Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead was an anthropologist who studied gender roles. She wrote and co-wrote many books about her work which was very influential to the Feminist Movement.  Though she had been married three times, she had close possibly romantic relationships with a few women.

Stuff Mom Never Told You Podcast:
https://www.stuffmomnevertoldyou.com/podcasts/margaret-mead.htm

Annie Jump Cannon

Annie Jump Cannon

Annie Jump Cannon was part of a group of women computers at employed at Harvard University.  She created a classification system for stars that we still use today. She was very fast at cataloging these stars, said to have been able to do three stars per minute.  She ended up with a total of over 350,000 stars in her career and still holds the record.  After contracting scarlet fever, she became mostly deaf.  This left it harder for her to socialize but easier to concentrate on her work.  She has a crater on the moon named after her.

Annie was featured on Gal's guide to the Galaxy https://galsguide.org/2017/09/22/annie-jump-cannon-your-gal-friday/

May Wright Sewall

May Wright Sewall

Similar to Victoria Woodhull, May Wright Sewall has several interesting
about her life

• May both founded and taught a girl's school in Indianapolis.  She advocated for programs like physical education girls. In the time of corsets, she asked the young ladies to wear clothing better suited ofr physical activity.  

• She belonged to and founded many clubs.  These ranged from the Indianapolis Women's Club to the Art Association of Indianapolis which later became the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

• May was heavily involved in the Women's Suffrage Movement both in Indiana and nationally.  She held many positions at many organizations. Like many of the suffragists, she did not live to see the amendment become ratified.  She died about a month prior.

• She lost both of her husbands to Tuberculosis. After the lost of her first husband she got into Spiritualism.  She believed that they communicated often after his death.

Sadly, no podcasts that I've seen for May.
Ray Boomhower has  written several books on her.
The Indianapolis Central Library has a collection of her letters
http://www.digitalindy.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/mws
I also found this tour of the Propylaeum with a May Wright Sewall reenactor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H4Sn5PFqJ0

Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace is the only legitimate child of Lord Byron.  Her parents separated when she was a baby.  Her mother wanted Ada to turn out nothing like her poet father so she encouraged her daughter to study mathematics and science.   Her mother was given the nickname "The Princess of Parallelograms".  Ada was eventually given the nickname "The Enchantress of Numbers".  Ada eventually met Charles Babbage who was working on his Analytical Engine which was an early computer.  Ada was commissioned by Babbage to do some translation.  She took notes, which ended up being longer than the document she was translating for Babbage.  This Note G is believed to be the first computer program.  She suggested that the machine could one day do more than just calculate numbers but do other tasks as well, like compose music.  This all happened in the early 1800's.

In this piece, I created Ada our of all the mathematics of Note G.

Goodies:
Gal's Guide to the Galaxy has many goodies on Ada at https://galsguide.org/2017/07/21/ada-lovelace-your-gal-friday/

Stuff You Missed in History Podcast: https://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/who-was-the-enchantress-of-numbers.htm

I recently discovered this adorable steam punk historical fiction comic by Sydeny Paudua. http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/

Victoria Woodhull

Victoria Woodhull

Victoria Woodhull is best known for being the first woman to officially run for President of the United States in 1872, but the rest of her life was pretty interesting too. 

• When she was young, her father made Victoria and her sister Tennessee work as spiritual mediums.  Spiritualism was pretty big back then.  

• When she was 15 she married a doctor.  Which, besides being too young, would sound great.  However, her husband was an alcoholic, often too drunk to work. She divorced him. 

• She was a supporter of Free Love, which sounds like something out of the hippie era. There was a social sigma attached to women who got divorced, but not on men to have mistresses. That comes up again later.

• She was a suffragist.  She believed that woman already had the right to vote under the constitution.  All people born in the United States were citizens, and every citizen had the right to vote. The other suffragists didn't seem to care for her much.  They liked her ideals, perhaps it was her personality?

• She was the first woman to address congress. 

• Victoria and her sister are considered the first women stockbrokers.  They made friends with Cornelius Vanderbilt and he taught them about the stock exchange.

• The sisters then used some of that money to start their own newspaper.  It was in this paper that she announced her candidacy for President of the United States.  She ran under the Equal Rights Party and named Fredric Douglass as her running mate, though he never accepted. She also published a story about a rival minister who didn't like her Free Love ideals.  He was committing adultery, which was a thing you went on trial for back in those days. She and her sister were arrested for publishing the "obscene" story in the paper, this was the Comstock Law era.  She spent election day in jail. 

Podcasts:
The History Chicks: http://thehistorychicks.com/episode-76-victoria-woodhull/
Stuff You Missed in History Class: https://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/little-queen-for-president.htm

There may be a movie coming out in 2019 on Victoria Woohull which is very exciting. 

Women's History Month

It's my favorite time of year, Women's History Month!  Every day in March I will tell you about the amazing women that I have featured in my artwork.  Every time I display my work I always include a short paragraph about each woman. Every day this month I will have even more information about each woman and some goodies like links to some great podcasts or books. Which women do you want to hear about first?  As always, if you have a particular woman you'd like to see me paint let me know.

Book Recomendations

I got through quite a few books last year and they were fantastic.  I thought I would share them with you since it's the season for hibernating under blankets with a good book.

I am Malala 

Yes, the book covers the shooting and so much more.   She talks about how her parents met, her relationships with her brothers, the origins of her name, the struggles of her father's school, the arrival of the Taliban to the Swat valley, her secret writings for a British blog. I hope that one day she can return to the Swat valley that she so beautifully describes. 

My own Words 

While reading this book I was wishing I had gone into law.  I envy anyone who was lucky enough to have Ruth for a law professor.  This book goes over times in her life as well as many cases that she has been a part of.  

Founding Mothers

This book goes into all the women how had a hand in forming our county.  It is where I found that wonderful quote from Abigail Addams.  

Capital Dames

This book covers women around the time of the civil war; women like Mary Todd Lincoln, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, and Clara Barton.

Wonder Women

This is the book I am currently reading and I am thoroughly enjoying it.  Not only is it super informative, its hilarious.  One of my favorite lines so far has been: "If you love science and equality but hate leprosy (and who doesn't?), Alice Ball is 100 percent your kind of gal." The author mentions serval times that the running theme in the book will be men taking credit for women's accomplishments, women underestimated, etc.  Which is infuriating, depressing, and all the other emotions.  However the stories are told in such a lighthearted manor that you want to go play with a chemistry set instead of just giving the evil eye to all the men in your life.

Many of these books I borrow from my local library with an app called Overdrive.  It allows you to check out e-books, audiobooks, and more.  I just watched a really good documentary on Dolley Madison the other day through it. I'll do another post soon about some other great media I consumed last year.