Women's History

In September 1927, the scion of a great Detroit automotive manufacturing family met with Pres. Calvin Coolidge on the White House lawn to be presented with a major motorsports trophy. This person was not a Ford or an Olds and also had not been behind the wheel of a race car. Delphine Dodge Cromwell, daughter of Grosse Pointe Farms residents Horace and Anna Dodge, was meeting with President Coolidge to be awarded the trophy for winning the American Power Boat Association President’s Cup, and she was the first woman to do so. In addition to having quiet streets, architecturally distinct homes, and one of the most beautiful drives in America, Grosse Pointe Farms is the source of many engrossing stories rich in history and cultural significance. In this book, readers can learn of the Grosse Pointe High School graduate whose tragic story led to a battleship being named for him, the Democratic Michigan governor and Grosse Pointe Farms native who was elected to that office a record six times, and the Republican governor who led a civil rights march that ended up at the high school football stadium. In the entertainment world, stars like the Supremes and Emmy Award–winning actress Julie Harris have ties to this gracious city.

Retired educators Terry and Barbara Nelson, whose two sons are Grosse Pointe South High School graduates, have scoured local school, church, and town archives—as well as private sources in locations ranging from the West Cost to Italy—to secure unique images of life in Grosse Pointe Farms over the decades.

Wells College, founded in 1868 by businessman Henry Wells, boasts a storied history that spans over a century and a half. Using images and ephemera from the Wells College Archive and Special Collections, Tiffany Raymond, MLIS, and Daniel G. Renfrow, PhD, illustrate the college's rich history and the unique traditions that continue to inspire generations of students to pursue knowledge, leadership, and positive change in the world.

Established as a women’s college in Aurora, New York, Wells fulfilled the founder’s dream of making a “College Home” for students while simultaneously pioneering women’s education, providing opportunities for intellectual growth and leadership long before women’s rights were fully recognized. Throughout this history, the college has adapted to the evolving needs of the students and the wider society, including transitioning to coeducation in 2005 to better serve a diverse student body. Wells College’s commitment to academic excellence, social responsibility, and community engagement remains unwavering, making it a beacon of higher education in the picturesque Finger Lakes region.

Tiffany Raymond, MLIS, is director of the Louis Jefferson Long Library at Wells

College and a member of the class of 2010. Daniel G. Renfrow, PhD, is an associate professor of sociology and chair of the Social Science Division at Wells College. 

Hillsboro was carved out of the thick woods of central Highland County in 1807. The small village soon built itself up from a collection of rough log buildings to a place of considerable prominence in southern Ohio. Blessed with an unusually healthy climate and rich surrounding farmlands, the town became an important business center and transportation hub. It was the home of many state and federal officeholders, including a multiterm governor of Ohio. Hillsboro became a center of women’s education as early as 1839, with as many as three women’s colleges in operation at one time. In 1873, many of these college-educated women launched the Women’s Temperance Crusade against the sale of liquor, which led directly to the federal passage of Prohibition in 1919. 

Tara Beery is a retired veterinarian with a passion for Hillsboro’s history. She lives in Hillsboro with her husband, son, and daughter. The Highland County Historical Society opened its archives to provide the historical photographs for this collection. Special effort was made to select images that have not been used in previous histories, though some old favorites will be found among these less-seen photographs.

When fearless and resourceful frontier women settled in Tampa Bay, they paved the way for dauntless suffragettes and the evolution of the modern woman.

Bay area suffragettes Eleanor Collier McWilliams Chamberlain, Elizabeth Robins, Julia Harrison Norris, and Elizabeth Askew fought tirelessly for the 19th Amendment and contributed to the evolving institutions of the 20th century that began to give women a voice--the woman's club, garden club, and welfare league. Covering the gamut from the Rosie Riveter types in the embodiment of prize-winning welder Margaret Clark Miller to the courageous female athletes such as Olympians Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Brooke Bennett and the first women council members and mayors of Tampa Bay area towns, perspectives were evolving. From the plight of women farm workers, Depression-era factory labor, and the changing world of women's work, Trailblazing Women of Tampa Bay offers a glimpse into the lives of female war heroes, entrepreneurs, and risk takers.

Madonna Jervis Wise is a lifelong educator, having served as an administrator in three large Florida school districts. Wise's first college degree was in history, and her most endeared area of research continues to be local history and genealogy. Wise volunteers with Tampa Bay area libraries and museums and does several presentations annually. Publications have included curriculum, 11 previous books, and regular columns for local newspapers.

Vassar College was founded in 1861, two miles from the banks of the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie by Matthew Vassar, a self-made businessman.

The college grew to confirm its founder's precedent-breaking vision that women would profit from intellectual opportunities in the liberal arts similar to those that Ivy League institutions had long offered the other gender. The college has grown and changed with the times, first countering Victorian prejudices that women were not suited for serious study, always leading the way as opportunities to broaden the spectrum of women's education developed. In the tumultuous decade of the 1960s, Vassar College again broke precedent, turning itself from a single-sex institution into one in which true coeducation exists. After 139 years, Vassar is poised for the changes under way and yet to come in the twenty-first century.

Produced through the Greek Women's University Club, this is a collection of the struggles and triumphs, the pathos and joy of five women who immigrated to the United States.

Greek women pioneers faced a difficult life when they arrived in the xenia (""strange land"") from the rural farms of Greece. They did not speak English, were bewildered by crowded Chicago and the alien culture, and unlike their male family, often did not have opportunity to work outside the home. Yet these brave, spirited women triumphed over adversity and embraced their adopted country to become exemplary citizens. Chronicling the stories of Georgia Bitzis Pooley, Presbytera Stella Christoulakis Petrakis, Theano Papazoglou Margaris, Venette Tomaras Askounes Ashford, and Senator Adeline J. Geo-Karis, this book showcases the life stories of immigrant pioneer women, their families, friends, and the emerging Greek-American community of Illinois.

Those early pioneers paved the way for women who would play baseball as both amateurs and professionals up to the present day. Some were headlining stars on barnstorming teams, while others organized and operated their own teams, and from the 1890s through the 1930s they were known as Bloomer Girls, due to the baggy pants created by Amelia Bloomer. In 1988, the American Women's Baseball Association began play in the Chicago area. With play starting in 1990, the Washington (DC) Metropolitan Women's Baseball League is now the oldest operating women's amateur baseball league in the country. In 2001, a true baseball World Series was held in Toronto, Canada, with women's baseball teams from the United States, Canada, Japan, and Australia. That event will celebrate its fifth season in 2005.

First with the Chicago Sun, then the Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune, the Duchess's newspaper career ran parallel to the 20th Century. She covered, as she called it, "blood, guts and sex," as well as presidents, natural disasters, women's issues, and-notably-humanitarian causes.

This volume, the first on the life and career of Virginia Marmaduke, reprints many of the famous articles from her Chicago heyday. Additionally, it documents her childhood in Carbondale, Illinois, her first newspaper job, and her return to Southern Illinois where she became a community booster, humanitarian, and beloved "all-Illinoisian."