Hannah Adams was the first American woman to support herself by her writings. Born in Medfield, Massachusetts, she was self-educated and wrote mainly about religion and history.

A journalist, author, and editor, Mildred Aldrich began her career as a journalist with the Boston Home Journal, and later worked for the Boston Journal and the Boston Herald. In 1898 Aldrich travelled to Paris and subsequently settled there, where she became a close friend of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. In 1914 she retired to Huiry, a village near Paris, and published four collections of her letters and a novel. This collection consists of four bound volumes containing a typed transcript of Aldrich's autobiography, Confessions of a Breadwinner, which she completed in 1926.

Founded in 1834 to combat widespread prostitution in New York City, the New-York Female Moral Reform Society enlarged its mission to address the needs of the homeless and indigent, work for prison reform and on behalf of seamen, and promote Christianity through missions and distribution of tracts. In 1839 its name was changed to the American Female Moral Reform Society to reflect its widening influence. The Society's work took the form of publications, a house of refuge, visiting committees, and petitions to local officials and legislators.

Best known for her lifelong crusade for woman's suffrage, Anthony was first active in the temperance and anti-slavery movements. In May 1869 she organized the National Woman Suffrage Association, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as president. From 1891 to 1900, she was the second president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Frances "Fanny" Theodora Apthorp was born in Boston in 1766. In the mid-1780s, she went to live with her older sister, Sarah Apthorp Morton, and her husband, Perez Morton. Fanny and Perez engaged in an affair that resulted in the birth of a daughter. Some time later, she returned to the Morton household, and appears to have resumed the affair. Fanny may have been pregnant again at the time of her suicide, on August 28, 1788. Tales of her death, including her alleged suicide note, spread widely within a youth culture of sentiment and sympathy. William Brown’s The Power of Sympathy, widely considered to be the first American novel, contains a fictionalized account of the affair. This collection consists of five letters written from Apthorp to Perez Morton in diary form, with suicide notes.

Partially digitized.
The Sheila Mackenzie Jewett Bailey collection includes personal correspondence, scrapbooks, writings, photographs, clippings, pencil drawings, etc., primarily documenting Sheila Mackenzie Jewett Bailey's girlhood, early married life, and motherhood, as well as family papers, keepsake wallets, diaries, genealogical information, correspondence from both the Jewett and Bailey families, and reading notes kept by William Bacon Bailey.

Partially digitized.
Central figures of the Barker-Battelle-Sharpe family include Thomas, Lugrand and William C. Sharpe, who were Methodists in Connecticut; Melissa (Stone) Barker and Joseph Barker, residents of Washington County, Ohio; and the Barkers' daughter, Elizabeth M. and her husband, Andrew Brimmer Battelle, also active Methodists and Ohio residents. In 1874 Andrew Battelle was tried by his Methodist peers for financial irregularities. The papers of the Barker family includes correspondence, genealogical information, an account books detailing the work of a barrel maker, an estate inventory, an autobiography, and records of donations and attendance at Methodist meetings kept by members of the Sharpe family, 1797-1876.

The Beecher-Stowe family is considered by many as one of the most influential families among its contemporaries. The family is known for their stance on abolition, religion, education, and women’s rights. Its members wrote and preached about the immorality of slavery for decades and took action in various ways, including purchasing and subsequently freeing slaves. When the Civil War began, they were ardent supporters. Like other abolitionist families, they sent family members into the war as soldiers, officers, chaplains and teachers: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s son, several nephews, two half-brothers, and a brother-in-law and a sister-in-law served in some capacity.

Rosamond Randall Beirne served as Madame Regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association from 1958 to 1968 and was the author of several books, mostly related to history. The collection consists of a diary by her mother, Elizabeth Winsor Harding Randall, detailing her trip to Europe in 1893; a scrapbook of Rosamond Randall Beirne documenting her social life and coming out as a debutante (1905-1918); photographs of Elizabeth Randall and family; and "The Book of the Bride Elect," containing a list of Beirne's wedding gifts (1919).

Bi Women was the newsletter of the Boston Bisexual Women's Network. Issues are available from 1983 to 2010.

The Black Women Oral History Project interviewed 72 African American women between 1976 and 1981. The project sought a cross section of women who had made significant contributions to American society in the first half of the twentieth century. Many interviewees had professional careers in such fields as education, government, the arts, business, medicine, law, and social work. Others combined care for their families with volunteer work at the local, regional, or national level. This collection consists of tapes and transcripts of the oral histories. The interviews discuss family background, childhood, education, significant influences affecting choice of primary career or activity, professional and voluntary accomplishments, and the ways in which being black and a woman affected options and choices made.

The most prominent members of the Blackwell family were Elizabeth (1821-1910) and Emily (1826-1910), who were among the earliest women doctors and founders of the New York Infirmary and College for Women; their brother Henry Browne Blackwell (1825-1909), his wife Lucy Stone (1818-1893), and their daughter Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950), who were known for their leading roles in the abolition, woman suffrage, and prohibition movements; and their sister-in-law Antoinette Louisa (Brown) Blackwell (1825-1921), the first woman ordained as a minister in the United States and an active speaker on behalf of abolition, women's rights and prohibition. This collection includes approximately 120,000 pages documenting the Blackwells’ involvement in United States women’s suffrage, abolition, prohibition, health care, and education reform movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. Five generations of family diaries, correspondence, sermons, lectures, orations and political speeches are included, as well as issues of the Woman’s Journal, an influential journal covering a wide spectrum of issues important to women, which was published by members of the Blackwell family from 1870 to 1917.

Partially digitized.
The Bledsoe-Herrick Family papers contain genealogies, memoirs, correspondence, writings, and photographs of various members of the Coxe, Bledsoe, Herrick, Fox, Wall, and Hunt families. A substantial amount of the correspondence and manuscripts in the collection center on Sophia Bledsoe Herrick, most prominent being a long series of letters to her daughter Louise Herrick Wall. The manuscripts include her unpublished memoirs, her Coxe family memoirs, and notes for her work on other family history and genealogy. A large quantity of photographs, including three daguerreotypes, one ambrotype, and a scrapbook of photographs of the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake, complete this collection.

Partially digitized.
The digitized portion of this collection consists of Beatrice MacDonald’s scrapbook, which contains documents, letters, clippings and photographs pertaining to her service in France during World War I (1915, 1917-1918) at hospitals headed by Dr. George E. Brewer. The scrapbook documents the numerous citations she received, including the Distinguished Service Cross, and contains photographs as well as an essay in which she describes her experiences in France.

College president Lucia Russell Briggs was the daughter of Le Baron Russell Briggs, a Harvard professor, dean, and second president of Radcliffe College. Lucia Russell Briggs graduated from Radcliffe (AB 1909, AM 1912), where she majored in English literature. She taught in high schools and at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, before being appointed president of Milwaukee-Downer College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she served for thirty years. This collection consists of a scrapbook containing programs, calling cards, tickets, photographs, and memorabilia documenting her years at Radcliffe College, as well as additional poems and biographical information.

An educator and founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, North Carolina, Charlotte Eugenia Hawkins Brown was active in the National Council of Negro Women and the N.C. Teachers Association, and she was the first black woman to serve on the national board of the YWCA. She lectured and wrote about black women, education, and race relations. The collection, which is mostly digitized through the library Flickr account, includes correspondence, speeches, and memorabilia pertaining to Brown's accomplishments in the field of education for African Americans. Material relating to the Palmer Memorial Institute includes the charter, constitution, reports, student publications, publicity and fundraising material, and photos.

Olympia Brown became the first American woman to be ordained by full denominational authority when she was ordained by the St. Lawrence Association of Universalists in 1863. She was also active in the suffrage movement, primarily in Wisconsin and then on a national level. In 1868 Brown helped found the New England Woman’s Suffrage Association, the first suffrage organization in the United States. She also joined the Congressional Union (later the National Woman’s Party) and distributed suffrage material in front of President Wilson’s White House. After the passage of the School Suffrage Law in Wisconsin in 1885, Brown cast a vote in November of 1887, but her vote was rejected and her case went to court. Brown argued on her own behalf and won, but the decision was repealed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Sarah Ellen (Nellie) Browne attended a school for girls conducted by Elizabeth and Louis Agassiz in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 1856 to 1859. This collection contains Nellie’s family correspondence (1856-1859) while a student at this school. Most of the correspondence is between Nellie and her mother, but there are also a few letters from her father (Albert Gallatin Browne, Sr.) and younger sister (Alice), as well as three letters from her older brother (Albert, Jr.) to his mother. Nellie's letters describe her social life, friends and relatives, course of study, clothing needs, health, homesickness, and religion. The letters to Nellie give advice and news of family members (especially of Albert, Jr., and his experiences as a war correspondent for the New York Tribune covering General Johnston's Utah Expedition, 1857-1858).

The Browne family papers primarily pertain to Albert Gallatin Browne, a ship chandler in Salem, Massachusetts, and an agent of the United States Treasury Department in Beaufort, South Carolina, during the Civil War; his wife Sarah Smith Cox Browne; and their children, Albert Gallatin, Jr., a lawyer and journalist; Sarah Ellen (Nellie), a nurse of wounded soldiers at a military hospital in Beaufort; Alice; and Edward. Also digitized are the Browne family additional papers.

A social worker (Radcliffe College, B.A., 1914; Simmons College, School of Social Work), Burrage worked at various Boston social service agencies. In the aftermath of World War I she joined the Radcliffe Unit established by the Radcliffe Alumnae Association War Work Committee, whose members were drivers and aides to the French Red Cross from April 1919 to May 1920, during reconstruction efforts in French villages. Burrage was stationed with the Union des Femmes de France, Poste Dispensaire, in Vermand, Aisne. This collection contains typescript copies of Burrage's weekly letters home from France.

Partially digitized
This collection documents four generations of a prominent Boston area family, including merchant Samuel Cabot, Jr.; James Elliot Cabot and his wife, Elisabeth Dwight Cabot; and surgeon Hugh Cabot and his wife, Mary Anderson (Boit) Cabot. The digitized material in this collection includes a letter, a will, and the travel diary of a European trip (1896-1898).

Partially digitized.
Ida M. Cannon (1877-1960) was a pioneer in medical social work. A graduate of the St. Paul (Minnesota) City and County Hospital Training School for Nursing (1898), Cannon also studied sociology and psychology before coming to Boston, where for nearly four decades she directed the growth of social work at Massachusetts General Hospital. Cornelia (James) Cannon (1876-1969), a best-selling author and civic leader, was active with the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, the Cambridge Civic Association, and the League of Women Voters. She married Ida Cannon's brother, Walter Bradford Cannon (1871-1945), who taught physiology at Harvard Medical School and was George Higginson Professor of Physiology and chair of the department. The digitized portion of this collection includes travel scrapbooks and writings as well as Cornelia’s correspondence.

Partially digitized.
Toni Carabillo and Judith Mueli were feminists and long-time activists with the National Organization for Women (NOW). Digitized material from the collection includes photo albums, clippings, and paraphernalia related to NOW campaigns in California.

Partially digitized.
Digitized material pertains to Chennault’s husband, Claire Chennault, and includes a manuscript of a memoir, My China Years, and other writings. General Chennault was commander of the Flying Tigers and co-founder of the Chinese Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Air Transport, later known as Civil Air Transport, which flew relief supplies into interior China.

Partially digitized.
Chicago is an artist, feminist, and writer. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles, where she received her M.F.A. degree in 1964. Earning considerable recognition for her minimalist sculptures in an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1967), she also had a one-woman show at California State University at Fullerton (1970). Increasingly sensitive to the need for an environment in which women artists could express themselves freely without regard to the male-dominated art world, Chicago pioneered feminist art education programs at California State University at Fresno (1969-1971) and at the California Institute of the Arts (1971-1973), where she and artist Miriam Shapiro directed an installation called Womanhouse (1971). In 1973 she organized the Feminist Studio Workshop, the first independent feminist art education program in the country. Chicago is best known for The Dinner Party, a multimedia installation honoring the achievements of women in Western civilization. Executed between 1974 and 1979 with the participation of hundreds of volunteers, The Dinner Party was viewed by approximately one million people in exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad between 1979 and 1988. See also Additional papers of Judy Chicago and Videotape collection of Judy Chicago. Digitized content is available through the finding aids for these collections and through the Judy Chicago Collaboration portal.

An anthropologist, food historian, and translator, Coe graduated from Radcliffe College in 1955 and married Michael D. Coe, with whom she worked on various archaeological projects in Mesoamerica and the United States. Instrumental in promoting Yuri V. Khorosov's theories of Maya script in the West through her translation of his Selected Chapters from The Writing of the Maya Indians (1967), she was also a serious student of native New World cooking. Her research in this area culminated in America's First Cuisines (1994). This collection consists of mostly English-language manuscript cookbooks, assembled by Coe, containing recipes, household hints, and home remedies.

Partially digitized.
A composer (B.A. Radcliffe College, 1900), Wheeler studied music in Boston and Munich, was director of music at Bradford Academy (1911-1913) and Simmons College (1913-1918), and then devoted the rest of her life to composing, specializing in choral compositions. She was the only woman represented in the "serious American music" festival at Carnegie Hall in 1939, and she had three different works played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Marie Jeanne d'Autremont was born in France in 1745 and came to America with her three sons, Louis Paul, Alexandre, and Auguste. They lived in various places in New York state, first on a piece of land that she had purchased while still in France, and later in Asylum, Butternut, and Angelica. Translations of d'Autremont's correspondence, especially letters between her and her son Louis Paul, provide insight into the establishment and management of a frontier farm in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They discuss shortages and high prices of household goods; the high cost of labor, travel, building materials, and land; and the purchase of an enslaved girl. Also included are photographs, wills, and correspondence among d'Autremont descendants about their family history.

Partially digitized.
Scholar, author, and black feminist philosopher Angela Yvonne Davis is one of the most recognized political activists of the 1960s and 1970s. She rose to national attention in 1969 after being removed from her teaching position at the University of California, Los Angeles, for her membership in the Communist Party at the urging of then-California Governor Ronald Reagan. In 1970 Davis was prosecuted for purchasing firearms used in the armed takeover of a Marin County courtroom. Her arrest sparked an international campaign to gain her release and led to a high-profile trial which culminated in her acquittal in 1972. She was the vice presidential candidate for the Communist Party of the United States in the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. Davis is an advocate for prisoners' rights and a founding member of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to abolishing the prison industrial complex. She writes and lectures on social injustice, social movements, and the intersections of race, gender, and class. The digitized content currently consists of audiovisual materials in Series XII of this collection.

Ann Maria Davison was born on April 2, 1783, probably in New Jersey, and lived in the North during the Civil War. Her religious feeling and opposition to slavery are documented in six volumes and one folder of diary entries. Davison wrote of well-known personalities and events of the slavery controversy: for example, of hearing Frederick Douglass speak, of reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's Dred, and of the 1856 presidential election. She also observed slave life closely and visited free blacks in Philadelphia and in Princeton, New Jersey. She wrote diary entries in New Orleans, while traveling to and from the East Coast, and in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts.

Partially digitized.
Established in 1921, the Iota Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta was the first African American sorority in the Boston area and gave rise to the Boston Alumnae Chapter of the organization. Since its founding in 1913 on the campus of Howard University, the mission of Delta Sigma Theta has been rooted in service within the African American community. The digitized portion of this collection is the 1943 Iota Chapter scrapbook, which includes biographies and photographs of early members.

Partially digitized.
Shirley (Graham) Du Bois was a political activist, writer, playwright, and composer. She married W.E.B. Du Bois in 1951, and they worked together to improve the lot of underrepresented groups in the United States, increasingly through their involvement in leftist causes and groups. Digitized material from the collection consists of the score to her musical drama, Tom-Tom, which was performed in Chicago and described by a critic as "the first all-black opera to be produced on a large [scale]."

Amelia Earhart, who disappeared during a flight around the world, was the first woman to fly, and to fly solo, across the Atlantic Ocean, in 1928 and 1932 respectively. This collection includes material relating to Earhart’s childhood, flying, and commemoration, as well as extensive correspondence of Earhart's sister, Muriel (Earhart) Morrissey, concerning investigations into Earhart's disappearance.

Amy Otis Earhart was the mother of the aviator Amelia Earhart. Most of this collection consists of letters to Earhart from relatives, friends, and Amelia Earhart fans; the rest consists of Otis family memorabilia and photographs, clippings, and other papers that mostly concern Amelia Earhart.

Ellen Dwight Eaton was a first cousin once removed of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragist and women's rights activist. This collection consists of letters written between 1857 and 1868, nearly all to Eaton, most from Stanton. A few mention the founding of the suffrage periodical, The Revolution, while others concern Stanton's travels and activities for suffrage. Other notable correspondents include Susan B. Anthony and Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.

Ernst was a lawyer who represented physician Hannah Stone in United States v. One Package of Pessaries, a successful legal action against the U.S. government, which had seized some contraceptives shipped to Stone from Japan. The collection contains correspondence, trial and appeal material, and other legal papers constituting Ernst's record of the case.

This collection consists of an American manuscript cookbook dating from 1764.

Maria M. Flagg was the niece of Lydia Nightingale, a resident of Providence, Rhode Island. She attended school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. This collection consists of thirteen letters from Flagg to Nightingale, with news of family, friends, and her courtship, as well as observations on her mother's death in childbirth.

Partially digitized.
Sarah Gamble and her husband, Clarence James Gamble (1894-1966), were active in the birth control movement in the U.S. and internationally. Digitized material from the collection includes photographs of a family trip to east Asia in 1908.

Arthur Gilman, a banker, educator, and historian, was instrumental in founding Radcliffe College; he served as secretary (1879-1894) and regent (1894-1896). He was also the founder (1886) of the Gilman School for Girls (later called the Cambridge School and the Cambridge School of Weston). This collection consists of family letters, genealogy, photographs, and children's books. See also the Arthur Gilman letters, which consists of autograph letters from Gilman to writer and editor Lucy Larcom and others, mostly concerning visits and his writings; and the Arthur Gilman scrapbook, which is a scrapbook of clippings documenting the evolution of Radcliffe College and women's higher education in the United States and England.

Although she never considered herself a feminist, Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman was the leading public intellectual of the women’s movement in the early twentieth century. To support herself, she wrote poetry and short stories and lectured extensively. Some of her best-known publications include “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a commentary on mental illness, and Women and Economics (1898), which argued for female economic independence and controversially compared marriage to prostitution. Gilman was highly critical of private institutions, such as families and marriage, that isolated women and prevented their participation in broader social developments. Correspondence, diaries, journals, manuscripts, articles, reviews, clippings, photos, literary material, and drawings in this collection provide information about Gilman's personal and public life. The Schlesinger holds a wide breadth of material related to Gilman, much of which has been digitized. Please see the Charlotte Perkins Gilman research guide for more information about accessing the digitized materials.

Partially digitized.
A writer, Inez (Haynes) Gillmore was active in the women's suffrage movement, the first fiction editor of Max Eastman's periodical The Masses, one of the original members of the feminist society Heterodoxy, and a feminist historian. She served in leadership roles in various professional writers' associations and chaired the board of directors of the World Center for Women's Archives. Digitized material includes a diary of a trip she took to Paris in 1908 and the 1920 volume Heterodoxy to Marie, which consists of photos; Christmas cards; and pictures, messages, and signatures of literary women.

Emma Goldman was an anarchist, writer, and lecturer who agitated for free speech and radical causes in the U.S., Canada, and Europe after emigrating from Russia. Leon Malmed, Goldman’s friend and lover, was a supporter of anarchist and radical causes, a fellow Russian emigré, and a small businessman in Albany, N.Y. This collection consists almost entirely of correspondence.

Josephine Clara Goldmark and Pauline Dorothea Goldmark were associated with the National and New York Consumers' Leagues, investigated industrial working conditions (particularly for women workers), and were published authors. Josephine Goldmark researched labor laws on hours of work and was on the committee that investigated the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Pauline Goldmark investigated conditions in New York canneries and was assistant director of social research for the Russell Sage Foundation, a member of the industrial board of the N.Y. State Labor Dept. (1913-1915), vice-chair of the N.Y.C. Child Labor Commission, and director of the National Consumers' League. This collection includes correspondence, photographs, reports, and clippings which illustrate the sisters' projects and interests and show the impact of their published works.

Constance H. Hall chaired the New England Clothing Committee, which worked with the Comité Franco-Américaine pour la Protection des Enfants de la Frontière during World War I. Her scrapbook, containing records of work by Hall's committee, bills, sample patterns, reports, pictures of children, and other items, depicts women's work at the time and has been fully digitized.

Lydia Holman was a public health nurse in the mountains of North Carolina. This collection consists of letters and reports as well as biographical material.

Partially digitized.
In 1972, Holtzman ran a grassroots campaign against long-time Brooklyn Democratic Congressman Emmanuel Celler and was elected to the United States House of Representatives from New York's 16th Congressional District, becoming the youngest woman elected to the House. She served in the House of Representatives from January 1973 to December 1980 and tackled a variety of local and national issues. She served on and chaired a number of congressional committees and was also one of the founding members of the Congresswomen's Caucus (currently known as Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues).

Partially digitized.
Author and reformer, Julia (Ward) Howe was descended, on both sides of her family, from illustrious American ancestors. Her maternal grandmother, Sarah (Mitchell) Cutler, was a niece of Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox" of the Revolution. The first American Ward (John) settled in Newport, Rhode Island in the 1660s; his son, Richard, became the Royal Governor of Rhode Island, and his son, the first Samuel, became the Revolutionary Governor and one of the framers of the Constitution.

Collection consists of eight indentures (1746-1860), most binding girls to apprenticeships ranging from two to seventeen years to learn housekeeping. Some are signed by a parent, others by overseers of the poor. One indenture concerns two children of color, Lucy and Edey Randolph Valentine (1823). The collection also includes one manuscript notebook kept by Charles Willey of Rochester, New York, containing rules for calculating the working speeds of shafts and other aspects of commercial cloth weaving as well as the rate of pay for a girl working on a loom (1857).

This collection includes letters from Modiste Jumelle in Paris to her family in Saint-Domingue (1788-1794); letters to Pierre Jumelle from a lover, (1790); documents and bills; and notes concerning the Jumelle family, (1925).

Partially digitized.
Kemp was involved in the American trade union movement, which included participation in the workers' education movement, African trade union movements, labor education worldwide (particularly for women), and the women's movement. In 1942, Kemp ran for State Assembly of New York County on the American Labor Party ticket. She was later appointed to a War Price and Rationing Board of the Office of Price Administration (1944), and in 1945 she became the first Black woman to represent the AFL abroad, serving as its delegate on a trip sponsored by the Office of War Information to observe wartime conditions for workers in Great Britain. Digitized material includes Kemp's campaign material (1942).

The League of Women for Community Service was an African American women's organization established in Boston during World War I as the Soldiers' Comfort Unit. It was incorporated in 1920 as a permanent social service and civic organization. The collection consists of organizational minutes (1918-1921 and 1924-1938).

Partially digitized.
Gerda Lerner, an author, historian, and educator, was one of the earliest proponents of women’s history as a field of study. She developed curricular material, preserved and publicized source material, helped upgrade the status of women in the profession, and produced distinguished research and writing. She taught at Sarah Lawrence College (1968-1980), where she established the nation’s first women’s history graduate program, and at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she created the nation's first women's history PhD program. She wrote more than a dozen books, including The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels against Authority (1967), Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (1972), The Creation of Patriarchy (1986), and Fireweed: A Political Autobiography (2003). She also co-wrote the screenplay for the film Black Like Me (1964) with her husband, Carl Lerner (1912-1973). Digitized materials from the collection include Lerner's correspondence with her family (mostly in German).

Partially digitized.
Lifton was a writer, adoptee, and adoption reform advocate. She was the author of a number of nonfiction books as well as over twenty books for children, many concerning adoption, Japanese folktales, and her travels to Japan. After receiving her PhD, Lifton worked as a psychological counselor, with a practice centered on adoptees and their families. The digitized materials in this collection are redacted questionnaires from her clients.

Partially digitized.
Educator, wife, and mother Florence Julie Lillibridge joined the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) in World War II. However, after arriving for duty in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1943, she was discharged for being pregnant. After the war, Florence taught English at various universities and high schools. Digitized materials from the collection include transcriptions of her diaries.

Partially digitized.
Alma Lutz became involved in the woman's suffrage movement when she returned home to North Dakota after graduating from Vassar College (1912). She continued to work for equal rights for women all her life and was the author of many articles and books, including Created Equal: A Biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. Lutz was an active member of the National Woman's Party, the Massachusetts Committee for the Equal Rights Amendment, and many other organizations. During 1951-1973 she served on the Advisory Committee of the Schlesinger Library. This collection consists of letters, and a few other items, purchased by Alma Lutz and reflects her interest in women in American history, particularly those active in the abolition and suffrage movements.

Grace Lathrop Mack was born in Rockmart, Georgia. She attended elementary and junior high school in Michigan City, Indiana. This collection consists of a baby book detailing her birth and early years.

Partially digitized.
This collection centers on two prominent New England families: the Mays and the Goddards. The daughter of Samuel (1776-1870) and Mary (Goddard) May (1787-1882), Abigail Williams May (1829-1888) was for thirty years a leader among Boston's social reformers, a cofounder of the New England Women's Club, and one of the first women to serve as a member of the Boston School Committee, to which she was elected in 1873. Her brother, Frederick Warren Goddard May (1821-1904), married Eleanor Swan Goddard (1829-1853), the daughter of Samuel (1787-1871) and Mehetable May (Dawes) Goddard (1796-1882). They had one daughter, Eleanor Goddard May (1853-1923). Some correspondence in this collection is digitized.

Feminist, suffragist, and lawyer Inez Milholland specialized in criminal and divorce practice and was active in the women's suffrage and peace movements, as well as the effort to abolish capital punishment. She supported the garment workers’ strike of 1916, and proclaiming herself a socialist, she joined the Women's Trade Union League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Fabian Society of England. As a result of her marriage she also became concerned with citizenship rights of married women. This collection includes personal and professional correspondence, speeches, articles, class notes and clippings which detail her marriage and friendships as well as her work as a lawyer and her involvement in reform causes.

Partially digitized.
African American civil rights activist Pauli Murray was a university professor and administrator in the United States and Ghana, served on a study committee for the President's Commission on the Status of Women, and earned a J.D.S. from Yale Law School. She published a book of poetry, Dark Testament and Other Poems (1970), and four other books: States' Laws on Race and Color (1951), Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family (1956), The Government and Constitution of Ghana (1961), and an autobiography, Song in a Weary Throat, published posthumously in 1987. She also wrote numerous newspaper and journal articles. In the early 1970s, Murray had a calling to the Episcopal priesthood; in 1977 she was the first African American woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest. Before her retirement in 1984, she served as a priest at the Church of the Atonement in Washington, D.C., and at the Church of the Holy Nativity in Baltimore, Maryland. Digitized material from the collection includes photographs, scrapbooks, select speeches and writings, and some audiovisual material.

Partially digitized.
The Nichols-Shurtleffs were a well-to-do Boston family whose female members were active in social and civic affairs, women's suffrage, and art. This collection consists mostly of correspondence and diaries, but also contains financial papers, manuscripts, pamphlets and clippings.

Catherine Porter Noyes was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and went to South Carolina to teach former slaves. The collection consists of one manuscript diary and three letters describing this experience and detailing the lives of the former slaves in the community where she was teaching. It also includes a photocopy of a photograph of the Noyes family, including Catherine.

Kathryn Coleman Wharton Packe served with the Office of Strategic Services/Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in London during World War II. Following the war the Packes settled in Alderney, in the Channel Islands, where she ran a market garden and helped run the library. She also assisted her husband in preparing his biography of John Stuart Mill, published in 1959, as well as subsequent books. The collection consists of typed and manuscript letters from Packe, mostly to her son John, describing her travels, daily life, visitors, and work.

Alice Paul was a Quaker, lawyer, and lifelong activist for women’s rights. She was active in the Women’s Social and Political Union in England, where she was arrested and jailed repeatedly as a participant in the campaign for women’s rights led by Emmeline Pankhurst. After returning to the United States in 1910, Paul was appointed chair of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1912. In June 1916, Paul founded the National Woman’s Party (NWP), its sole plank a resolution calling for immediate passage of the federal amendment guaranteeing the enfranchisement of women. After the ratification of the suffrage amendment in 1920, the NWP began a long battle to end all legal discrimination against women in the United States and to raise the legal, social, and economic status of women around the world. The Equal Rights Amendment, as written by Paul in 1923, was first introduced in Congress in December of that year. In 1938, Paul founded the World Woman’s Party in Geneva, Switzerland.

Partially digitized.
Lydia E. Pinkham brewed home remedies, concoctions of herbs and alcohol, for menstrual pain and other health issues. The tight finances of the Pinkham family after the financial crash of 1873 apparently led her to ask for payment from those neighbors to whom she normally gave her remedy for free. In 1875 the Pinkham family realized the potential money-making opportunity in selling remedies, and worked together to produce, market, and sell Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound. The Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company was officially founded in 1876. The company eventually had operations in Mexico and Canada as well as the U.S., and its trademark was registered in Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and East Asia. In 1968 the company was sold to Cooper Laboratories of Connecticut (later of California).

This collection documents five generations of the Poor family, members of which were active in the clergy, business and social movements in New England. The collection centers on Henry Varnum Poor (1812-1905), a railroad journalist and economist, and his wife Mary (Pierce) Poor (1820-1912), a participant in social reform movements who for fifty years was minister of the First Church of Brookline, Massachusetts. Also represented are the Pierce family: John Pierce and his wife Lucy (Tappan) Pierce, daughter of Benjamin Tappan, who was a progenitor of the abolitionist family; Lucy (Pierce) Hedge and her husband Frederic Henry Hedge (1805-1890), a transcendentalist minister; Henry Varnum Poor's children, including Henry William Poor (1844-1915), a New York banker; and Henry Varnum Poor's grandchildren. The collection contains correspondence, diaries, financial documents, notebooks, sermons, photos, and clippings. Subjects include social life and customs in New York and New England, Unitarianism, women missionaries, and the rights of women. See also the Additional papers of the Poor Family (partially digitized).

Rebecca Primus, an African American educator and member of the Hartford Freedmen's Aid Society, was the eldest of four children in the prominent free black family of Holdridge and Mehitable "Hettie" Primus in Hartford, Connecticut. Her paternal grandfather was an African slave who won his freedom by fighting with the American army during the Revolutionary War. Primus traveled to Royal Oak, Maryland, toward the end of the Civil War to teach newly liberated black people. Primus was an active letter-writer, and this collection consists of letters from friends and family discussing daily activities, health and sickness, community events, and local race relations, including lack of entertainment opportunities for people of color and prejudice among whites.

Partially digitized.
Pruitt was a writer, educator, and social worker who grew up in China as the daughter of Southern Baptist missionaries. After attending school in the United States, Pruitt returned to China as a teacher and principal of Wai Ling School for girls in Chefoo (1912-1918). The Rockefeller Foundation later appointed her chief of the Department of Social Services at Peking Union Medical College (1921-1939). During the Japanese occupation she and social reformer Rewi Alley organized Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (CIC), an international committee that worked to promote Chinese self-sufficiency. She served as executive secretary (1939-1952) of Indusco, the American fundraising arm for the CIC. She was also the author and translator of a number of books, including Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman (1945), Yellow Storm (1951), and China Childhood (1978).

Ann (or Annie) Dorsey Read Reeves came from a prominent family in Delaware. Her pro-Southern sympathies led her to move to Arkansas during the Civil War. She traveled by boat to Virginia and by train to Tennessee, and then settled with her children in a home near Lake Chicot, near the Mississippi River. The collection consists of a bound manuscript diary recording her thoughts and feelings, travels, local customs, neighbors and friends, attitudes towards politics, wartime scarcities, interactions with soldiers, and housekeeping concerns.

Partially digitized.
Sandler was director of the Project on the Status and Education of Women (PSEW) of the Association of American Colleges from 1971 to 1991. She worked with the Center for Women Policy Studies, the National Association for Women in Education, and the Women's Research and Education Institute. She pioneered research into campus sexual harassment, gang rape, and a "chilly climate" for women on campus. She was an active member of the Women's Equity Action League and the Weal Fund in the 1970s, and from 1975 to 1982 was a member of the National Advisory Council on Women's Educational Programs.

This collection consists of recipes from the Clarkson-Masters-King family (1793-1826). It includes one volume (1793) which was, according to family tradition, passed around so that family members could add recipes; the volume ended up in France before being returned to Marion Schlefer.

Partially digitized.
An executive secretary and world traveler (Barnard College, B.A., 1911), Schoedler had a variety of jobs; during the 1930s she was an assistant and hostess for Edward A. Filene, the Boston businessman. She traveled on every continent except Antarctica, and this collection documents her travels through diaries, correspondence, notes, and reports.

Louisa Levite Sommers escaped from Nazi Germany in 1937, staying first in London before sailing for New York. Her family settled in Terre Haute, Indiana, for a couple of years before moving to New York City in 1941. This collection consists of a memoir entitled Looking Back, written in 1941 when Louisa was living in New York and attending high school. She describes her childhood in Germany, how her family left Germany and came to the United States, and her schooling.

Partially digitized.
Bonnie Spanier graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1967 and received her doctorate inMicrobiology and Molecular Genetics from Harvard University in 1975. She was an assistant professor of biology at Wheaton College from 1975 to 1978. From 1978 to 1980 she was a fellow at the Bunting Institute (now the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program) at Radcliffe College, where she began a series of interviews with women scientists to look at their experiences as women within a male-dominated field. Many of the interviewees, like Spanier, were Bunting fellows at the time of their interviews. Spanier continued interviewing women scientists after her fellowship ended and also interviewed a few men. She interviewed medical scientist Joan Borysenko and botanist Ruth Patrick several times, with the intention of writing a book about the two women, thereby comparing and contrasting the lives of women scientists at different stages of their careers. This book was never written and the ultimate use to which Spanier put those and the other interviews is not apparent.

Partially digitized.
A physician and lecturer on family planning, Standish was born in 1902 in Hartford, Connecticut. A graduate of Wellesley College (1924) and Cornell University Medical College (1928), she worked at Philadelphia General Hospital (1928-1930), Bellevue Hospital (1930-1931) and St. Louis Maternity Hospital (1931). The following year she accepted an appointment to teach obstetrics at the Woman's Christian Medical College in Shanghai. Returning home in 1934, she became medical director of the first birth control clinic in Connecticut, which opened in July 1935; birth control was then illegal in Connecticut and most other states. The clinic closed in 1940, following the arrest of staff at a similar clinic in Waterbury. The digitized materials in this collection document Standish’s time in China.

Partially digitized.
Edna Lamprey Stantial (1897-1985) was secretary of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government and archivist of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. As Maud Wood Park's close friend and secretary, Stantial collected papers of leading figures in the movement for women's rights. The digitized portions of this collection include materials related to the Blackwell family, including correspondence, photographs, biographical and financial papers of Alice Stone Blackwell; her parents, Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell; her aunt Elizabeth Blackwell; and other members of the Blackwell family. Other digitized materials include correspondence and paraphernalia related to the Woman's Journal. The Stantial collection is included with full-text searchability in the Blackwell Family research guide.

Partially digitized.
Doris Stevens was active in organizations for the advancement of women both in the United States and internationally. She was a suffrage organizer and a member of the National Woman's Party and the Lucy Stone League, and she served as chair of the Inter-American Commission of Women (1928-1939). In 1931 Stevens became the first woman member of the American Institute of International Law. She was also an author and composer.

Partially digitized
The Swanton family represented here begins with Margaret Lewis, who married William Gay and settled in Maine. Digitized material in this collection includes Margaret Lewis’s commonplace book, from approximately 1759, which comments on the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood.

This collection includes correspondence of Tappan family, the Winthrop family, and the Patten family. These papers include letters, sermons, hymns, wills, deeds of land, and other legal documents. This material contains letters from Elizabeth Bowdoin Temple (Winthrop) Tappan to her father Thomas Lindall Winthrop, as well as letters with her husband the Reverend Benjamin Tappan.

Penologist (University of Oregon, B.A., 1908, M.A., 1910; Clark University, Ph.D., 1913) Miriam Van Waters' most noted work was as superintendent of the Reformatory for Women in Framingham, Massachusetts (1932-1957). Her liberal views on penal reform brought her both praise and condemnation. In January 1949 she was fired because of alleged administrative failings, such as condoning lesbianism among the "students" (as she called the prisoners) and failing to supervise a work-release program properly. After a lengthy hearing process she was reinstated. Van Waters was the author of Youth in Conflict (1925) and Parents on Probation (1927). Van Waters also served as director (1919-1920) of El Retiro, a school for delinquent girls in California, referee (1920-1930) for the Los Angeles County Juvenile Court, consultant for the Wickersham Commission (1928-1931), and on a number of other boards and commissions. The collection includes correspondence, diaries, notes, lectures, speeches, articles, reports, scrapbooks, photos, clippings, and printed material document Van Waters's personal and professional life. See also Papers of Anna Spicer Gladding and Miriam Van Waters and Records of Friends of Framingham for more related material.

Elizabeth Wentrous was a midwife. This collection consists of handwritten testimony of Wentrous, Lydia Bayly, and Rebecca Coan concerning the parentage of a child (1693-1694).

Dorothy West was an African American writer best known for her 1948 novel The Living Is Easy. Nicknamed "the kid" by Langston Hughes, she was the youngest member of the Harlem Renaissance, and during the Depression, she worked for the Federal Writers Project. See also the Black Women Oral History Project for an interview with West.

Dr. Priscilla White attended Radcliffe College (1917-1919) and graduated from Tufts University Medical School, third in her class (1923). White first met Dr. Elliott Proctor Joslin when she was a fourth year medical student. Joslin was a pioneer in the study of diabetes and the first doctor in the United States to specialize in the disease. In 1922, Joslin recruited White to work in his laboratory and test new medications for diabetes. In 1924 she joined his practice, becoming the youngest member of the team that would establish the Joslin Diabetes Clinic in Boston, Massachusetts. Joslin assigned White to develop programs for juvenile diabetic patients.White's research helped to increase the fetal survival rate at the Joslin Diabetes Clinic and other diabetes clinics around the country from 54 percent in the 1920s to 97 percent by the 1980s.

The Woman’s Journal was the official organ of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. It was edited by Julia Ward Howe, Lucy Stone, Thomas Wentworth Higgins, and others and published in Boston, MA, between 1870 and 1912. All issues have been digitized and are accessible without a Harvard ID online through Harvard's Library Viewer.

Explore the history of Radcliffe College through digitized annual reports, College and alumnae publications, student publications and newspapers, yearbooks, photographs, archival collections, and more.

Partially digitized.
This collection of papers concerning women and men involved in the woman's rights movement formed the nucleus of the Women's Archives, which is now the Schlesinger Library. Highlighting the work done in Massachusetts, the collection primarily documents the suffrage movement and also the gains for women in government participation, protective legislation, and employment opportunities after 1920. It includes papers of and about little-known women, suffrage leaders, and professional women; records of suffrage groups; and information on international peace activities.