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History - Women
Love and Succor In Civil War - and Beyond
Sojourner Truth
She Could Out Pray and Out Preach White Patriarchy
Born a slave in 1797 on the estate of Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh Jr. - a Revolutionary War hero and wealthy landowner 95 miles north of New York City - Isabella (Belle) was born child #9 to James Baumfree and Elizabeth Bett. She carried no memory of her older siblings; the Colonel had a habit of selling them off. Nor did she remember the Colonel. She was a toddler when he died in 1799.
She did remember his son...
Grace and Grit
GRACE AND GRIT MIGHT WELL HAVE BEEN THE NAMES of these two Van Buren sisters. My guess is you've never heard of Augusta and Adeline - Gussie and Addie as they preferred to be called.
We want to.
The Lone Woman of San Nicholas
She was born on San Nicholas Island off the coast of Santa Barbara’s Channel Islands in the early 1800s, a small outcropping of sandstone and sea mist, home to the Nicoleño for millennia. In 1835, the Catholic Church rounded up those who remained, but she got left behind. Subsequent searches found no trace of her. She was given up for dead and became the legendary Lone Woman.... Until found in 1853.
TAMING THE DRAGONS: Lucy, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Taming the Dragons: Mary, Mother of Jesus
WAS MARY, fiance of Joseph, at the well in Nazareth when the stranger approached? Or was she washing butter, packing it into earthen vessels? What was she doing when a man she’d never seen before said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
I wonder, did the bucket fall from her hand, warm water splash across her hot and dusty feet? Did she drop her bowl? Did it break? Did she hasten to gather the precious butter coated now in dust and dirt? Kneeling, scooping, heart beating fast?
Taming the Dragons: Bathsheba
Taming the Dragons, Sojourner Truth
When ISABEL "SOJOURNER TRUTH" was born a slave in 1797 in Hurley, NY, it was against the law to sell a slave South. Yet when a former master sold her five-year-old son Peter to a Dr. Gedney (who in turn sold him to his brother Solomon), it didn’t stop Solomon Gedney from selling the little boy to his sister’s brother, an Alabama planter. Outraged and grief-stricken, Sojourner Truth confronted Solomon Gedney’s wife. When she got no satisfaction, she appealed to Mrs. Gedney the matron, mother of the man who’d illegally sold her son.
“Ugh!” said Mrs. Gedney. “A fine fuss to make about a little nigger!
Anne Hutchinson, Colonial America
Louisa May Alcott: 10 Fun, Little Known Facts
In February, I visited the Orchard House in Concord, MA, where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women in 1868: The same year my great-grandmother Isabella Stewart was born in Denholm, Scotland, clear across the ocean. Such different lives! Granny lived in the heart of the Scottish borderlands—daughter of a poor agricultural laborer on Hall Rule Farm, where barefooted she hoed onions to help support the family. Louisa May Alcott was already an established writer by the time Isabella came along, and although she didn’t hoe onions to support her family’s crippling poverty, her prolific writing made her the primary bread winner.