When Madame Marguerite Steinheil paid an illicit call on President Félix Faure at the Palais de l’Élysée, no one could have predicted a scandal–and a farce–beyond imagination. Had Mme. Steinheil been your average concerned French citizen, the afternoon appointment with the portl[...]
Archive for the ‘Women’ Category
August 8th, 2010 - 8:00 am § in Women
Fascinating Women: Florence Foster Jenkins
America is the land of dreams and opportunity, and Florence Foster Jenkins was wealthy enough to take advantage of this. Born to wealthy Pennsylvanians, Florence expressed an interest in music at an early age. She took piano lessons during her childhood and adolescence, but when at adulthood, she ho[...]
July 25th, 2010 - 8:00 am § in Women
Fascinating Women: Lutie Lytle
Though Lutie A. Lytle (1871/5-1950) was not the first black woman lawyer in America (the second, in fact), she was the first black woman to practice law in the South, when in 1897, she passed the bar in Tennessee. She then moved to Topeka, Kansas, where she then became the first black woman lawyer i[...]
July 11th, 2010 - 8:00 am § in Women
Fascinating Women: Dr. Yamei Kin
Dr. Yamei Kin (1864-1934) was a contradiction. The product of American-upbringing and Chinese heritage, she held the traditional values of the turn-of-the-century, but was both modern and fiercely feminist. Her parents were progressive, especially her mother, who, despite submitting to the tradition[...]
May 23rd, 2010 - 7:00 am § in Women
Fascinating Women: Charlotte Hawkins Brown
To upwardly mobile African-Americans of the first half of the twentieth century, the names Charlotte Hawkins Brown and Palmer Memorial Institute were synonymous with class and breeding. Countless schools, colleges, and institutes arose from the ashes of the Civil War with the aim of educating and up[...]
May 9th, 2010 - 7:30 am § in Women
Fascinating Women: Mrs. Leslie Carter
For most girls of the Gilded Age, marrying a wealthy man was success enough, but for Mrs. Leslie Carter, this was the least of her accomplishments, which would eventually outstrip the coup in marrying up. A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Caroline Louise Dudley was born to Orson Dudley, a moderately [...]
Fascinating Women: Lily Elsie
With her button nose, piles of heavy, lustrous brunette locks, and doe eyes, Lily Elsie walked across the stage as a child star and into the hearts of Victorian and Edwardian audiences, where she remained for the majority of her life. She was born Elsie Hodder to an unmarried seamstress in West Ridi[...]
Women’s Colleges & Universities: Smith College
When Sophia Smith made plans to bequeath her fortune to the foundation of a women’s college in the sleepy town of Northampton, Massachusetts, she laid the foundation for one of America’s premiere women’s colleges: “1) the educational advantages provided by it would be equal t[...]
