The Liz Library presents Irene Stuber's Women of Achievement


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July 4
WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT AND HERSTORY

Compiled and Written by Irene Stuber.
07-04 TABLE of CONTENTS:

Women who served in the U.S. Civil War killed by historians

Madeleine Barot saved lives in WWII

DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS

QUOTES by Jill Ruckelshaus and Irene Stuber.


Women who served in the U.S. Civil War killed by historians

      Authorities estimate up to 400 women disguised themselves as men to join the Union forces in the U.S. Civil War. The number is necessarily vague because most were never discovered.
      Most historians claim the women only went to war to be close to the men they loved, but such a "romantic claim" fails to separate those women who became cooks, housekeepers, etc. and those women who were active soldiers.
      It is recognized that many women went with their men because staying home without a means of support meant they would starve in the repressive society at the time. These are the women who usually became the cooks, beasts of burden, launderers, etc.
      Then there were the women who were gun-carrying, bullet targets...
      In true Southern tradition, the Confederate forces denied any women (belles) fought in their war, but sightings noted by writers of the day and revelations in diaries contradict that claim.
      Kate W. Howe, aka Tom Smith, was wounded at the battle of Lookout Mountain in the Civil War and drew a pension of $17 a month. She was the granddaughter of Gen. Winfield Scott.
      Frances Hook, aka Frank Miller/Henderson, wounded in battle with the 65th Illinois, was discharged but reenlisted in the 19th Illinois regiment. She also served in the 90th and the 3rd Illinois. She was taken prisoner in Tennessee when she was wounded in the leg and her sex revealed. After being exchanged with other prisoners, she refused to "go home" and instead enlisted with the 90th Illinois, Company G. She was captured and sent to the prison in Atlanta where she was shot while attempting to escape. She recovered and was again exchanged.
      Sarah Emma Edmonds Seeleye, aka Franklin Thompson of the 2nd Michigan Company F, was the only woman officially recognized as a woman and a member of the Grand Army of the Republic. She is buried in the GAR plot in Houston.
      Sara Rosetta Wakeman, born 01-16-1843, aka Lyons/Edwin Wakeman, died while with the 153rd NYSV, Co. G&H, serving as a regular soldier in the Civil War. Her letters, a photo in uniform identifying her, and some personal belongings were found in a trunk in the family attic almost 100 years after her death. She is buried in grave #4066, Section 52, of what is now the Chalmette National Cemetery, Chalmette, Louisiana, outside New Orleans. Her letters contain references to other women in the military.
      But most of the women who soldiered in the Civil War were like Pvt. Charles Johehouse who served as a man and was never unmasked as a woman - during her lifetime. When bodies of the war dead were being moved in 1886 from the battle area near Gesaca, Georgia, for reinternment to a national cemetery, the body of Charles Johehouse, Private 6th Missouri, was noticeable by its small feet. Examination revealed Johehouse to be a woman in full uniform shot through the head. Her real name, birthplace, and reason for risking her life for her country is unknown - as it was for the unknown number of women who fought for their beliefs in the U.S. Civil War.
      Many women gave their all as did men soldiers but they have been ignored or denied. Many women, double killed by their erasure by historians of their own country.
            -- (The above is part of an article by Irene Stuber that appeared in The Rebel.)

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Madeleine Barot saved lives in WWII

      Born 07-04-1909, Madeleine Barot who risked her life to save hundreds - maybe thousands - of those who were hunted during the totalitarian rule of Europe in the World War II era.
      Many she saved had already been chosen by the Nazis for extermination in the death camps.
      MB helped found the CIMADE organization (1940), an ecumenical group that provided humanitarian aid to victims of the Nazis and all refugees in general. Barot personally helped refugees fleeing Franco's Spain.
      A member of the French Resistance, she saved an unknown number of Jews, Gypsies, and political activists from the Nazis by setting up a network to smuggle them safely to Switzerland.
      Following the war, Barot became an ardent defender of women's rights. She served on the board of the Young Women's Christian Association from 1945 to 1950 and worked for the World Council of Churches from 1953 to 1973.
      Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, a fellowship of 330 mainly Protestant and Orthodox churches in more than 100 countries, said in his memorial of Barot:
     
"In the 1940s, her courage, coupled with a strong sense of realism rooted in her Christian faith, made Madeleine Barot a central figure in the efforts to help Jews to escape from occupied France into safety."
      Barot received many honors for her work, including Israel's Yad Vashem Award and the French Legion of Honor.
            -- From an Associated Press release December, 1995 when this wonderful woman died at 86. Sent to us by Varda Ullman Novick.

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07-04 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS

DIED 07-04-1336, Saint Elizabeth of Portugal. Known as "The Peacemaker" or the "Holy Queen" was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1625. Married to a womanizing Portugal king, she is said to have ridden between the armies of her husband and her rebelling son to force them to make peace. She is also known for her good deeds to the poor and sick. She was named for her great aunt Saint Elizabeth of Hungary.

B. 07-04-1839, Helen Stuart Campbell - U.S. author and home economist.

B. 07-04-1845, Edmonia Lewis - Afro-American sculptor of Amerinds and Afro-Americans. After initial success in the U.S., she resettled in Rome for further training. Her works became world recognized and admired for their realism. EL was raised among the Chippewas.

B. 07-04-1857, Mary Florence Denton, U.S. teacher in Japan.

B. 07-04-1866, Anita Eugenie McCormick, U.S. philanthropist, an heir of the McCormick reaper fortune. She believed her inherited money was merely a trust. Like her mother, Nettie Fowler McCormick, AEM gave away more than $10 million plus earmarked another $20 million for eleemosynary endeavors in her will. She endownd the Chicago Institute to train teachers and became associated with Jane Addams at Hull House. With Addams, AEM formed the Chicago Homes Association. AEM was a firm believer in the League of Nations and the United Nations. She contributed more than a million to various world government movements.

B. 07-04-1868, Henrietta Swan Leavitt - U.S. astronomer. HSL established the period-luminosity relation for Cepheid variable stars and enabled others to formulate distance determinations of the furthest stars.
      At the Harvard Observatory, she determined new method of intensity so accurate that it could only be replaced by the development of photoelectrical methods. She discovered four novas and 2,400 variable stars. Her discoveries account for more than half of all those found before the great telescopes were built in the 1930s.
      HWL worked with photographic plates from all over the world to define sections of the sky to be used in the Astrographic Map of the Sky. She completing 108 sections in all.
      Her work has been utilized for a dozen or more theories.

B. 07-04-1876, Sophie Loeb, Russian-born U.S. social worker and newspaper columnist. Along with Hannah B. Einstein, Loeb probably contributed more than any other Americans to a welfare-help system that advocated "Not charity, but a chance for every child...."
      The duo was instrumental for the passage of the pioneering New York State child welfare system. They helped direct the State Commission for Widowed Mothers that sought to keep families together rather than putting children into orphanages if their parent couldn't support them. Her list of accomplishments are awe-inspiring

Event 07-04-1876: For the Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda Joslyn Gage wrote a Declaration of Rights to be read at the official proceedings, but their request to present it was denied.
      Undaunted Anthony and four other women decided to go ahead with their plan. when the Declaration of Independence had been read, Anthony and the other women rose from their seats and marched down the aisle to the speakers' rostrum.
      Anthony presented the Declaration to Vice-President Thomas W. Ferry. The women then proceeded back down the aisle while scattering printed copies of the Declaration to the audience. The women's declaration was shunned because it had as its principle statement: all men AND WOMEN are created equal.
      The statement was based on the Declaration of Sentiments written by Stanton for the 1848 women's rights convention.

Event 07-04-1880: Mary H. Myers became the first women to ascend in a balloon. For the next 40 years she was a star in the "air shows" with her daring balloon flights and precision landings. Her breathtaking accomplishments were made possible through the several design and steering innovations she developed and patented.

B. 07-04-1893, Corinne Boyd Riley - U.S. Congressional Representative from South Carolina. She was elected to serve out the term of her late husband and served 04-10-1962 to 01- 03-1963. She was not a candidate for reelection.

B. 07-04-1898, Gertrude Lawrence - British-American stage actor. Gertie, as she was known, was noted for her dry sophistication and wit. She introduced many of Noel Coward's plays in her remarkable career of great popularity. The hero, in fact the whole plot of Coward's Private Lives (1930) was patterned after Gertie's life.

B. 07-04-1902, Florence Price Dwyer - U.S. Congressional Representative, New Jersey. According to her official biography, FPD concentrated on issues of consumer protection, women's equality, and procedural reform in the House of Representatives. She served in seven congresses 1957-73. She was not a candidate for reelection. FPD was a mmember of the New Jersey State House Assembly 1950-56. http://clerkweb.house.gov/womenbio/

B. 07-04-1906, Percy Maxim Lee - president League of Women Voters (1950). Her mother Josephine Hamilton was a prominent suffragist and helped set up the LWV in Connecticut. When she established the LWV in 1920, Carrie Chapman Catt said, "Let us make the League of Women Voters a living memorial dedicated to the memory of our departed leaders and the sacrifices they made for our cause (of suffrage)." The motto of the LWV: "We support principles, but never a candidate; we take stands on issues, not on individuals."

B. 07-04-1913, Virginia Graham - U.S. radio and TV personality in the 1950s and 1960s.

B. 07-04-1916, Iva Toguri D'Aquino - aka Tokyo Rose. During World War II, ITD broadcast propaganda from Japan to U.S. troops that was aimed at lowing the moral of American troops. After the war she was convicted of treason and served six years in a U.S. prison.

B. 07-04-1918, Esther Pauline Friedman and Pauline Esther Friedman, the twins who became U.S. traditions under the names of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren, respectively.

B. 07-04-1924, Eva Marie Saint - German-American actor. She was the 1954 Academy Award for her role in On The Waterfront. Her elder sister was a research chemist and her mother was a teacher.

B. 07-04-1928 (?), Gina Lollobrigida - earthy Italian-American actor who later became a sucessful photographer.

B. 07-04-1932, Kay Nolte Smith - U.S. actor, teacher, and novelist.

Event 07-04-1960: Liza Redfield became the first woman to ever conduct a musical on Broadway. She had conducted regional theater productions for years.

B. 07-04-1962, Pam Shriver - U.S. tennis champion.

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QUOTES DU JOUR

RUCKELSHAUS, JILL:
      "It occurred to me when I was thirteen and wearing white gloves and Mary Janes and going to dancing school, that no one should have to dance backward all their lives."
            -- Jill Ruckelshaus, 1973.

STUBER, IRENE:
     
"To those who think women's rights are not under attack in the 21st century:
      " http://fathers.ourfamily.com/ QUOTE:
      " 'The primary cause of the 50 fold increase in the US divorce rate in the last century was granting women legal rights.
      " 'The primary cause of the fifty fold increase in the rate of rape and the ten fold in the murder rate was the fifty fold increase in the divorce rate.' "

This is precisely why NOW needs to address mother's issues against the fatherhood movement. As goofy as they sound, they're dead serious.


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© 1990-2006 Irene Stuber, Hot Springs National Park, AR 71902. Originally web-published at http://www.undelete.org/. We are indebted to Irene Stuber for compiling this collection and for granting us permission to make it available again. The text of the documents may be freely copied for nonprofit educational use. Except as otherwise noted, all contents in this collection are © 1998-2009 the liz library.  All rights reserved. This site is hosted and maintained by the liz library.

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