Digitizing American Feminisms

Before Evelina Belden served with the Red Cross in Poland, she worked for and lived in Hiram House. Defying the conventions of marriage and careers for women in the early twentieth century, Belden pursued social work throughout her life.
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From 1890 until her death in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Susan Rowena Bird worked as part of a group of missionaries in Shanxi known as the Oberlin Band. Retroactively labeled imperialist, Susan Rowena Bird participated in the larger forces of U.S. imperialism or the compulsory gender norms that coded the work of “civilizing.”
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The Oberlin Colony founding covenant mandated abstinence from alcohol, and Oberlinians were firm in advocating for temperance beyond their own borders. Local WCTU members sought to move past partisan politics to advocate for their sisters worldwide.
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Luella Miner, one of three missionaries featured in this collection, wrote, “The women of China will be saved by women.” This captures both the imperialism and independence that categorized the motivation of Oberlin women to participate in domestic missions on Native American reservations and overseas.
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Wells’ impressive career in the United States and globally is not only a testament to her skills as a medical practitioner, but to her perseverance to pursue a career almost exclusively held by men and a scientific doctrine that preached, among other inaccuracies, that thinking too much would make women sterile.
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Frances Densmore pioneered the field of ethnomusicology for women through her preservation of Native American song and music – by mistreating Native Americans in order to collect songs and music. Densmore’s strong relationship with women faculty and professors at Oberlin likely inspired her to pursue a challenging profession herself, one in the sciences.
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Adelia Field Johnston’s mark on Oberlin College was profound, as the college’s first female professor and fundraiser for almost every nineteenth century building on campus. Through her prestige and personal success, Johnston was a testament to women’s education and coeducation.
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Lucy Stone was a prominent abolitionist and suffragist, leading groups such as the American Equal Rights Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. Stone’s view of enfranchisement for African Americans distinguishes her from contemporaries Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
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Lucy Stanton Day, a free-born African American woman, graduated from the Oberlin College Ladies’ Department in 1850, giving the commencement address “A Plea to the Oppressed.” This project focuses on her eligibility to teach at a missionary school for freed people in the South during the Civil War.
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Mary Burton, teacher and member of temperance and reform societies, married Giles Waldo Shurtleff, Union captain for Ohio companies. Their letters provide a window on conceptions of romantic love, as well as growing tensions between female education and domesticity.
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