May 28, 1995 - Episode 303 - Women of Achievement and Herstory

      Julia Smith (born 05-27-1792) was 82, and her sister Abby
(born 06-01-1797) was 77 in 1874 when they were notified the family
farm they had inherited had been reassessed and $100 added to its
value.  They discovered that the property values of two widows of
the town had likewise risen "while not one acre owned by the voting
males of Glastonbury had been reappraised."
      (In those days no women were allowed to vote or to speak in
public.)
      The sisters refused to pay the increased taxes.  "To be sure,"
Abby wrote later, "it increased our tax but little, but what is unjust
in least is unjust in much."  
      Abby and Julie were the two surviving of the five daughters
of Hannah Hadassah Hickock, who was a linguist, mathematician,
astronomer, and poet.  One of the earliest anti-slavery petitions
presented before Congress by John Q. Adams was drawn by Hannah
Hickock Smith and bore the names of 40 women of Glastonbury.  None
of the sisters married and historical writer Elizabeth G. Spears tell
the charming story that one brave lad decided to go a courtin'. 
After a couple of trips, one of the sisters faced him and asked him
which one he was eyeing, saying that she could stay and waste her
time while the others went about their business.  He fled and never
came back, much to their relief.
             >> Continued Tomorrow - Part II of The Marvelous 
                         Smith Sisters of Connecticut <<

05-28 Anniversaries ...............................................

       May 28, 1858, Lizzie Black Kander, thousands of immigrants
and poor in the Milwaukee area received help with a hand up from
this remarkable woman.  Starting with organizations that distributed
food and clothing to needy immigrants, she joined others in forming
the city's first settlement house, which she headed as president from
1900-1918.  It offered domestic and vocational training, academic
studies, and recreational facilities.  As a 1901 fund-raiser, the
settlement house printed a cook book with paid ads. In 1914, LBK
took over the cook book and its profits enabled the Settlement House
to continue its work. Still in print many years after Lizzie's death in
1940, _The Settlement Cook Book, Treasured Recipes of Seven
Decades_, continued to sell more than a million copies in 23 editions.
LBK used $75,000 of the royalties to organize the Milwaukee Jewish
Center. She was primarily responsible for the creation of a girls'
vocational school in the city. 

       May 28, 1934, five identical girls, Cecile, Annette, Yvonne,
Emilie and Marie, are born to Oliva Dionne in Ontario, Canada, and
become a world-wide rage. Their father, Elzire Dionne, signed to have
them exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair only hours after they
were born and the Ontario provincial government intervened and took
custody. 

      Event: May 28, 1939, Helen Hadassah Levinthal becomes the first
Jewish woman to receive a degree from a Jewish college of theology. 
She became a Master of Hebrew Literature awarded by the Jewish
Institute of Religion.  

      Event May 28, 1963: Congress passes the Equal Pay Act which
provided (on paper) equal pay for equal work without sex
discrimination.

Quotes du jour ...............................................

      "The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things
move on the surface."
             -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton


>>>(C) 1995 Irene Stuber, PO Box 6185, Hot Springs National Park, AR
71902, irenestuber@delphi.com. Distribute verbatim copies freely with
copyright notice for non-profit use. Don't let anyone tell you there
weren't notable and effective women throughout history.  They were
always there, but historians failed to note them in our histories so
that each generation of women has had to reinvent themselves. <<<