular writers for national magazines. Both sisters wrote columns for New York newspapers and published more books. They became important people in New York. Leading artists and writers often gathered in their home to discuss their works and ideas. They also started a club for women called the Sorority of Sisters (Sorosis) in 1869. Alice died in 1871. Phoebe fell ill with malaria and died five months later. Alice's books include Clovernook Papers and Hagar: A Story of Today. Among Phoebe's famous works is Poems of Faith, Hope and Love.
   
   
3. Nancy J. Currie - Astronaut
   Nancy Currie was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1958. She graduated from Troy High School in Troy, Ohio, in 1977, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in biological science from The Ohio State University in 1980 and holds a Master of Science degree in safety engineering from the University of Southern California. After her graduation from Ohio State, Currie served as a neuropathology research assistant at the OSU College of Medicine. In 1981, she became a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army and attended Army Aviation School. Following her flight training, Currie became a helicopter flight instructor and a senior army aviator. She went to work at the Johnson Space Center in 1987 as an engineer on the flight simulator for the Shuttle Aircraft and became an astronaut in 1991. Since then, she has held various technical jobs at NASA. Currie’s first space flight was STS-57 in 1993 aboard the shuttle Endeavor. As a mission specialist on that flight she took part in many experiments in materials and life sciences. In 1995, she again served as a mission specialist and as part of an all-Ohio crew on STS-70 aboard the shuttle Discovery.
   
   
4. Victoria Claflin Woodhull - Women's Rights
   Victoria Claflin was born in Homer, Ohio in 1838. As a youth, her family was forced to flee Homer when her father, Buck, was suspected of arson. She spent her youth traveling from town to town with her family’s medicine and fortune telling show. When she was an adolescent, the family moved to Massillon, Ohio. The family lived in a double house on what later became Federal Avenue N.E. By the time Victoria was 15, the family had moved to Mount Gilead, Ohio. In 1853 she married Dr. Channing Woodhull (later divorced him) and they moved first to Chicago and then on to California. Victoria's interest in women's rights led her into political situations. In 1872, the Equal Rights Party nominated her to be its candidate for President of the United States. A woman running for President was unheard of at a time when women not only could not vote, but also were not welcomed in the discussion of politics. Claflin/Woodhull accepted the nomination and became the first woman to run for President. She received far fewer votes than U. S. Grant, another Ohioan, who won the election. Turmoil followed Victoria and her sister, Tennessee, most of their lives and they moved to England in 1877. But in 1892, she was a candidate for the presidency again. She returned to England and in World War I distinguished herself in war work. She died in 1927 at the age of 89.
   
   
5. Mary Owens Jenkins - Civil War
   This is a local woman and the story has been told many times in the area.The story goes: Mary Owens enlisted in the Union Army in 1862 as "John Evans" so that she would not be parted from the man she loved, William Evans. She dressed as a man and served for 18 months with him. It is said that she was a messenger between the lines and managed to keep her disguise until the Battle of Gettysburg. William Evans was killed in the fighting and "John Evans" was wounded. When she was taken to a hospital her secret was revealed. She returned to her home near Youngstown and later married Abie Jenkins. The couple moved to North Lawrence, Stark County, Ohio. Mary is buried in Brookfield Cemetery, Massillon, Ohio, and on her tombstone is the inscription: "Mary Owens Jenkins served in the Civil War in Co K, 9th Penn. Vol. Cav. under the name of John Evans."
   
   
6. 1st Lt. Sharon Ann Lane - Military
   Lt. Lane died from shrapnel wounds when the 312th Evac. at Chu Lai was hit by rockets on June 8, 1969. From Canton, OH, she was a month short of her 26th birthday. She was posthumously awarded the Vietnamese Gallantry Cross with Palm and the Bronze Star for Heroism. In 1970, the recovery room at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver, where Lt. Lane had been assigned before going to Viet Nam, was dedicated in her honor. In 1973, Aultman Hospital in Canton, OH, where Lane had attended nursing school, erected a bronze statue of her. A permanent display in her honor can be seen at the Ohio Society of Military History in Massillon, Ohio.
   
   
7. Toni Morrison - Author
   An American author, Toni Morrison (Chloe Anthony Wofford) was born 18 February 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. In 1949, she entered Howard University and in 1955 earned a master's degree in English at Cornell Univesity. She subsequently taught at Texas Southern University and then at Howard University until 1964. While at Howard she met and married Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect. The couple had two children and then divorced in 1964. Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She has been a member of both the National Council on the Arts and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Morrison has actively used her influence to defend the role of the artist and encouraged the publication of other black writers.
   
8. Annie Oakley - Entertainer
   Annie Oakley's real name was Phoebe Anne Oakley Moses but she later changed the spelling of her last name to Mozee. She was born 13 August 1860 in Darke County, OH, and died 3 November 1926 in Greenville, Darke Co, OH. She had seven siblings and was the daughter of Jacob and Susan Moses. She was a noted markswoman who starred in "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" show. Annie married Frank E. Butler and they toured the vaudeville circuit until 1885 when they joined the Buffalo Bill (William F. Cody) show and remained with it 17 years. The wild west show included performances and re-creations of western scenes and displays of frontier skills. Oakley was the marksman. The show also featured Sitting Bull, the famous Indian Chief, and a number of other celebrated Westerners. While with the show, Oakley entertained audiences, including Queen Victoria, around the world. Irving Berlin, the noted American playwright, produced a musical entitled "Annie Get Your Gun" that told the story of Annie's life.
   
   
9. Judith A. Resnik - Astronaut
   Judith A. Resnik was born in Akron, Ohio, on April 5, 1949. She graduated from Firestone High School. Resnik earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1970. Following college, she worked at the RCA Corporation in their missile and service radar divisions. In 1974, she left RCA to become a staff scientist at the neurophysiology laboratory at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland. Resnik continued her schooling and earned a Doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland in 1977. In 1978, Resnik and five other women were selected to become America's first female astronauts. In 1984, she became the second American woman in space when she flew on the first flight of the space shuttle Discovery. During the mission she conducted experiments with the shuttle's solar energy equipment and performed some biomedical research. Resnik was chosen as a mission specialist for shuttle mission STS-51-L, aboard the shuttle Challenger. Tragically, she and six other astronauts were killed in an explosion shortly after lift-off on January 28, 1986.
   
   
10. Harriet Beecher Stowe - Author
    Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut in 1811 the daughter of Lyman Beecher, a famous minister. In 1832, Harriet moved to Cincinnati when her father became President of Lane Theological Seminary. In Cincinnati, she met and married Calvin Ellis Stowe, a biblical scholar. Calvin, like Harriet's father, believed that slavery should be abolished. Through visits to Kentucky and through stories told by her father's friends, Harriet heard of slaves being mistreated and of their efforts to escape. Ohio, a state that had outlawed slavery in 1803, bordered Kentucky and western Virginia, two states in which slavery was legal. Slaves would escape to Ohio where they would find people who would hide them and help them get to Canada. In Canada, slaves were beyond the reach of their masters. All across Ohio, but particularly in Cincinnati, church sermons and newspapers repeated the accounts of fleeing slaves being chased by their masters. Stowe read and listened to those stories. By 1850, Stowe and her husband were living in Maine and in 1852 she wrote a book titled Uncle Tom's Cabin - a story of a fictional character escaping from a cruel slave owner. The vivid story came at a time when the country was turning against slavery. In the first year, it sold over 300,000 copies and eventually was published worldwide. The book was also made into a play. Uncle Tom's Cabin aroused abolitionist feelings in the years before the Civil War because Stowe skillfully described the horrors of slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote many other books during her life but none had the impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin. She died in 1896.
    
    
11. Maya Ying Lin - Architect, sculptor
    Maya Ying Lin was born 5 October 1959 in Athens, Ohio. She is the daughter of Henry Huan Lin and Julia Chang Lin. She graduated from Yale University, School of Architecture. In 1980 (while still a student and only 21 years old), she entered a national design competition for the proposed Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Her entry was chosen from 1400 designs. The memorial was dedicated in 1982 and is one of the most moving public memorials in the United States.
    
    
12. Florence Kenyon Hayden Rector - Architect
    Flroence was born in St. Louis in 1882 and moved to Columbus, OH, with her mother in 1892. She enrolled at Ohio State University and was listed in 1901/2 as an architecture student. She is acknowledged as the first woman to study architecture at OSU. She left the university in 1903 and later assisted her uncle, L. Howard Hayden, in designing the seating plan for Madison Square Garden in New York. Her first major commission was for Oxley Hall, the first women's dormitory on the OSU campus. Wilbur Mills, a Columbus architect, worked with her on this project, assisted by Thomas French. She married James M. Rector in 1910. Ms. Rector was also an outspoken suffragist and social reformer and served as financial chair of the Women's National Party in 1921.
    
    
13. Alice Robie Resnick - Lawyer and Judge
    Alice Robie Resnick was born 1939 in Erie, PA, and grew up in Toledo, Ohio. She received her J.D. in 1964 from University of Detroit. She was elected to the Ohio Supreme Court in 1988 - re-elected in 1994 and is currently a member. She is the 2nd woman elected to the Supreme Court of Ohio. Prior to that, she had served on the 6th Court of Appeals and also the Toledo Municipal Court.
    
    
14. Phebe Temperance Sutliff - Educator
    Phebe Temperance Sutliff (1859-1955) was born in Trumbull Co, Ohio. She received degrees from Vassar and Cornell and was considered an authority on both national and international issues. She taught at Hiram College in Ohio and headed the departments of history and English at Rockford Seminary in IL before becoming president there. Among her many achievements was establishing the Warren Branch of the American Association of University Women.
    
15. Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke - Nurse
    Mary Ann Ball was born July 19, 1817, in Knox County, Ohio. She died November 8, 1901, at Bunker Hill, Kansas. She attended Oberlin College in Ohio and later studied nursing. In 1847 she married Robert Bickerdyke who died in 1859. After his death, Mary Ann supported herself by the practice of "botanic" medicine. After the outbreak of the Civil War, she volunteered to accompany and help in the relief of wounded soldiers in Cairo, IL. She became matron when a hospital was organized there in 1861. She made trips into the battlefield to search for wounded. She soon attached herself to the staff of General U.S. Grant and set up hospitals as they were needed. She accompanied General Willaim Tecumseh Sherman on the march through Georgia. Under her supervision, about 300 field hospitals were built with the help of U.S. Sanitary Commission agents. During 1866-67 she worked with the Chicago Home for the Friendless and in 1870 she went to New York City to work for the Protestant Board of City Missions. In 1874 she went to Kansas where her sons lived and worked with victims of the locust plague. Then on to San Francisco where she helped at the Salvation Army. She worked on behalf of veterans, making many trips to Washington to help on pension claims. She received a pension herself from Congress of $25 a month in 1886.
    
16. Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson - Author/Journalist
    Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson was born 10 July 1905 in Ladora, Iowa. She graduated from the University of Iowa in 1925 and moved to Ohio in 1928. For 58 years she worked as a reporter for The Blade newspaper (and the former Times newspaper) in Toledo. Mildred died in Toledo in 2002. She is the author of 23 Nancy Drew mysteries under the pen name of Carolyn Keene.
    
17. Alice Schille - Artist
    Alice Schille, an outstanding watercolorist, was born in Columbus, Ohio. She graduated from the Columbus Art School in 1893 (this later became the Columbus College of Art and Design) and went on to study in Paris and New York. When she returned to Columbus, she began teaching watercolor and portrait painting at her alma mater. Her work was included regularly in important American exhibitions. She received numerous awards and honors throughout the U.S.
    
18. Lillian Gish - Actress
    Lillian Gish was born in Springfield, OH, and had strong ties to the city of Massillon, OH. She started in the theater as a 5 year old and made her screen debut in 1912. In 1984, Miss Gish received the Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute.
    
19. Jerri Mock - Aviator
    Jerri Mock of Newark, Ohio, became the first woman to pilot an aircraft on a solo trip around the world. It took her 29 days on April 18, 1964. She also holds the women's nonstop distance record of more than 4,500 miles. She is a graduate of Ohio State University.
    
20. Betsy Mix Cowles - Abolitionist, Feminist, Educator
    Betsy Mix Cowles was born in Bristol, CT, in 1810 but her family moved to Ohio when Betsy was an infant. She began teaching about 1827. In 1835, she organized the Ashtabula County Female Anti-Slavery Society. In 1840, she graduated from Oberlin College and by 1850, she was a leading suffragette, presiding over the Woman's Rights Convention in Salem, OH. In 1858, she became one of the first female superintendents when she became superintendent of Painesville, OH, schools. Betsy never married. She died in 1876.
    
21. Lillian Wald - Nurse
    Lillian Wald was born in Cincinnati Ohio on March 10, 1867. The family moved to Rochester NY in 1878. Lillian lived among the poor of New York City and organized the Visiting Nurse Society. From 10 nurses in 1906, the VNS grew to 250 nurses in just 10 years. Ms Wald also persuaded the NY Board of Education to hire school nurses and helped create a Federal Children's Bureau to protect children from abuse.
    
22. Malana Ann Walling Harris - Educator
    Malana Walling Harris was born near Erie, PA, May 8, 1842, to Luman and Elizabeth (Adams) Walling but moved to Ohio at a young age. She was a leader in bringing free kindergarten to children in Summit County, OH. Akron's Harris Elementary School was named in her honor. Mrs. Harris, who followed the teachings of Friedrich Froebel, founder of the kindergarten movement, was a national leader in her field and teachers from all over the country would come to her for instruction. She died in 1904 and is buried at Glendale Cemetery in Akron.
    
23. Emily St. John Bouton - Educator and Journalist
    Emily St.John Bouton was born in Connecticut in 1837 to Daniel and Almina (St.John)Bouton. They moved to Sandusky, OH, and Emily was in the first graduating class of Sandusky High School (1855). She taught school in Milan, Tiffin, and Toledo. She was the literary and household editor of the Toledo Blade. She wrote books about health, beauty, and etiquette. Her works can be found in several university libraries and in the Ohioana Collection.
    

More women will be added in the future.

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