The Complete List of Historical Women - Last Name Begins with "W-Z"

Historic Women - W-Z

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Jemima Warner (17??-1775) - Probably the first woman to be killed in action during U.S. wars, Jemima was the teen-aged wife of Private James Warner of the Pennsylvania Rifle Battalion during the American Revolution. Fearing he might become sick or wounded along the campaign trail, she wanted to be with him if such an event occurred. Unfortunately, that would be the case as the troops marched towards Quebec, Canada. Supplies were scarce and smallpox was rampant through the troops. In Maine, an ailing James Warner fell behind the rest of the troops and Jemima stayed with him. When he died, she buried his body under some leaves, took up his rifle and powder, and ran 20 miles to catch up with the battalion. Serving as a cook for the troops, the company tried to approach Quebec under a white flag to discuss terms with their enemy. However, they were driven off by British cannons. Changing strategies, they then dressed Jemima Warner in a borrowed formal gown and the woman marched through some 800 yards of deep snows to deliver a proposal to the British, which was promptly torn up and Jemima was imprisoned. Five days later, she was released. She returned to the battalion. However, a short time later during the Siege of Quebec, she was killed by British guns on December 11, 1775.

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) - Born in Pepin, Wisconsin on February 7, 1867, Laura was the second of five children born to Charles Philip and Caroline Lake (Quiner) Ingalls. Laura first started school at the age of four in Pepin, but father, Charles, dreamed of going West to pioneer unsettled lands. Over the next several years, Laura would attend school only sporadically, as the family moved to Kansas, Minnesota, and Iowa before finally settling in DeSmet, South Dakota, where Laura finally attended school full-time.

During these many moves, the family encountered difficult times, as grasshoppers destroyed their crops two seasons in a row, a winter of continuous blizzards threatened their supplies, and constant financial struggles and the family moved from place to place. Laura's brother, Charles Frederick, died when he was just nine months old and sister, Mary lost her eyesight at the young age of 15 after an illness.

After father, Charles, accepted a railroad job, the family faired better and Laura continued her education until the age of 15 and earned her teaching certificate, helping her family financially. After meeting homesteader Almanzo Wilder, the two married August 25, 1885, Laura stopped teaching, helped Almanzo with the homestead, and had their only child, Rose, on December 5, 1886.

In their early years, the couple faced a number of difficulties including Almanzo being partially paralyzed after a life-threatening bout of diphtheria, the loss of a still-born son, losing their home and barn in a fire, and a severe drought that left them in major debt. In 1890, they left South Dakota, first moving to Minnesota, then to Florida, returning to South Dakota, before finally settling down in Mansfield, Missouri in 1894. After many years of hard work, they finally began to prosper

Laura began to develop her writing abilities editing the Missouri Ruralist for 12 years and as she grew older began to write of her life experiences as a pioneer. Her first book was an autobiography called Pioneer Girl, but she was unable to find a publisher. Later, she rewrote a section of the book into a fictional novel called Little House in the Big Woods. It was published in 1932 when she was 65 years old. An immediate success, she began to write an 18 volume series based on her young life. After suffering two heart attacks, Almanzo Wilder died at the age of 92 on October 23, 1949. Eight years later, Laura suffered a stroke and died on February 10, 1957. Both Almanzo and Laura are buried at the Mansfield Cemetery in Wright County, Missouri.

Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838-1927) - Born in Homer, Ohio on September 23, 1838, she was one of several children whose parents ran a traveling medicine show, doing faith healings, telling fortunes, and selling medicines. She received no formal education and was self taught. When she was just 15, she married 28 year-old Canning Woodhull, who practiced as a doctor at a time when medical education and licensing were not required to practice medicine in Ohio. She soon larned that her new husband was an alcoholic, a womanizer, and often didn’t work. Thought the couple had two children, she divorced him in 1864, a time when "divorce,” itself was a scandal. A couple of years later, Victoria remarried a Colonel James Blood and in 1868, the pair, along with her younger sister, Tennessee "Tennie” Claflin, moved to New York City.

Victoria and Tennie soon set out to make their fortunes and the pair became the first female Wall Street brokers in 1870. With the help of wealthy benefactor, her admirer, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Woodhull, Claflin & Company began and the two women were hailed as "the Queens of Finance." The sisters also established a newspaper the same year, which published controversial opinions advocating women's suffrage, short skirts, spiritualism, free love, sex education, and licensed prostitution. Widely criticized for promiscuity, she answered these charges in her own weekly newspaper.

Due to her radical views, she was not accepted by many known suffragists of the time, such as Susan B. Anthony, but in 1872, she was nominated for the U.S. presidency at the New York convention of the minor Equal Rights Party, running against incumbent Ulysses S. Grant. Although laws prohibited women from voting at the time, there were no laws stopping women from running for office. Obviously, she wasn’t a threat, but does have the fame of being the first woman to run for the job.

Friends of President Ulysses Grant decided to attack her character and she was accused of having affairs with married men, brought up her first husband’s alcoholism, and said one of her sisters was a drug addict. Fighting back, she was convinced that popular minister of time, Henry Ward Beecher, was behind the attacks and she published a story in her newspaper that the minister was having an affair with a friend’s wife.

On November 2, 1872, just days before the presidential election, Victoria, her husband, James Blood, and her sister, Tennie were arrested for sending obscene material through the mail. Held for the next month, she was in jail on election day and her name did not appear on the ballot because she was one year short of the mandated age of 35. Over the next seven months Woodhull was arrested eight times and had to go through a number of trials for obscenity and libel. She was eventually acquitted of all charges but the legal bills forced her into bankruptcy. Though extremely controversial, the newspaper stayed in publication for six years, finally ceasing to exist in 1876. That same year, she obtained her second divorce from James Blood.

Woodhull tried to secure nominations for the presidency again in 1884 and 1892 but was unsuccessful. She eventually married the English banker John Biddulph Martin and left the United States for England in 1878. There, she continued to campaign for women's rights and in 1895 she established the Humanitarian newspaper. She died on June 9, 1927.

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