RECOGNIZING WOMEN IN HISTORY —
ONE JANE AT A TIME.

“Jane by Jane is my save-the-date card sent to you…”

America will be celebrating its 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies in 1776. Jane by Jane is my save-the-date card sent to you in anticipation of the big day in 2026. I’m counting (down) but not in minutes/hours/days but in “Janes”—one Jane at a time.

Meet the Janes of history.

  • Jane is the name Jamestown archaeologists gave to a 14-year-old English girl; they excavated a dozen parts of a skull and shin bone dating to the “starving time’ winter of 1609-1610. The bones were found in a trash deposit of what once was James Forts.

    From the fragments forensic anthropologists have been able to reconstruct the story of a long-forgotten young woman.

    She was likely lower-class, as were many of the new settlers in 1609; the tableware in the trash was wooden, not pewter, which indicates Jane’s lower-class

    She lived during a drought. It was the driest period in 800 years.

    She was cannibalized, as her remains indicate. Starvation and the settlers’ recourse to eating the unthinkable are recorded in this diary.

    Jane (d. 1609 or 1610) shows how agonizingly close Jamestown came to failing.

  • The mother of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known best by his pen name, Mark Twain.

    Jane died thirty years before women had the right to vote.

    When women still had no right to vote in the 20th century, Mark Twain told a group of girls about Jane at the Hebrew Technical School for Girls in Hartford, NY on January 20, 1901. “Time sometimes leads to crime.” Because for all this time, time since 1848, the laws affecting women are a disgrace.

    The New York Times reported that Twain had been invited to the school “to tell us what he thinks of women.” (January 21, 1901). Twain told them

    “For twenty-five years, I've been a woman's rights man. I have always believed, long before my mother [Jane] died, that, with her gray hairs and admirable intellect, perhaps she knew as much as I did. Perhaps she knew as much about voting as I.

    I would like to see the time come when women shall help to make the laws. I should like to see that whiplash, the ballot, in the hands of women.” (Votes for Women)

    Jane was all the proof Twain needed to convince him that women were his equal. But even Twain did not live to see that day. He thought he might. The New York Times reported the sixty-six-year-old Twain saying, “If I live seventy-five years more—well, I won’t—fifty years, then, or twenty-five, I think I’ll see women use the ballot.”

    He didn’t.

    Like Jane, he died years before women had the right to vote.

    Like Twain said, “Time sometimes leads to crime.”

    Call it the Jane Crime. This is the crime of Mark Twain’s mother and the women before her and the women after her and the women after her son pleaded for women’s rights on her behalf but with no success. The crime of Jane is time spent waiting to be equal.

  • Jane G. Swisshelm is one of Pennsylvania’s own, born in Pittsburgh.

    Suspecting Jane had tuberculosis, her mother (Jane Grey Swisshelm “Big Jane”) moved her children to a borough outside of Pittsburgh called Wilkinsburg.

    Jane died on July 22 at her residence in Sewickley, a borough outside of Pittsburgh along the Ohio River. She was 68 years old.

    The hands of Marquis de Lafyette touched her head when she was child, turning her face toward radical ideas. Jane recalls in her book (Half a Century, Chicago, Jansen, McClung & Company, 1880) how schools, including hers, lined up along the pavement to pay Lafayette honor. She remembered General Layfette’s visit to Pittsburgh in 1825: “When he came to where I stood, he stepped aside, laid his hand on my head, turned up my face and spoke to me” (18).

    Jane was a journalist. She contributed to the Spirit of Liberty a newspaper (1841-1847) in Pittsburgh, PA created by the western committee of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. She submitted articles appealing earnestly for the liberty of African Americans. Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter [alternatively Visitor] succeeded the Spirit of Liberty from 1851-1854. Jane took complete editorial charge of it. The Visitor was so successful that it caught the reformist eye of Horace Greely, founder and editor of the New York Tribune, which backed the freedom of African Americans from slavery. Greeley secured Jane as a correspondent to write letters to the Tribune from Washington, D.C.

    Jane opened the way for female journalists by inducing Vice-President Millard Filmore (1850-1853) to open a place for her in the Congressional reporter’s gallery.

    “I asked him [VP Filmore] to assign me a seat in the Senate gallery. He was very surprised and tried to dissuade me. The place would be very unpleasant for a lady, would attract attention, I would not like it, but he gave me the seat. I occupied it one day, greatly to the surprise of the Senators, the reporters, and others on the floor and in the galleries” (Half a Century, 130).

    Though her tenure brief (lasting one day, Jane believed the “novelty” of female reporters in the galleries would wear off. Jane was right. By 1879, there were 20 female reporters in the galleries. A year later, there were none. As it turned out, Jane happened to be more wrong than right about the novelty of female reporters wearing off. Women were not readmitted to the congressional galleries until after World War II. By then, it was the middle of the 20th century, and Jane had been dead for nearly three-quarters of a century.

    Lesson: Sometimes, there is more to “paving the way” than being the first. The first is the first, nothing more and nothing less. But Jane knew this. Her advice on change and progress: “Read good books aloud to your friends, and think and talk about what you have read.” Jane G. Swisshelm, Letters to Country Girls New York: J.C. Riker, 1843.

  • Martha Jane Cannary (A.K.A. Calamity Jane) was born in Missouri on May 1 and died on August 1 in South Dakota. She is buried in the Mount Moriah cemetery in Deadwood, South Dakota.

    When Jane was 12 years old, her family moved West. According to her “autobiography” (Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane / by herself), her family traveled the Overland Route to Montana. If so, they journeyed out of Independence, through Cheyenne, Laramie, down the Green River Valley of Wyoming, and into Utah and Salt Lake City before going north across the desert and mountains of northern Utah across southern Idaho and Montana, roughly 2000 miles.

    It was on the trail of living that the wild frontier claimed her. No one knows exactly how Jane earned Calamity, but sure as shootin’, she made the most of the title. When Jane was fourteen years old, her father died; a year later, her mother died. Evidently, about this time, Jane decided. “they say,” to join the male sex. Her childhood journey West had been her schooling while living on the edge of society. Who would feed her except herself now that her mother and father were dead and gone? Jane was good with a gun and became an excellent mule skinner; this job required her to keep hauling materials to and from job sites with mules. The skinner skillset included outsmarting the mules so they would behave the way the skinner—Jane—needed.

    In effect, Jane had outsmarted the society that wanted her to wear a calico. She needed money to survive the frontier, so she dressed in men’s clothes, cut her hair short, learned how to throw a diamond hitch, and became a mule skinner. The “Diamond Hitch” is one of the most high-tech knots ever created. It was used to tie loads to pack animals.

    In 1876, Jane appeared in Deadwood. The “gulch” was at its peak, crowded with miners, construction workers, ex-soldiers, miners, and muleskinners. Today, she would be considered a woman who can do much the same thing as a man; she was fifty years ahead. Maybe more.

    If Jane had appeared in Philadelphia in 1876, she would have been ridiculed as a rough, tough, unschooled woman. [Read she could not play the piano]. She would have been pictured in the press as a manly woman, a cheat and outlaw of society.

    It just so happened that 1876 was America’s 100th birthday. The Centennial International Exhibition not only celebrated the signing of the Declaration of Independence but was also the first World’s Fair, and it was hosted, fittingly, in Philadelphia.

    At high noon on July 4, 1876, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda J. Gage stood before Independence Hall. On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), he presented a “Declaration of Rights of Women of the United States.” Contrasting America’s celebrated achievements with America’s degradation of women of all races, the document read, “The history of our country the past one hundred years has been a series of assumptions and usurpations of power over woman in direct opposition to principles of just government, acknowledged by the United States as its foundation.”

    The women had been forbidden to present their “Declaration” by Civil War Major General Joseph Hawley, President Grant’s choice to head the “greatest patriotic exhibition in American history.” Yet Susan, Elizabeth, Matilda, and two other Missouri women persevered. Here is Gage’s description of what happened.

    “We went out then through the Hall (Independence) and up onto a music stand, which was unoccupied ….There, Susan read the Declaration. I [Gage] stood beside her, shading her with my parasol. A crowd gathered about, cheered the strong points, and begged for copies.” (Matilda Joslyn Gage to Thomas Clarkson Gage, July 6, 1876).

    Should Calamity Jane have mule-skinned her way to bring feminist materials to the site of Philadelphia’s celebration in 1876, she certainly would have added to the calamity of men standing on one side of Independence Hall praising the nation’s accomplishments and looking back to 1776 while on the other side Susan, Matilda, and three other women reminded the nation how much still needs to be done if America is to be a true democracy.

    Jane would have settled the score of history.

  • No known picture of her.

    Little is known about Jane Sharp. She authored The Midwife’s Book, which was used in early America as a medical and midwife manual.

  • “When I was a student, I wasn’t aware of any LGBTQ role models. I hope I’m part of the last generation who grew up without queer role models to follow.”

    Jane Rigby is an American astrophysicist and Operations Project Scientist at the James Webb Space Telescope. Dr. Rigby was named to the BBC’s list of 100 inspiring and influential women for 2022. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-75af095e-21f7-41b0-9c5f-a96a5e0615c1

    A year ago, the James Webb Telescope [JWST] began its journey to the stars. JWST is an infrared telescope.

    It sees the sky at wavelengths of light that are beyond what our eyes can discern. Rigby explained what this means in a TEDx called “Putting Telescopes in Space” in 2011. https://youtu.be/zfWc9HefUe0.

    Her talk helps us to see what and how the telescope sees what it sees.

    It has been a year since the JWST was launched on Christmas day, 2022, but it “was a present that took six months to unwrap,” said Rigby.

    What a present it has been: Check out the Cartwheel Galaxy (I like to think of it, as “Chakrasana” or the universe in wheel pose).

    Rigby did her undergraduate at Penn State earning a B.S. degree in Physics and a B.S. degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

    WE ARE …

  • No known picture of her.

    We know Jane Milam existed because her husband, Joseph, published an advertisement about her in Ben Franklin’s The Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia) on April 7, 1784. Otherwise, this everyday woman would have been lost to History’s ash can. Ironically, his advertisement preserved Jane’s astonishing spirit.

    What makes Jane extraordinary is that she fled her husband. She became a runaway woman seeking her freedom and independence through “self-divorce.”

    When Joesph Milam placed an advertisement in the newspaper, he claimed that his wife Jane Milam had “eloped from me without just cause …; this is to forewarn all persons from trusting her on my account, as I will pay no debts of her contracting from the date hereof.”

    What if Jane Milam’s husband portrayed himself as a victim of an unvirtuous woman? What chance does Jane—cast as a bad woman—have of being believed? What fate awaited her if she fled, presumably becoming a divorcee if she were believed? Jane doesn’t say. But Abigail Bailey (1746-1815) gives us a glimpse into women's lives during the period after the Revolutionary War. In her memoir published in 1815, Abigail anguishes over the decision to divorce her husband, who had incest with her daughter and numerous sexual contacts with other women. “… to flee, and not be made a monument of civil justice,” she wrote. [Bailey, Abigail Abbot, 1746-1815, and Ethan Smith. Memoirs of Mrs. Abigail Bailey. New York: Arno Press, 1980.]

    The monumental lesson at stake for Jane (and others like Abigail) is a deep, vast, and compelling story in American history. Here is one tiny thread to pull on and out of this history if we want to begin understanding how women's status has fared. The thing is, Jane belonged to her husband. A wife was the husband’s property. If she escaped, what Rubicon did she have to face to make a living?

    Pull on Jane’s dilemma through the fabric of American life for thirty-three years, and you will hit a change at Seneca Falls, the site of the first women’s rights convention in the United States. Let’s look at Jane’s 1784 situation from the eyes of a nineteen-year-old named Charlotte Woodward in 1848.

    Upon seeing the announcement for the women’s rights convention published the day before in the Seneca County Courier, Charlotte grabbed it. She “ran from one house to another in her neighborhood and read aloud the call of a discussion on “the social, civil, and religious conditions and rights of women” to commence in Seneca Falls at Wesleyan Chapel in five days.

    In the early morning of July 19, Charlotte and six friends started their journey to Seneca Falls in a democrat wagon drawn by farm horses. It was about forty miles to the town, but it was easy to get along what are today routes NY 5 and US 20, authorized in 1794. Still, it took them at least four hours. Seneca Falls was also connected by railroad to Rochester, home of the escaped slave Frederick Douglass, who published the North Star, a weekly abolitionist newspaper. The paper's motto, first published in December 1847, included the phrase “Right is of no sex.” Douglass came to the convention, too.

    At Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, Elizabeth Cady Stanton delivered the keynote address to about 300 men and women, mostly from the area. It is unknown how many of the 351 free African Americans (less than 2% of the population living in Seneca Falls) attended the convention. Douglass took on a major role of advocate for women’s rights, and it is reasonable to assume that his thoughts on human freedom attracted other like-minded free African Americans to attend the day’s doings in Seneca Falls.

    Discontent filled the chapel. Discontent. The noise of the crowd, Charlotte recollected in her later years, led her to take her first step into the land of the free. When thirty-two-year-old Stanton told the crowd, “We are assembled to protest a form of government existing without the consent of the governed—to declare our right to be free as man is free … and to take the wages which she earns …,” Charlotte was hooked. She was sick and tired of sewing gloves from leather pieces for fifteen to eighteen hours a day at a wage of about 75 cents to $1.50 per week plus board.

    Seneca Falls confirmed that, though dead and gone, Jane Milam was not alone, not a freak, that something more was possible for her, and that she deserved the right to ask for it. Her winged spirit flew what was likely an abusive relationship. Several decades later, Charlotte felt this spirit move her. When she was ninety-two, she confessed her motives for going to Seneca Falls to her interviewer: “I do not believe there was any community anywhere in which the souls of some women were not beating their wings in rebellion.… Every fiber of my being rebelled, although silently, for all the hours that I sat and sewed gloves for a miserable pittance that could never be mine after it was earned. I wanted to work. I wanted to choose my task, and I wanted to collect my wages.”

    Whatever happened, and whatever caused Jane to flee, the advertisement posted about Jane Milam by Joseph Milam tells us that a new woman ruled by the Declaration of Independence was on the way. Remember this: Jane is the conscience of freedom.

  • After weathering a heart attack in 1926, Jane never regained her health. On December 10, 1931, the day the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to her in Oslo, she was in a Baltimore hospital. She was not the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, but Jane (Double D-‘ed) Addams was America’s first.

    The Nobel Peace Prize is an international award given to those deemed to have done the most to encourage international peace and cooperation. Nobel Laureates lecture on a subject connected with the work for which the prize has been awarded. Jane didn’t—nay couldn’t—speak on her day. An undelivered speech is worse for us because it could have given us an outline with signposts for sure footing to our next place. Since 1901, the first prize was given. Nobel Peace Prize speakers, such as William Faulkner, Martin Luther King, Elie Wiesel, and The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, have summoned us to be architects of our future. If you don’t think words matter in receiving a Nobel Peace Prize, you might want to rethink your position on speech, meaning rhetoric, or perhaps reading a few Nobel Peace Prize speeches might nudge your curiosity to discover why and how rhetoric is a techne (technology) of democracy. In sum, we need speeches to grow and evolve.

    Without Jane’s speech, we can still hear something of her voice through her work, and we can catch her vision for the world through what others have said about her.

    Jane was a feminist and an internationalist and pioneered settlement work, which can be likened to social work. She and her friend Ellen G. Starr leased a large home built by Charles Hull at the corner of Halsted and Polk Streets in Chicago “to provide a center for a higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago” (My Life at Hull House). They recruited well-to-do women to help care for children, nurse the sick, and listen to what troubled people. By the second year, Hull House had 2000 visitors per week. Addams and her friend kept adding on and expanding services, offering things like an employment bureau and a library (which today be equivalent to providing laptops). Eventually, she led investigations on things like milk supplies and sanitary conditions.

    She sought peace in the world. It sounds a bit corny, but peace was a form of doing. Her breath guided her way of acting and living in the world. She strived to find a path for humans to live peacefully or peacefully in times of war. Jane spoke against America’s entry into the First World War. She provided relief supplies of food to the women and children of the enemy nations (see the book Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922).

    Jane obtained the right to vote right before her sixtieth birthday. But not having that right was not limiting her way of being in the world. When she was fifty-one years old, Jane did something—almost unbelievable in an era when women did not have the right to vote.

    She seconded the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt as the Progressive Party’s presidential candidate on August 7, 1912. (The Smithsonian Magazine’s “1912 Republican Convention” details the many facets of party politics in Roosevelt’s ambitions for a third term. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1912-republican-convention-855607/)

    Jane believed that women should make their voices heard in legislation. She thought that women should generate aspirations for political decision-making and leadership and seek opportunities to realize them.

    How dare she nominate a man to the presidency? Dr. Charles W. Eliot, President emeritus of Harvard University, was infuriated and said so. The New York Times published his criticism. “Women have no proper share in a political convention. Never before in our history as a Democratic nation have we gone so far as to permit women to nominate a candidate for the Presidency.” (Aug 21, 1912). How could a woman possibly THINK she has the power to decide who can be or who cannot be a presidential candidate?

    On the other hand, Roosevelt thanked her, sending her a telegraph the next day. Her nomination meant something to him. Of course. But , simultaneously, he was delighted to have her second the nomination because of who she was. Progressive.

    Jane (Double D-‘ed) Addams was a disruptive nonvoter whose political and peaceful operations altered women's status, thereby bettering the world in terms of the justice she established. She died of cancer on May 21, 1935. Fittingly, her funeral was held in Hull House.

  • There was no Jane. She was nobody, but she could be anybody. Yet, there was a Jane. She had a telephone number. “Pregnant? Don’t want to be? Call Jane.” If you called Jane, she never answered. Every one of her calls went straight to the answering machine. You left a number. Jane called you back and got your information. Jane passed it on to Jane.

    Jane is real, even though there is no Jane. Jane is Janes. Janes (the plural of Jane) are real women who formed an underground network that provided illegal abortion services. How do we know this? Laura Kaplan was a Jane. She operated in a group in Chicago called the Jane Collective from 1969 to 1973. Their services were not needed after January 22, 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark decision (Roe v Wade), ruled that the Constitution of the United States conferred the right to have an abortion. Many years later, Laura Kaplan revealed she was a Jane who worked in the presence of a secret organization, code-named Jane, which provided an alternative for women who did not want to be pregnant.

    Kaplan’s book The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service was published by Pantheon Books in 1995. Most of the Janes were not medical professionals. Ironically, one famous doctor was named Jane. Dr. Jane Hodgson, an obstetrician and gynecologist, was convicted of illegally performing an abortion in a highly publicized case in 1970. Dr. Jane was born in 1915, five years before women had the right to vote. Her father was a country doctor, and Jane liked following him as he made calls and attended to his patients in rural Minnesota. She graduated from medical school in 1939 and for decades refused to perform abortions, although women whispered to her for help. What changed Dr. Jane’s mind? Watching women who suffered from complications due to botched abortions.

    The Janes is a 2022 HBO Documentary Film. Here is the trailer for it: https://www.hbo.com/movies/the-janes.

  • Miss Jane taught first, second, and third grades at Maple Cottage School, a private school operated on Little Street in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, from November 1892 until December 1923. Miss Jane became a teacher while she was a high school student. After graduating from Sewickley High School, Miss Jane taught in several schools before she opened the Maple School. She was eighty-one years old when she quit teaching. She died three years later. Miss Jane didn’t retire from the teaching profession. She taught until she couldn’t stand up.

    Miss Jane worked for sixty-three years, starting at a wage in 1863 of approximately $1.00 per week, and by 1923, her teaching wages would never have exceeded $10.00 per week. Even after the middle of the nineteenth century, the standard pay for a woman teacher in many districts was one dollar a week, according to the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics History of Wages in the United States from Colonial Times to 1928. In the 1860s, the usual sum paid to a male master teacher was ten or twelve dollars a month, though a wealthy district might, in exceptional cases, give twenty dollars to retain a man of culture and experience. At the same time, women earned from four to ten dollars per month.

    Miss Jane was 75 years old when women obtained the right to vote and were eligible to vote in the 34thquadrennial presidential election held on November 2, 1920.

  • Jane Toppan was a nurse and serial killer who confessed to murdering at least 31 patients while working in Massachusetts in the late 19th century. Born Honora Kelley in 1857 to Irish immigrants, she was later adopted by a wealthy Boston family, the Toppans. Despite her privileged upbringing, Toppan had a troubled childhood, including the death of her mother and the abuse she suffered from her foster sister. She also began experimenting with drugs as a teenager, which may have contributed to her later crimes.

    In 1885, Toppan began working as a nurse in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she eventually gained a reputation for her calming demeanor and attentive bedside manner. However, she also began administering lethal doses of drugs to her patients, taking pleasure in their suffering and eventual deaths. It’s believed that Toppan’s motivations for her crimes were a mix of sexual gratification and a desire to control life and death.

    Toppan’s killing spree went undetected for years until a colleague at the Cambridge Hospital raised concerns about the high mortality rate of patients under Toppan’s care. Toppan was arrested in 1901 and confessed to her crimes, claiming to have enjoyed the act of killing and often using it to test different drugs.

    Toppan told a lawyer that she was not insane, and she never felt remorse.

    The lawyer said: “Miss Toppan, you must be insane.”

    “Insane,” she repeated, “how can I be insane? When I killed those people, I knew that I was doing wrong. I was perfectly conscious that what one was doing was not right. I never at any time failed to realize what I was doing. Now, how can a person who realizes what she is doing and who is conscious that she isn’t doing right be insane? Insanity is a complete lack of any feeling of responsibility, isn’t it?”

    “Yes,” said the lawyer, “that is correct. But you have no remorse, have you?”

    “No, I have absolutely no remorse. I have never felt sorry for what I have done. Even when I poisoned my dearest friends, as the Daises were, I did not feel any regret afterward. (From St. Paul Globe, July 6, 1901)

    She was found not guilty because of insanity and committed to the Taunton Insane Hospital, where she would spend the rest of her life until she died in 1938.

    The case of Jane Toppan remains one of the most notorious instances of medical serial killing in American history. It also sheds light on the issue of nurse and doctor misconduct, prompting reforms in medical training and increasing scrutiny of medical professionals.

  • A fictional person used to protect the identity of Norma McCorvey in Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973.

    The case began in 1970 when “Jane Roe”—a fictional name used to protect the plaintiff's identity—led to the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. It was decided (7-2) that the unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion was unconstitutional. The law against abortion violated the Ninth and fourteenth amendments’ implied protection of personal privacy.

    Justice Harry A. Blackmun wrote the majority opinion. He reviewed the history of abortion laws in the United States, noting

    Abortions before “quickening” (defined as discernable fetal movement) had not been prohibited until the middle of the nineteenth century

    The right to privacy could be traced back to 1891, including

    Griswold v. Connecticut which gave married people the right to contraception in 1965.

    Eisenstadt v. Baird, which gave single people the right to contraception in 1972.

    Blackmun argued that both of the decisions (right to contraception for married people and for single people) were based on a constitutional right to privacy in matters of sex and procreation.

    Roe v. Wade did not take effect in Illinois immediately. After legal issues were resolved and the courts lifted the Illinois injunction, Roe v. Wade became the law of the land on March 2, 1973.

  • Jane Edna Hunter was an African American social worker and civil rights leader who dedicated her life to helping women and children in need. Born in Virginia in 1882, she was orphaned at a young age and was raised by her older sister. Despite facing numerous obstacles due to her race and gender, Hunter was determined to make a difference in the world and pursued her education at Hampton Institute and the Tuskegee Institute.

    In 1911, Hunter moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where she founded the Working Girls Association, a settlement house for young women who had recently migrated from the South to the city. The organization provided housing, job training, and other support services to help these women navigate their new environment and achieve financial independence. Hunter also established a training program for African American nurses, which helped to improve healthcare outcomes for Black patients in the city.

    Hunter’s most significant achievement was the creation of the Phyllis Wheatley Association in 1921. Named after the famous African American poet,* the organization provided many services to women and children in need, including job training, childcare, and housing assistance. The association also worked to promote civil rights and social justice, and Hunter played a key role in advocating for integrating public spaces and eliminating discriminatory practices.

    Hunter was a tireless advocate for social justice and was recognized for her leadership and commitment to service throughout her life. She received numerous awards and honors, including an honorary doctorate from Western Reserve University, and her legacy continues to inspire and guide future generations of civil rights leaders.

    *Phillis Wheatley, born around 1753 and passed in 1784, holds the distinction of being the pioneering African-American woman to achieve publication with her poetry book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. This remarkable work emerged in 1773, most likely during Wheatley's early twenties.

  • Jane Alexander made history as a pivotal figure in York County’s political and legal landscape.

    Her journey began with remarkable achievements, becoming the first female state House member in York County and the second member of the York County Bar Association.

    In 1965, she secured her place in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives by winning the election in the 92nd District. At that time, only a handful of female legislators served in the House, where she remained until 1969. Her educational background was impressive, earning a bachelor’s degree from Dickinson College in 1951, followed by a law degree from Dickinson College of Law in 1954.

    During the 1950s, the number of female lawyers in the United States was notably lower than it is today. This context underscores the significance of Jane’s entry into the legal profession.

    Notably, Jane Alexander’s path intersected with other prominent figures in law: Sandra Day

    O’Connor graduated from law school in 1952, just before Jane, while Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated first in her class at Columbia Law five years after Jane, in 1959. York County boasted its trailblazing figure in the legal field.

    The legal profession during Jane’s era was predominantly male-dominated, and the representation of women in law significantly lagged at our contemporary levels. She received impactful advice from the first female physician in her hometown, emphasizing the importance of avoiding typing and wearing a hat to assert her professional identity and not be mistaken for a secretary.

    Governor Milton Shapp recognized Jane’s capabilities and appointed her as the deputy secretary of the Department of Agriculture in 1972, a groundbreaking move that made her the first female deputy agriculture secretary in the nation.

    Jane Alexander’s contributions to law and agriculture were highly regarded. In 2001, the York County Bar Association introduced the Jane Alexander Award, honoring women who advanced the legal rights of other women through various means, regardless of whether they were attorneys. Moreover, the Pennsylvania Farmers Union established its own Jane Alexander Award to celebrate individuals, families, organizations, or projects dedicated to preserving family-farm agriculture and rural life.

    Throughout her remarkable career, spanning 65 years, Alexander practiced law in York County, leaving an indelible mark on the legal and agricultural landscapes.

    Jane Alexander’s enduring legacy serves as a guiding light, inspiring a new generation to honor her trailblazing spirit. Her journey is a testament to resilience and determination, encouraging others to fiercely advocate for the principles she championed. In doing so, they carry forward her vision of progress and equality in both the legal realm and the agricultural domain, perpetuating her profound impact on the fabric of York County’s history.

  • Jane Franklin, the youngest sister of American founding father Benjamin Franklin, was born in Boston in 1712. She held a unique place in the Franklin family as the 15th and final child. Despite the limitations of the time that prevented females from attending public schools, Jane's thirst for knowledge led her to acquire the ability to read and write, thanks to the guidance of her brother, Benjamin Franklin. This early education laid the foundation for her remarkable intellect and independence.

    Jane's relationship with her brother was deeply affectionate and impactful. As a young woman, she actively assisted Benjamin in his printing business and later supported him during his European diplomatic missions. The two shared a strong bond, and Jane became Benjamin's trusted confidante and advisor on personal and political matters. Her letters to him showcased her sharp wit and keen interest in science and politics, earning her respect from Benjamin and others in their social circle.

    Despite their close relationship, Jane and Benjamin did experience some differences and disagreements. Political and religious matters were points of contention between them. Benjamin sometimes expressed disapproval of Jane's lifestyle and choices.

    Although Jane and Benjamin corresponded for over six decades after Benjamin left their childhood home, regrettably, the letters Jane wrote before 1758 have been lost. However, before that date, Jane had created a slim book that chronicled her life, and she aptly named it the "Book of Ages."

    Jill Lepore delves into Jane's life and the contents of her "Book of Ages" in her recent work titled Book of Ages. Through Lepore's book, readers gain a deeper understanding of Jane's contributions, challenges, and the historical context in which she lived. Lepore's biography sheds light on this often-overshadowed figure. It brings to life the story of an intelligent and resilient woman who played a significant role in the life of one of America's founding fathers.

    Book of Ages not only provides a rich historical account of Jane Franklin but also serves as a reflection on the complexities of the lives of ordinary people during the early years of American history. The book received critical acclaim for its engaging narrative and contribution to our understanding of the lesser-known figures of the American Revolutionary era.

    Visitors to York can explore the Colonial Courthouse and the Golden Plough Tavern to gain insights into the town's rich history during the Revolutionary period. Similarly, those interested in Jane Franklin's life can delve into her "Book of Ages" and the letters she wrote, gaining a deeper understanding of early American history's personal and social aspects. In celebrating the spirit of Jane Franklin alongside York's historical landmarks, we honor the contributions of lesser-known figures and places playing a significant role in the birth of the United States.