What do Pocahontas, Emily Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Clara Barton, Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Bloomer, Eleanor Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Sandra Day O'Connor have in common? (All are notable women who have earned their places in the history books.)

NOTABLE WOMEN IN HISTORY

~Victoria Taylor Murray~


POCAHONTAS, American Indian princess. Born: 1595(?) in Virginia. Died: March, 1617.

In 1608, Captain John Smith, one of the leaders of the English settlement at Jamestown in Virginia, was captured by Indians. According to a book Smith wrote in later years, he was about to be clubbed to death when Pocahontas, "the king's dearest daughter...got his head in her arms and laid her own upon his to save him from death."

No one knows for sure if Smith's story is true . Yet there is no doubt that Pocahontas was a young princess of the Powhatan tribe who befriended the settlers, helped them in many ways, to give the foreigners food during the harsh winter. Relations between the Indians and the settlers were not good, however. In 1613, Pocahontas was taken hostage by the settlers. During her stay in the colony, Pocahontas learned English and became a Christian. Her marriage to John Rolfe, a tobacco planter, resulted in an eight-year truce between Indians and settlers.

In 1616, Pocahontas traveled to England with her husband. She was treated like royalty by the English, who found her charming and beautiful. But before she could return to Virginia in 1617, she was taken ill and died at the age of 22.

DID you know...

Pocahontas' real name was Matoaka. "Pocahontas" was a nickname meaning "the playful one." After she was married, Pocahontas was known as Lady Rebecca Rolfe.


EMILY DICKINSON, poet. Born: December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Died: May 15, 1886.

Emily Dickinson called her poetry "my letter to the world." But only a handful of her poems were published during her lifetime. Not until after her death did the world take notice of the odd, brillant woman who was one of America's greatest poets.

Dickinson was born and lived her entire life in her father's red brick house in Amherst, Massachusetts. She had a normal childhood, but as an adult she led a largely solitary life. She never married. She rarely left her home and she spent many hours alone, writing poetry. Her poems expressed her deepest emotions. Many of them were about nature, death, and God.

In all, Dickinson wrote 1,775 poems. But she never tried to have them published. A few were submitted to newspapers by admirers without her consent. She hid most of her poems in a bureau in her bedroom. After her death in 1886, her sister and friend arranged for a volume of her poems to be published. One reviewer attacked them as "barbaric," because they did not have simple positive messages or traditional forms. But the book became a great success with the American public, which recognized the genius of Emily Dickinson's "letter to the world."

Did you know...

Because Emily Dickinson was rarely seen around Amherst after she reached adulthood, the townspeople called her "The Myth."


HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Born: June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, Connecticut. Died: July 1, 1896.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, a novel about the evils of slavery that stirred the conscience of Americans and helped to bring about the Civil War.

Stowe's father and six of her brothers were ministers. All of them were strongly opposed to slavery. After the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1832, she met many other abolitionists. Visiting plantations in nearby Kentucky, she saw slavery in operation, and her hatred of the institution deepened.

Harriet Beecher had married Professor Calvin Stowe in 1832. They moved to Maine in 1850, the same year that the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. The law made it easier for runaway slaves to be returned to the South. Stowe was so angry about this, she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly. Published in 1852, it is the story of a slave named Uncle Tom who dies after he is beaten by a plantation owner named Simon Legree. The book's powerful portrayal of the evils of slavery shocked its readers. When President Lincoln met Stowe during the Civil War, he said to her, "So this is the little lady who wrote the book that made this great war."

Did you know...

Incle Tom's Cabin sold more than 300,000 copies in its first year and about two million copies before the start of the Civil War.


CLARA BARTON, humanitarian, and founder of the American Red Cross. Born: December 25, 1821, near Oxford, Massachusetts. Died: April 12,1912.

She was called the "angel of the battlefield" by those who saw her caring for wounded and dying soldiers during the Civil War. Her role there made her a national heroine. A strong-minded woman, Clara Barton then devoted the rest of her life to helping others.

When the Civil War began in 1861, Barton was working as the first female clerk in the Patent Office in Washington, D.C. But reports of suffering soldiers roused her to action. Besides nursing the wounded, she carried supplies and medchines to the battlefield.

Barton's war efforts left her exhausted and ill. In 1869, she went to Switzerland to recover. There, Barton learned about the International Red Cross, an organization devoted to the relief of suffering resulting from war. In 1870-1871, she took part in Red Cross activities during the Franco-Purussian War. Two years later, Barton returned home and set about forming an American Red Cross. In 1881, she achieved her goal and served as the organization's first president for 22 years. Before retiring in 1904, Barton expanded the efforts of the Red Cross to include aid to victims of peacetime disasters, such as floods and hurricanes.

Did you know...

Clara Barton created a bureau to search for missing Civil War soldiers and mark the graves of the dead.



SUSAN Brownell Anthony, crusader for women's rights. Born: February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts. Died: March 13, 1906.

Until the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution became law in 1920, American women were not allowed to vote. Susan B. Anthony's 50-year fight for women's suffrage, or the right to vote, made this amendment possible.

Susan B. Anthony grew up in a Quaker home. Like her parents, she believed that men and women should be treated equally. In 1851, she began working with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another suffragette. Their first success was the passage of a law in 1860 in New York that gave women the right to own property and to keep their children if they divorced.

Anthony also fought for the abolition, or end, of slavery, and for the right of former slaves to vote. After the Civil War, she was disappointed when former slaves were given that right, but women were not. As a result, she formed suffrage associations and lectured all over the world. She saw women get the right to vote in other countries, but not in the U.S. But she remained hopeful, and a month before her death in 1906, she said "failure is impossible." She was right. Fourteen years after Anthony's death, the 19th Amendment became law, and people called it the "Anthony Amendment."

Did you know...

In 1979, the U.S. government minted $1 coins with Susan B. Anthony's picture on them. This made her the first woman to be pictured on an American coin in general circulation.


AMELIA JENKS BLOOMER, fighter for women's rights. Born: May 27, 1818, in Homer, New York. Died: December 30, 1894.

In the mid-1800's, reform was in the air. Many Americans wanted to purify their country, to cure ills that they saw in it. Their targets? Slavery was one. The use of alcohol was another--temperance societies urged an end to the manufacture and drinking liquor. Lack of women's rights was a third--reform groups demanded that women be allowed to own property and to vote, rights thus far denied them.

Amelia Jenks Bloomer strode onto this scene, wearing the revolutionary style that bore her name. The "Bloomer Costume" replaced the heavy, long, dirt-gathering skirts of the time with baggy trousers worn under a short skirt. The newer style was lighter, freer, and easier to get around in. "For some six or eight years," she said, "I wore no other costume."

Bloomer had begun her reformist career in 1849 by founding Lily, a magazine that preached temperance. But soon she began including articles on women's rights. She urged the reform of unjust marriage laws and the extension of voting rights to women. Though she did not invent bloomers, she eagerly publicized them in Lily and brought the new outfit to national attention.

Did you know...

Bloomers became such a national fad that a song was written about them. The composer dedicated "A New Costume Polka" to Amelia Bloomer.


ANNA ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, First Lady and humanitarian. Born: October 11, 1884, in New York City. Died: November 7, 1962. (Years as First Lady: 1933-1945).

"She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness," Adlai Stevenson said of Eleanor Roosevelt, "and her glow has warmed the world."

A tireless crusader for human rights and world peace, Eleanor Roosevelt overcame her natural shyness after her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was stricken with polio in 1921 and paralyzed from waist down. When he ran for governor of New York she became active in politics, traveling throughout the state on his behalf. And when he became President in 1933, she became the most active and influential First Lady the country had ever known. She went everywhere and met everyone, reported to her husband what she had seen, and worked constantly, on behalf of African-Americans, women, the poor, and all those who hoped the federal government would help improve their lives.

Soon after F.D.R. died in 1945, President Harry Truman appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as a delegate to the United Nations. In 1948, she helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She spent the rest of her life promoting peace, teaching, and speaking out for the downtrodden. In a poll taken in the 1990's, she was named the most influential woman of the twenthieth century.

Did you know...

At the wedding of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt in 1907, the bride was given in marriage by her uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt.

MARIAN ANDERSON, concert and opera singer. Born: Feburary 17, 1902, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Died: April 8, 1993.

On an evening in 1939, 75,000 people gathered at Washington's Lincoln Memorial. They had come to hear Marian Anderson, the great African-American singer, in a special concert arranged by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Anderson had been refused permission to sing in a concert hall in Washington because of her race.

This was not the first time that Marian Anderson had faced prejudice. As a youngster, she was refused admission to a music school despite her talent. And when she began her career as a professional singer, she needed to go to Europe to establish her reputation because African-Americans were not welcome in many American concert halls and opera houses. But she overcame discrimination to win the admiration of her countrymen. Moving with ease from spirituals to operatic arias, she won recognition as a great American artist.

In 1955, Anderson became the first African-American to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She remarked with characteristic modesty, "I wish the opportunity had come earlier that I might have been able to bring more to it." She retired in 1962 after having been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon Johnson.

Did you know...

In 1958, Marian Anderson served as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations.


JACQUELINE BOUVIER KENNEDY ONASSIS, First Lady. Born: July 28, 1929, in Southampton, New York. Died: May 19, 1994. (Years as First Lady: 1961-1963).

She was one of the most glamorous First Ladies in American history. Women copied her clothes, her hairstyle, and her elegance as a hostess. Her devotion to her young children was widely admired. But Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is remembered most of all for her courage and grace at a time of personal and national tragedy.

"Jackie," as she was called, was born into the wealthy Bouvier family. While working for a Washington, D.C., newspaper, she met John F. Kennedy, a handsome congressman. They married in 1963. After Kennedy became President in 1961, the First Lady made the White House a center of American culture. She supervised its redcoration with period furnishings and invited famous artists to perform there. Then, in November 1963, that world ended. She was at the President's side in a limouaine in Dallas when he was assassinated. The image of the stunned First Lady in her blood-splattered suit will never be forgotten by those who saw it. Her dignity and strength in the days that followed helped ease the nation's grief. A second marriage to Aristotle Onassis, a wealthy Greek shipowner, was unsuccessful. She moved to New York, where she raised her children and worked as a book editor. She died in 1994, mourned by the nation she had represented so well.

Did you know...

When the Kennedys visited France in 1962, the President joked, "I am known as the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris."


SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR, first woman to become a Justice of the Supreme Court. Born: March 29, 1930, in El Paso, Texas. (Service on Supreme Court: 1981-).

Sandra Day O'Connor made history on September 26,1981. On that day, she became the first woman ever to serve as a Justice of the Supreme Court.

Justice O'Connor grew up on her family's 155,000-acre Lazy B Ranch in southeastern Arizona. A brilliant student, she went off to Stanford University in California when she was only 16. After earning her law degree there, she became a county deputy attorney in California. In 1959 she opened her own law firm in Arizona.

A tireless worker for the Republican Party, she became a member of the Arizona State Senate in 1969 and in 1972 was elected its majority leader. She was the first woman to hold that post. Two years later, she moved from the legislative to the judicial branch, becoming first a Superior Court judge and then a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan nominated her for the Supreme Court. The Senate resoundingly confirmed her nomination by a vote of 99-0. In the court's 191-year existence, 101 men had served as Justices, but not a single woman had served until Sandra Day O'Connor.

Did you know...

Though Sandra Day O'Connor graduated third in her law class, no law firm would hire her. Why? In 1952, many private law firms simply refused to hire any women lawyers.