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Historic Women - B
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Ida
B. Wells Barnett (1862-1931) - Born in Holly Springs,
Mississippi, Ida Wells would become African-American educator,
newspaperwoman, anti-lynching campaigner, and founder of the NAACP.
When both her parents died of yellow fever when she was just 16 years
old, she dropped out of high school and found employment as a school
teacher. In 1880, she moved to Memphis and became a part-owner of the
Memphis Free Speech newspaper, launching her activist career.
Though a mob ransacked her offices and threatened her life if she did
not leave town, she stood steady.
In 1895 she moved to
Chicago, where she
married a widower and African-American rights advocate named Ferdinand
Barnett. The couple published the Chicago Conservator, where
Ida wrote many articles on the lynchings taking place in the south, as
well as beginning to lecture widely. She was a founding member of the
National Afro-American Council, served as its secretary, and was
chairman of its Anti-Lynching Bureau. Wells was also a founder of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Wells-Barnett continued her tireless crusade for equal rights for
African-Americans until her death in 1931.
Anne
Bassett (1878-1956) - The daughter of Herb and Elizabeth
Basset, who owned a ranch in the isolated area of Brown's Hole, near
the
Wyoming,
Colorado,
and
Utah
border, Anne was the first white girl to be born in Brown's Hole.
Butch Cassidy and the
Wild Bunch were frequent visitors to the ranch and often courted
both Anne and her sister Josie. Anne's father was an unassuming man
who allowed his wife, Elizabeth, to run the ranch.
During this time, there were a number of
large cattle barons who wanted to take over Brown's Hole and Anne's
mother, in the midst of a feud with the large cattlemen began to do a
little cattle rustling of her own. As Anne grew up, she took up
her mother's feud against the cattle barons, especially against the
Two Bar Ranch. Helping herself freely to their cattle, she was soon
dubbed the "Queen of the Rustlers."
When rumors began to fly that Anne and her
mother were intentionally running Two Bar cattle over the cliffs out of
spite, the cattle barons hired
Tom Horn to infiltrate Brown's Hole. After warning Matt Rush,
Isom Dart, and other area ranchers to leave the area, he shot and
killed the two men when they refused to vacate.
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When Ann Married H. Bernard the manager of
the Two Bar, he was quickly fired. The marriage lasted six years.
When Ann was caught rusting cattle from the "enemy" ranch, she was tried
but acquitted. In 1928, Ann married a man named Frank Willis and the two
settled in a small southwestern
Utah
town where she lived until her death at the age of 78. Over the years,
many believed that Ann Basset and Etta Place were the same women; however,
most historians have discounted these allegations.
Elizabeth
Blackwell (1821-1910) - Originally from England, Blackwell
immigrated with her family to the United States in 1832, when she was just
11 years old. Well educated as a child, her family was very religious
Quakers and she grew up to become an anti-slavery proponent.
She first became a teacher, but, knew that
what she wanted to become was a doctor. She took up residence in a
physician's household, using her time there to study from the family's
medical library. She then began to apply to a number of medical school,
but, was turned down time and time again. She was finally accepted at
Geneva Medical College but, that was a fortuitous “accident.” When the
college received her application, the faculty put it to a student vote.
The students thought her application was a hoax perpetrated by a rival
college, and voted her in. By the time they found it wasn’t a joke, it was
too late. During her training, she suffered prejudice at the hands of the
professors and students alike but, in the end, would prove them wrong when
she graduated at the head of her class in 1849 and became the first woman
to earn a medical degree in the United States.
Her struggle wasn’t over; however, as she was
banned from practice in most hospitals. Though she was advised to go to
Paris to continue her training, she chose instead to continue training as
a student midwife. In 1857, Elizabeth, along with her sister, Dr. Marie
Zakrzewska, who had followed in her footsteps to become a doctor, founded
their own infirmary in New York, treating indigent women and children. She
would go on to train numerous women as nurses in the
Civil War, open the
first training school for nurses in the United States, and establish a
Women's Medical College in England. When she retired she continued to work
for the women’s rights movement and published books about diseases and
proper hygiene.
In 1907 Blackwell was injured in a fall from
which she never fully recovered. She died on May 31 1910 at her home
in Hastings in Sussex, England after a stroke. She was buried Saint Mun's
churchyard at Kilmun on Holy Loch in the west of Scotland.
Celia Ann "Mattie"
Blaylock (1850-1888) - Born in Wisconsin, Mattie was raised in
Fairfax, Iowa until she ran away from home at the age of 16. She then made
her way to
Kansas where she first worked as a prostitute in Scott City
before moving on to
Dodge City.
There, she met
Wyatt Earp around 1873 and
soon became his romantic companion. She continued to work as a prostitute
during their early years together. Living and working together, Mattie
utilized the last name of "Earp" and by the time they moved on to
Tombstone,
Arizona in 1879, she would have been considered his
"common-law" wife. She allegedly suffered from severe headaches and became
addicted to laudanum, which was commonly used as a pain killer at the
time. As her addiction became worse,
Wyatt's eyes began to stray in
Tombstone and started up an affair with Josephine Marcus. After Morgan Earp was killed in March, 1882,
Virgil, along with the Earp women,
escorted his body home to Colton,
California.
Wyatt sent Mattie along with
the others while he and Warren stayed to begin the
Earp Vendetta Ride.
Mattie waited for
Wyatt's telegraph that she should return to
Tombstone,
but it never arrived. In the meantime,
Wyatt was getting more and more
involved with Josephine, who he would later marry. Finally, Mattie
left
California and moved to Globe,
Arizona,
where she returned to prostitution. On July 3, 1888, she took a lethal
dose of laudanum in Pinal City,
Arizona. Her
death was ruled suicide. She was laid to rest in the cemetery about one
mile from the old town site.
Sara Bourdett, aka: Great
Western (1813-1866) - Born in Tennessee, Bourdett went to Texas at
the outbreak of the Mexican War and followed the troops driving a buggy
and cooking for the soldiers. Packing two pistols and standing six foot
tall, she quickly earned the nickname "Great Western," after the massive
ship that was the second steamer to cross the Atlantic Ocean. She caught
up with Zachary Taylor and his troops at Matamoros, Mexico and set up her
cook tent throughout the campaign, providing meals for the officers of the
5th Infantry and 2nd Dragoons. In 1849 she became so ill in Chihuahua that
she was forced to return to the United States, but after she recovered,
she once again set up her cook tent for the soldiers in El Paso, Texas.
She followed John Glanton, Texas soldier and infamous scalp hunter, to
Yuma, Arizona. There, she married A.J. Bowman and later died there. While
providing her assistance to the troops she was bestowed an "honorary
brevet" as a colonel for her services in Mexico. Her remains were later
re-interred at the Presidio at San Francisco,
California.
Mary
Elizabeth Bowser (1839?-??) - Born as a slave on John Van
Lew's plantation in Richmond, Virginia, Mary Elizabeth remained as such
until Mr. Van Lew died in 1851. At that time, Mrs. Van Lew and her
daughter, Elizabeth, freed all of their slaves, in addition to buying
members of their slave families from other owners and freeing them as
well. Elizabeth Van Lew, an outspoken abolitionist, soon arranged for
Bowser to be educated in Philadelphia. However, when tensions increased
between the North and South, Bowser returned to the Van Lew household,
where she worked as a servant. Soon thereafter, she married a free Black
man named William (or Wilson) Bowser.
Despite her abolitionist sentiments, Elizabeth Van Lew was a prominent
figure in Richmond, though secretly she was regularly sending reports to
Union officials about activities in the South. To further her cause, she
recommended Bowser for a position in Jefferson Davis' household, where
Mary Elizabeth would become a prominent Union spy. Household members and
guests assumed that Bowser was an illiterate slave and therefore spoke
openly in front of her about battle strategies and often left important
papers lying about that Bowser would read. The information was quickly
passed to Union informers which ultimately led to the Confederate defeat.
Unfortunately, what happened to Mary Bowser after the war is unknown,
including the date and details of her death.
Marie
Isabella Boyd (1844-1900) - Best known as Belle Boyd, and often
called "La Belle Rebelle," and the "Cleopatra of the Secession," Belle was
a Confederate spy in the
Civil War.
Born at Martinsburg, West Virginia, she was the oldest child of
Benjamin Reed and Mary Rebecca Glenn Boyd. Her career as a
spy occurred after a band of Union army soldiers tore down a confederate
flag hung outside her home in 1861 and replaced it with a Union flag. To
make matters worse, when one of the soldiers cursed at her mother, Belle
was so angry that she shot him down. Though she was exonerated by a Board
of Inquiry, Union sentries were posted around the home and her father's
hotel in Front Royal, carefully scrutinizing her activities. Little did
they know, she was watching and listening to the soldiers just as
thoroughly. Listening to their talk and charming at least one of the
officers into revealing military secrets, she passed on valuable
information, via her slave, Eliza Hopewell, to Generals Turner Ashby and
"Stonewall" Jackson during the Shenandoah Valley Campaign in the spring of
1862. For her contributions, Stonewall Jackson awarded her the Southern
Cross of Honor and made her an honorary captain and aide-de-camp on his
staff.
However, she was betrayed by her lover and arrested on July 29, 1862. Held
for a month in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, she was exchanged a
month later. She then went into exile with relatives but was again
arrested in June, 1863, this time spending several months in prison,
before being released in December. Suffering from typhoid fever, she then
went to England to try to regain her health in 1864. There, she
met
and married a Union naval officer named Samuel Wylde Hardinge. who died in
October, 1866 when his ship went down.
She
then became an actress in England before returning to the United States in
1869. that same year, she married John Swainston Hammond in New Orleans
and, after a divorce in 1884, married Nathaniel Rue High the next year. in
1886, she began touring the country giving dramatic lectures of her life
as a
Civil War
spy. She died while touring in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin on June 11, 1900
at the age of 56.
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The "Unsinkable Molly Brown"
This
image available for photographic prints
HERE!
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Margaret "Molly"
Tobin Brown (1867-1932) - Better known as "The Unsinkable
Molly Brown," who survived the sinking of the Titanic, Margaret Tobin
originally came from humble beginnings. Bron in Hannibal,
Missouri
on July 18,1867, she was one of six children of Irish immigrants. In
1883, Molly's older sister Mary, and her husband Jack Landrigan, moved
to
Leadville,
Colorado
to work in the mines. Three years later, Molly and her brother Daniel
followed them to the rough and tumble mining town. While Daniel went
to work as a miner, Molly took a job in a department store. Soon,
Molly met James Joseph (J.J.) Brown, an enterprising and self-educated
miner. In 1886, they married. While in
Leadville,
Molly became involved in women's rights, helping to establish the
Colorado
chapter of the National American Women's Suffrage Association. She
also established a soup kitchen to assist miners' families.
In the meantime, her husband, J.J. was moving up at
his job at the Little Johnny Mine, becoming a superintendent.
However, when he invented a method that could reach gold at
the very bottom of the mine, proving instrumental to the Little
Johnny's owners, the Ibex Mining Company, he was awarded 12,500
shares of stock and a seat on the board. The Browns became
instantly wealthy and in 1894, moved to Denver, where they became
active in social, philanthropic, and political circles. The
Browns had two children.
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Though J.J. and Molly were privately separated in
1909, they remained close until his death in 1922. In 1912,
Molly was on a European tour with her daughter when she learned
that her oldest grandson was ill. She immediately booked first
class passage back to the U.S. on the first ship that was
available, the Titanic. When the ship collided with the
iceberg and began to sink, she helped many others to the lifeboats
before being forced into one herself. The French Legion of Honour
recognized Molly in 1932 by awarding her for her efforts during
the sinking and her work with miners and women and children. Margaret Tobin Brown died of a brain tumor on
October 26, 1932 in New York City. She is buried at the Holly Rood
Cemetery in Westbury, New York.
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Laura
Bullion, aka: Della Rose, Rose of the Wild Bunch (1876?-19??) - Born in Knickerbocker,
Texas
around 1876
to a German mother and a Native American father, she met
outlaws
William Carver and
Ben "The Tall Texan" Kilpatrick when she was just a teenager. Knickerbocker was a haven of
outlaws
and Laura's own father was a bank robber, so it came as no
surprise when the young girl followed a life of crime. When she was just 15 years-old she began a romance with
Will Carver, who had been married to her aunt until she had
recently died.
Carver often worked with
Black Jack Ketchum robbing trains before he moved on to
Utah
and hooked up with
Butch Cassidy
and the
Wild Bunch,
where Laura ultimately ended up too. Somewhere along the line,
Laura transferred her affections to
Ben Kilpatrick, who cast his lot
with the
Wild Bunch in
1898. Laurie Bullion often helped the gang by fencing goods and
money for them and was known to the group as Della Rose and often
called the "Rose of the
Wild Bunch."
Having taken part in
several train robberies with the
Wild Bunch,
Kilpatrick and Bullion returned to
Texas
with
William Carver, where
Carver was ambushed and killed by lawmen on
April 1, 1901. Bullion and
Kilpatrick then fled to
to
St. Louis,
Missouri,
where they were arrested on November 8, 1901. Kilpatrick
was found guilty of
robbery and sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Laura was sentenced
to five.
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Laura Bullion was also known as
"The Rose of the
Wild Bunch."
This
image available for photographic prints
HERE!
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After serving 3 1/2 years,
Laura was released from the
Missouri State Penitentiary at Jefferson
City,
Missouri, on September 19, 1905 and lived the last years of her
life in Memphis, Tennessee, under the name of Freda Lincoln, making
her way as a seamstress and a dressmaker. She passed away on December
2, 1961 and is buried in Memphis under a tombstone that reads, "Freda
Bullion Lincoln—Laura Bullion—The Thorny Rose." She never saw
her lover Ben Kilpatrick again. Kilpatrick, on the other hand,
was released from prison in June, 1911 and immediately returned to a
life of crime. While
trying to rob a Southern
Pacific express near Sanderson,
Texas,
on March 13, March, 1912, he was killed with an ice mallet.
Continued Next Page
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