History has long favored those at the top – powerful rulers, military generals and industry captains. Unfortunately for us today, our ancestors seldom saw women enter these ranks.
“Since the first settlers arrived on our shores and befriended American Indian families, men and women have collaborated together in building this nation,” stated President Jimmy Carter when declaring March 8-10, 1980, National Women’s History Week (since extended to cover all of March). Too often women’s contributions went unacknowleged or went undetected by society at large.
Genealogists are becoming increasingly fascinated with these mundane but indispensable duties of women ancestors; housework, cooking, child-rearing and calling on neighbors are often just part of everyday life for families to survive and flourish. Learning those particulars helps us honor them more fully as female ancestors are celebrated throughout history. Four archival collections hosted by universities serve to illuminate both daily lives as well as exceptional lives of women ancestors.
Sophia Smith Collection Established by Smith College for women in Northampton, Mass. in 1942 and named for its founder Sophia Smith, this compilation began by collecting works written by women writers. Now comprised of manuscripts, photos, periodicals and primary sources from 19th and 20th century New England family life as well as women in arts/professions (particularly journalism and social work), suffrage activism and other areas, this extensive archive offers something for everyone interested in women’s history and feminism.
Highlights: This medical collection boasts student applications and administrative records from New England Hospital for Women and Children from its establishment in 1862 until 1969, as well as Margaret Long’s journal from 1897-1907 that chronicled her studies at Johns Hopkins and interning at New York Women’s Infirmary.
What’s online: At http://smith.edu/libraries/libs/ssc/digitalcoll.html, you can view samples from collections about the YWCA; papers belonging to Garrison Dunham Bodman Hale families of New England; and Voices of Feminism Oral Histories project.
Iowa Women’s Archive
Housed by the University of Iowa Libraries, this archive containing 1,100+ letters, photos, diaries, employment records, oral histories, speeches and newspaper articles chronicling Iowan women from 19th to present chronicles their lives from 1900 until today. Click Resources then Collections for browsing holdings by topic such as teachers, rural and farm women nurses as well as women’s clubs. Special projects also cover Latina immigrants arriving as early as the 1880s along with their role in Iowa suffrage movement efforts.
Highlights: Rosalie Braverman is a Polish immigrant living in Iowa City who discusses being Jewish there in an oral history interview. Over one linear foot of diaries, letters, family histories and memorabilia dating from 1866-1932 from Lucy Van Voorhis White is available from Dallas County Iowa which span her years as both schoolteacher and farm wife in Dallas County.
What’s Online: The Iowa Women’s Archives Digital Collection holds thousands of photographs, diaries, scrapbooks, oral histories and more for you to peruse online. Just click Browse to begin exploring!
HEARTH: Home Economics Archive
Are you curious to discover what life was like for your female ancestors before 1950 when it came to child care and home management? Cornell’s collection of books and journals published between 1850 and 1925 covers topics including child care, cooking, housekeeping, home management and hygiene; you’ll also find practical how-to guides as well as philosophical treatises about women in families.
Highlights: Step back through time by reading William A. Alcott (Louisa May’s second cousin once removed) 1852 book The Young Woman’s Guide to Exellence and Christine Frederick 1915 cookbook Meals that Cook Themselves and Reduce Costs.
What’s online: All 1,174 books and 13 journals (in 401 volumes) related to home economics history can be found online, providing access to full text or titles; browsing by time period or title; as well as bibliographies and essays about home economics history.
Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture
This archive at Duke University’s Special Collections Library holds published and unpublished materials related to women in the work force, women during the American Civil War, African-American women, literature for girls (such as Ruth Fielding or Nancy Drew), as well as available resources. Their website contains descriptions of their content as well as finding aids and additional research resources.
Highlights: The Lois Wright Richardson Davis Papers span from 1851-1881 and include letters between Lowell, Mass. sisters who moved south with Confederate militia husbands as members of Mobile, Ala. Additionally, widow Mary G. Franklin of Cherokee County Georgia kept an account book from 1847-1855 that details all aspects of her mining, sawmill and farm businesses; including entries about hired hands as well as slave labor.
What’s online: Unfortunately, very little material from Duke Library’s Women’s History archives has been digitalized yet; however, by visiting http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections and selecting Women’s History you will see several items such as Alice Williamson’s 1864 diary; Hannah Valentine and Lethe Jackson slave letters dating from 1837-1838 and Rose O’Neal Greenhow Civil War papers among other items.
The National Women’s History Museum has existed since 1996, yet you cannot walk inside its virtual exhibits. Since its creation, however, its leaders have advocated for physical locations in Washington DC to showcase its displays.
The museum would explore both famous and ordinary women from history through displays that include education from colonial America to 1900s, textile and cannery industries as well as women’s suffrage movements.
Congress representatives have introduced multiple bills proposing museum locations. HR 1700, passed by a Senate committee in April 2010, would authorize the federal government to sell an area at 12th Street and Independence Avenue SW for use as a museum; private funding will pay for and construct this 250 million to $350 million museum.
