Biography collection, 1771-1995 (bulk 1920s-70s).

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Biography collection, 1771-1995 (bulk 1920s-70s).

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/49516938

This collection consists of biographical material related to both well-known and unknown women and men whose lives spanned the years from 1771-1970s. For the most part, there is only a small amount of material on each individual. Files are organized alphabetically by name. Materials typically include published and unpublished biographical sketches, books, correspondence, diaries, genealogies, newspaper clippings, photographs, and published and unpublished writings. Angela Davis' file also contains legal documents, memoranda, postcards, political buttons, leaflets, petitions, newsletters, trial bulletins, press releases, and political cartoons. Other notable individuals represented include Mary McLeod Bethune, Bernard Baruch, Lizzie Borden, Grace Coolidge, Mary Daly, Hannah Dustin, Dorothy Gish, Julia Ward Howe, Anne Hutchinson, Mother Jones, Helen Keller, Florynce Kennedy, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Rosa Luxemburg, Marie Antoinette, Margaret Mead, Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Victoria Woodhull. Some lesser-known individuals include interesting and significant material as well, such as Ferdinanda Wesselhoeft's personal letters detailing daily life in Germany during the period 1842-1884; the letters and journals of Anna Green Winslow and Mary Hutchinson Parmele dating from the 1770s and 1780s; and correspondence to Ethel Clyde from such famous individuals as Pearl Buck, Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Pauli Murray, Norman Thomas, Mary van Kleeck, Margaret Sanger, and A.J. Muste. Files on Eleanor Roosevelt include published articles and pamphlets by and about her, and correspondence to Gertrude Foster Brown, Eva Hansl, Carrie Chapman Catt, Dorothy Ainsworth, and others. Finally the collection contains a small number of collected biographies including those that document the lives of women associated with Princeton University, White House brides, "women who wanted to be men," and living daughters of presidents.

6.25 linear ft. (17 boxes)

Smith College, Neilson Library

Information

SNAC Resource ID: 7608811

Smith College, Neilson Library

Related Entities

There are 34 Entities related to this resource.

Bethune, Mary McLeod, 1875-1955

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6t839kh (person)

Mary Jane McLeod Bethune (born Mary Jane McLeod; July 10, 1875 – May 18, 1955) was an American educator, stateswoman, philanthropist, humanitarian, womanist, and civil rights activist. Bethune founded the National Council for Negro Women in 1935, established the organization's flagship journal Aframerican Women's Journal, and resided as president or leader for myriad African American women's organizations including the National Association for Colored Women and the National Youth Administration'...

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt, 1884-1980

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w62s4jk4 (person)

Aice Roosevelt Longworth (February 12, 1884 – February 20, 1980) was the eldest child of U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt. Longworth led an unconventional and controversial life. She was married to US Representative Nicholas Longworth III; her only child, Paulina, was from her affair with Senator William Borah. She published her memoir, Crowded Hours, in 1933....

Sanger, Margaret, 1879-1966

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w66b7wgt (person)

Margaret Louise Higgins was born in Corning, New York, on September 15, 1879, the sixth of eleven children and the third of four daughters born to Anne Purcell Higgins and Michael Hennessey Higgins, a stone mason. Her two elder sisters worked to supplement the family income, and financed her education at Claverack College, a private coeducational preparatory school in the Catskills. After leaving Claverack, Higgins took a job teaching first grade to immigrant children, but decided after a short ...

Jones, Mother, 1837-1930

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w66794x8 (person)

Union activist Mother Jones was born Mary Harris in Ireland and immigrated to the United States. She was a school teacher and married George Jones and had four children. By 1867, Jones had lost her family to a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee. By the 1870s, "Mother" Jones began her long involvement in the labor struggle, by participating in various strikes such as the Pittsburgh Labor Riots (1877), the Western Virginia Anthracite Coal Strike (1902), and the Colorado Coal Field and A...

Luscomb, Florence, 1887-1985

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w65r5msm (person)

Florence Hope Luscomb, social and political activist, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on February 6, 1887, the daughter of Otis and Hannah Skinner (Knox) Luscomb. With an S.B. in architecture (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1909), she worked as an architect until 1917, when she became executive secretary for the Boston Equal Suffrage Association. She held positions in the Massachusetts Civic League and other organizations and agencies until 1933, when she became a full-ti...

Flexner, Eleanor, 1908-1995

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6844hnx (person)

Eleanor Flexner (October 4, 1908 – March 25, 1995) was an American distinguished independent scholar and pioneer in what was to become the field of women's studies. Her much praised Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States, originally published in 1959, relates women's physically courageous and politically ingenious work for the vote to other 19th- and early 20th-century social, labor, and reform movements, most importantly the push for equal education, the abolition...

Strauss, Anna Lord, 1899-1979

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6zm6754 (person)

Anna Lord Strauss, civic worker, was born in New York City on September 20, 1899, the daughter of Albert and Lucretia Mott (Lord) Strauss and the maternal great-granddaughter of the abolitionist and woman suffrage leader Lucretia Mott. She was educated in New York City and attended the New York School of Secretaries. In 1918 she became a secretary in the New York office of the Federal Reserve Board. She held several similar positions in state and federal government before joining t...

Van Kleeck, Mary, 1883-1972

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6sz748h (person)

Mary Abby Van Kleeck was born on June 26, 1883, in Glenham, New York, to Eliza Mayer and Episcopalian minister Robert Boyd Van Kleeck. (Mary van Kleeck changed the capitalization of her last name in the 1920s.) Following her father''s death in 1892, her family moved to Flushing, New York, where she attended Flushing High School. She earned an A.B. from Smith College in 1904. In the fall of 1905 she began working as a fellow for the College Settlement Association on New York''s Lower East Side, w...

Howe, Julia Ward, 1819-1910

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6b95zmk (person)

Julia Ward Howe, née Julia Ward, (born May 27, 1819, New York, New York, U.S.—died October 17, 1910, Newport, Rhode Island), American author and lecturer best known for her “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Julia Ward came of a well-to-do family and was educated privately. In 1843 she married educator Samuel Gridley Howe and took up residence in Boston. Always of a literary bent, she published her first volume of poetry, Passion Flowers, in 1854; this and subsequent works—including a poetry collec...

Woodhull, Victoria C. (Victoria Claflin), 1838-1927

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6xm94pf (person)

Victoria C. Woodhull was a woman's rights pioneer who achieved notoriety on many fronts in Gilded Age America. She founded (with her sister Tennessee Claflin) a Wall Street brokerage, with the support and advice of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Woodhull used profits to publish Woodhull & Claflin Weekly, advocating female suffrage, free love, and other progressive causes. Later she addressed House committee on suffrage, and exposed the Beecher-Tilton scandal, implicating celebrated minister Henry War...

Daly, Mary, 1928-2010

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w69w1mpc (person)

Little, Joanna

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w66125xz (person)

Baruch, Bernard M. (Bernard Mannes), 1870-1965

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w62v2fwv (person)

Baruch, a financier and public adviser, was a millionaire by the age of thirty thanks to his investments in the stock market. He put his wealth to use in politics and public affairs and became an adviser to Woodrow Wilson, who appointed him chairman of the War Industries Board and a member of the president's war council. After World War I, he took part in the postwar peace conference and later became an adviser to President Roosevelt on defense matters and industrial preparedness for war. After ...

Murray, Pauli, 1910-1985

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w68m804b (person)

Pauli Murray (1910-1985) was a lawyer, scholar, writer, educator, administrator, religious leader, civil rights and women's rights activist. She was a co-founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the first black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal minister. She spent much of her life in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C. From the description of Proud shoes : the story of an American family : typescript, 1956 / by Pauli Murray. (New York Public Library)....

Marie Antoinette, Queen, consort of Louis XVI, King of France, 1755-1793

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6844g2w (person)

Marie Antoinette (b. Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, Nov. 2 1755, Vienna, Austria–d. Oct. 16, 1793, Paris, France) was the last queen of France. The daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Francis I, her parents and King Louis XV of France arranged a marrage between her and his grandson, Louis-Auguste, later Louis XVI. They were married May 16, 1770 at Versailles; Marie Antoinette became queen in 1774. Known for her oppulance and lavish spending, she was convicted of high treason during French Revo...

Borden, Lizzie, 1860-1927

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w61r6w2n (person)

Lizzie Borden was born July 19, 1860 in Fall River, Massachusetts, to a wealthy family. Her mother, Sarah, died when she was a child. Her father, Andrew, later married Abby Durfee Gray. On August 4th, 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were murdered at home. Lizzie was arrested after making contradictory statements to the police about the murders. She was put on trial for murder on June 5, 1893. The prosecuting attorneys were Hosea M. Knowlton and William H. Moody. The defending attorneys were Andrew...

Duston, Hannah Emerson, 1657-

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6n31328 (person)

Ponsonby, Sarah, 1754 or 1755-1831

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6cz3csw (person)

Sarah Ponsonby was the orphaned daughter of Chambre Brabazon Ponsonby. She lived an unhappy life with relatives in Woodstock, Ireland. She met Lady Eleanor Butler in 1768. Since both women shared a mutual love of the arts, and were both unhappy with their lives, they decided to live a quiet rural life. They left Ireland and they set up home in "Plas Newydd", in Llangollen, North East Wales, in 1780. Because they led an unusual and secluded life, Ponsonby and Buttler became known as the LADIES OF...

Butler, Eleanor, Lady, 1738 or 1739-1829

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6w38234 (person)

Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the British couple known as the Ladies of Llangollen. They set up home in 1780 in Plas Newydd, Wales, and over their fifty years together hosted some of the most celebrated literary figures of the day, including Robert Southey, Wordsworth, Shelley, Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott. From the description of Ladies of Llangollen manuscript material : 5 items, ca. 1790-1825. (New York Public Library). WorldCat record id: 77743699 Lady Elean...

Yaggy, Laura Reed, 1887-1884.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6nk4mn2 (person)

Mead, Margaret, 1901-1978

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6kw5d1c (person)

American anthropologist. From the description of Letter 1968 June 12. (Denver Public Library). WorldCat record id: 38156541 Anthropologist. From the description of Collection re Margaret Mead, 1978-1979. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 71131863 Anthropologist, author, and educator. From the description of Margaret Mead papers and South Pacific Ethnographic Archives, 1838-1996 (bulk 1911-1978). (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 71068917 M...

Sullivan, Annie, 1866-1936

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6tb1xf3 (person)

Annie Sullivan was the teacher of Helen Keller. For biographical information see Notable American Women, 1607-1950 (1971). From the description of Letter, 1902. (Harvard University). WorldCat record id: 232007368 Anne Mansfield ("Annie") Sullivan (1866-1936) became the teacher of Helen Keller (1880-1968) in 1887 upon the recommendation of Michael Anagnos (1837-1906), director of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind in South Boston, Mass., from which...

Muste, A. J. (Abraham John), 1885-1967

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6sx6c4w (person)

Clergyman, pacifist. From the description of Reminiscences of Abraham John Muste : oral history, 1954. (Columbia University In the City of New York). WorldCat record id: 309741542 From the description of Reminiscences of Abraham John Muste : oral history, 1965. (Columbia University In the City of New York). WorldCat record id: 122681124 A.J. Muste (1885-1967). Muste's involvement as a labor organizer began in 1919. When he led strikes in the textile mills of Lawrenc...

Sophia Smith collection

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w65n08xb (corporateBody)

Einstein, Albert, 1879-1955

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w63c6p77 (person)

Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Six weeks later the family moved to Munich, where he later on began his schooling at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Later, they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was...

Coolidge, Grace Goodhue, 1879-1957

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6h41vh9 (person)

Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge served as First Lady of as the wife of the 30th President, Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929). An exceptionally popular White House hostess, she was voted one of America’s 12 greatest living women in 1931. For her “fine personal influence exerted as First Lady of the Land,” Grace Coolidge received a gold medal from the National Institute of Social Sciences. In 1931 she was voted one of America’s twelve greatest living women. She had grown up in the Green Mountain city ...

Luxemburg, Rosa, 1871-1919

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w67n0z3g (person)

Born in Zamość, Russian Poland 1871, died in Berlin 1919; socialist theorist, journalist and agitator; joined the revolutionary socialist group ÌI. Proletarjat' as a schoolgirl in Warsaw in 1887 and had to emigrate in 1889; studied sciences and economics in Zurich; cofounder of the Socjaldemokracja Królestwa Polskiego (i Litwy) (SDKP) in 1894, which she represented in the International Socialist Bureau (ISB) 1904-1914; participated in the Russian Revolution 1905/06; active in the Sozialdemok...

Buck, Pearl S. (Pearl Sydenstricker), 1892-1973

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w66w9g8f (person)

Pearl S. Buck was the daughter of American missionary parents, and spent the first seventeen years of her life in China. Her third novel, The Good Earth, won the Pulitzer Prize, and a Nobel Prize for literature followed, citing The Good Earth as well as her biographies of her parents. Critical reception for her works has been mixed since these early successes. A prolific and optimistic author, most of her fiction is set in China, and she displays great affection for the place and her characters....

Thomas Norman Mattoon, 1884-1968

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6d50kt2 (person)

Norman Mattoon Thomas (1884-1968), was a leading American socialist, pacifist, author, and six-time presidential candidate on the Socialist Party of America ticket, between 1928 and 1948. Born in Marion, Ohio, he was a graduate of Princeton University, attended Union Theological Seminary, where he became a socialist, and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1911. Thomas opposed the United States' entry into the First World War, a position that earned him the disapproval of many in his soci...

Kennedy, Florynce, 1916-2000

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6xw5m66 (person)

Lawyer and feminist, Florynce Kennedy is a founding member of the National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus and the author of Abortion Rap. From the description of Papers. (Harvard University). WorldCat record id: 232007592 Florynce Rae ("Flo") Kennedy, an African American lawyer, feminist, activist, and civil rights advocate, was born on February 11, 1916, in Kansas City, Missouri, the second of five daughters of Wiley Kennedy an...

Stokes, Rose Pastor, 1879-1933

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6s18491 (person)

Rose Pastor Stokes was a Communist and an editor, lecturer, and author. From the description of Letter, 1914. (Harvard University). WorldCat record id: 232007901 Social worker, reformer, and author. From the description of Playscripts of Rose Pastor Stokes, 1913-1915. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 71068623 Rose Pastor Stokes was a factory worker from 1890-1902, and a journalist from 1903-1905. In 1917-1918, she opposed the entry of the United States int...

Hutchinson, Anne, 1591-1643

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6ks7zbr (person)

Gish, Dorothy

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6wm1qtx (person)

Actress whose career spanned the silent film era till the 1960's. From the description of Papers, 1920-1990. (Bowling Green State University). WorldCat record id: 39285335 ...

Keller, Helen, 1880-1968

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6sc4vq1 (person)

Helen Adams Keller (1880-1968) devoted her life to bettering the education and treatment of the blind, the deaf, and the nonverbal, and was a pioneer in educating the public in the prevention of blindness in newborns. Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama on June 27, 1880. When Helen Keller was 19 months old she became ill with Scarlet Fever, which resulted in her becoming blind and deaf. In her autobiography The Story of My Life, a book she first wrote in 1903 at the age of 23, she desc...