Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a well renowned Victorian poet was born on March 6, 1806 in Durham, England, the eldest of 12 siblings, to a wealthy family. She is well known for many of her works, not the least of which being Sonnet 43, How do I love thee. How do I love thee? Let me…
Category: #miniBios
Andrée Raymonde Borrel, female agent extraordinaire
Andrée Raymonde Borrel was born on November 18, 1919 into a working-class family in the Parisian suburb of Bécon-les-Bruères. Her father passed away when she was 11 which led her to quit school in order to work for a dress designer at the age of 14. Through a series of moves, she and her family…
Sally Hemings, one of the many things about slavery…
The article “Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, A Brief Account“, available on the official website for the Monticello Estate in Charlottesville, Virginia, begins “Years after his wife’s death, Thomas Jefferson fathered at least six of Sally Heming’s children.” and ends with “Questions remain about the nature of the relationship that existed between Thomas Jefferson and…
Maggie Lena Walker, banker/activist extraordinaire!
Maggie Lena Walker was born Maggie Lena Draper in Richmond, Virginia on July 15, 1864 to Elizabeth Draper, a former slave and assistant cook for Elizabeth Van Lew, an abolitionist, and Eccles Cuthbert, an Irish American who had met her mother on the Van Lew estate. Her parents were never married. Her mother married William…
Phillis Wheatley, first female black poet
Phillis Wheatley, the first known published female black poet in the United States, was born 1753 in West Africa. In 1761, against her will she brought to New England and sold to John Wheatley of Boston. The Wheatley’s, taking an interest in her education and her precocious nature, allowed her to learn to read and…
Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf
She drove them crazy
Not before and not since (1925 in Texas)
I’ll concede that this is only technically the first all female Supreme Court in the US, in the sense that the three women sitting on the court were there only for this case …
Katie Mulcahey and the whim of an insecure man
It is important in our search for our female heroes lost to history that we do not ignore the “working class” heroes; those beautiful souls, having little to no resources (comparatively speaking), who encounter oppression and refuse to bend to its momentum. Katie Mulcahey is one such hero. Although we do not know much of…
Zona Gale, the basics
Zona Gale was the American writer who won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1921 for her play “Miss Lulu Bett”. Apart from being the first woman to …