In 1870, the widowed Mary Lincoln and her son Tad, who had already been in one war zone in Washington, D.C., found themselves in another as France and Prussia faced off. Mary Lincoln in mourning after the death of her son Willie (my collection) After her husband’s assassination, Mary refused to return to Springfield, Illinois.[1] Although the Lincolns owned a home at Eighth and Jackson Streets there, and three of her married sisters lived nearby, Mary was on chilly terms with many of her former neighbors. She decided instead to make her home in Chicago. Accompanied by her sons Robert and Tad ..read more

In 1851, a new word entered the fashion lexicon: the “Bloomer.” It referred not to undergarments but to what had been known previously by such names as the “reform dress” and the “Turkish dress”: essentially, a short dress paired with pantaloons, in place of the constricting women’s garments of the day. It would become associated with women’s rights activists, especially with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and the woman who accidentally bestowed her name upon the garment, Amelia Bloomer. Unidentified woman from my collection Although the dress reform movement first attra ..read more

In researching my forthcoming novel on Ernestine Rose, I quickly found that biographers knew little about her family–only the names of her husband William Ella Rose and the three nieces that she named in her last will and testament. Knowing that genealogical information is far more accessible now than it was to her biographers, I set off to discover what I could. To my delight, I managed to identify Ernestine’s parents, four of her siblings, and one of her two children–and stumbled across a secret as well. (Hint: William Ella Rose, Ernestine’s beloved husband, was her second husband.) After al ..read more

National Portrait Gallery: Stanton and Anthony photographed by Napoleon Sarony ca. 1870 In July 1863, the infamous “draft riots” roiled New York. Among those caught up in the violence were the two people most associated with the nineteenth-century women’s rights movement: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s husband, Henry Stanton, had been appointed Deputy Collector of the New York Custom House in 1861. Elizabeth Cady Stanton seized this opportunity to move from Seneca Falls to the metropolis with her family. In 1863, the family was living at 75 West 45th Stre ..read more

In nineteenth-century London (and apparently into the 1960s), it was possible for the venturesome to climb all the way to the interior of the golden ball surmounting St. Paul’s Cathedral in London (right below the cross). One of those who made the effort was the intrepid feminist Ernestine Rose, who along with her husband was traveling abroad in the summer of 1856. Ernestine wrote in a letter to the Boston Investigator on July 6, 1856, “In St. Paul’s, after seeing the library, we went up to the Whispering Gallery, the clock, and the ball under the cross. It is 510 feet from the crypt; twelve ..read more

A while back, I was fortunate enough to acquire this letter written by John Brown, Jr., the oldest son of the abolitionist John Brown, just a few months after his father’s ill-fated raid on Harpers Ferry and his subsequent execution. John writes from his Ohio home to his family in North Elba, New York: his married sister, Ruth Brown Thompson; his stepmother, Mary; his half-sisters, Annie, Sarah, and Ellen; his half-brother Salmon Brown; and his widowed sister-in-law Isabel “Bell” Brown. Presumably he anticipated that the letter would be handed around freely; hence the “cousins.” John Jr. had n ..read more

Ernestine Rose, the subject of my novel-in-progress, was a contemporary of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Ernestine was much closer to Susan B. Anthony, who accompanied Ernestine to Washington, D.C., in 1854, defended Ernestine against those who would have kept her off the platform because of her open atheism, and visited Ernestine, a recent widow, in London in 1883. Ernestine was also on good terms with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, however, and the two women were instrumental in getting the New York State legislature to pass an act in 1848 granting married women certain property righ ..read more

Early feminist Ernestine Rose, the heroine of my novel-in-progress, and her husband William changed residences multiple times during the more than 30 years they resided in New York City, which means that they frequently had to cope with what was known as Moving Day. Harpers Weekly, 1859 Until well into the 20th century, most residential leases in New York City expired on May 1, meaning that on that day, much of the population would be changing houses simultaneously. Diarist George Templeton Strong wrote on May 1, 1844, “Never knew the city in such a chaotic state. Every other house seems to be ..read more

I couldn’t resist this charming poem and accompanying illustrations, apparently given as a contribution to a scrapbook in the early 1860s. (Sadly, I have only this page, not the rest of the scrapbook.) In case you have difficulty reading the poem, here’s a transcription: I’ve been requested in this book To write lines old or new By one I gained a knowledge of On the 5th Avenue. (The street where Harry Alxxn (?) walks On pleasant afternoons With sundry showy specimens Of young female Balloons.) ‘Tis thought the ladies seldom love A specimen of “Mose”, But some an interest take I fear In “Met ..read more

A while back, I posted on the solemn subject of Victorian postmortem photography. Here’s a more lighthearted aspect of nineteenth-century photography: the phenomenon of what collectors have nicknamed the “hidden mother.” Contrary to legend, having a picture taken didn’t mean that the subject had to stand still for minutes at a time, except in the earliest days of photography. Yet even with comparatively short exposure times, a wiggly subject could mar a photograph, and what subjects were squirmier than infants and young children? So if a parent wanted an image of his or her little darling by ..read more