Mattie H. Brinkerhoff (fl. 1860s) was a uniquely persuasive lecturer who promoted women’s education and suffrage, shared parental responsibility, and rights to pre-and post-natal care. In 1867, Brinkerhoff toured Kansas with friends Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Universalist minister Olympia Brown. A year later, Brinkerhoff would win scores of admirers touring Illinois and […]

Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) and Tennessee Claflin were flamboyant sisters who from poverty to become Wall Street’s first female stockbrokers and major political provocateurs. In 1871, Woodhull argued before Congress that voting rights recently extended to Black men must also apply to women. In 1872, Woodhull became the first woman ever to run for president. Unfortunately,

Matilda Joslyn Gage (Karonienhawi) (1826-1898) grew up among abolitionists and made her adult home an Underground Railway station. Deprived of a medical education, then-unknown Gage channeled her anger into a rousing feminist speech at the 1852 Syracuse National Convention. With Lucretia Mott’s support, Gage came to help manage the National Woman Suffrage Association and edit

Eleanor Kirk was the pen name of essayist and novelist Eleanor “Nellie” Ames (1831-1908). Abandoned by her husband after ten years of violence and infidelity, Kirk argued passionately for self-reliance, urging women (in The Revolution columns like “A Word to Abused Wives”) to leave their abusers, with or without the vote. In answer to critics who