Today In Herstory

1751: Margaret Corbin born (fought in American Revolution)

• after taking over her husband’s cannon in battle on Manhattan Island, now called Ft. Washington, New York, Margaret Corbin was badly wounded. She was the first woman to receive a military pension.  During the Battle at Fort Washington on November 16, 1776, Corbin went with her husband onto the battlefield.  Her husband was a matross, which meant he loaded the cannon.  Corbin helped him with this task.  After her husband’s partner was killed, he took over firing the cannon, and Corbin began loading the cannon.  Her husband was also killed, but Corbin continued firing the cannon alone.  Other soldiers took notice of her excellent aim. Unfortunately, so did the British who were soon targeting her with their own cannons. On July 6, 1779, the Continental Congress awarded her with a lifelong pension equivalent to half of the amount a man would receive.  She was the first woman to receive a pension.

1790: Letitia Christian Tyler born (First Lady, wife of John Tyler; she appeared at no social functions except the White House wedding of her daughter; she died while Tyler was still President)

1815: Elizabeth Cady Stanton born (reformer: suffrage)

• feminist, suffragist, organized first U.S. women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls in 1848, first president of the National Woman Suffrage Assn. In 1848, Cady Stanton and Mott did hold the first Woman’s Rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York. She wrote “The Declaration of Sentiments,” calling for changes in law and society – educational, legal, political, social and economic – to elevate women’s status, and demanding the right to vote. Those present at the convention signed the Declaration. That same year, Cady Stanton also circulated petitions throughout New York to urge the New York Congress to pass the New York Married Women’s Property Act. Cady Stanton met Susan B. Anthony in 1851, and the two quickly began collaboration on speeches, articles, and books. Cady Stanton’s intellectual and organizational partnership with Anthony dominated the woman’s movement for over half a century. Cady Stanton died in October 1902 in New York City, eighteen years before women gained the right to vote.

1908: Ann Petry born (African American, journalist, writer)

• an American author who became the first African American woman writer with book sales topping a million copies for her novel The Street. She enrolled in college and graduated with a Ph.G. degree from Connecticut College of Pharmacy in New Haven in 1931 and worked in the family business for several years. She also began to write short stories while she was working at the pharmacy. On February 22, 1938, she married George D. Petry of New Iberia, Louisiana, which brought Petry to New York. She not only wrote articles for newspapers such as The Amsterdam News, or The People’s Voice, and published short stories in The Crisis, but also worked at an after-school program at P.S. 10 in Harlem. It was during this period of her life that she had realized and personally experienced what the majority of the black population of the United States had to go through in their everyday life.

1994: Wilma Rudolph died (Olympic athlete)

• Athlete Wilma Rudolph was born the twentieth of twenty-one children and battled polio until the age of 12, at which time she could walk normally and decided to become an athlete. While in school, she played for the basketball team, earning a full scholarship to Tennessee State University. She graduated in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in education. Rudolph competed in the Olympics for the first time in 1956, winning a bronze medal for the 4×4 relay. She returned to the Olympics in 1960, where she became the first American woman to win 3 gold medals in the Olympics. Her achievements in the Olympics led her to become one of the most celebrated female athletes of all time. She then worked as a teacher, track coach, and sports commentator and was the mother of four children. She died from brain cancer in 1994.

Quote for Today

“Thus far, women have been the mere echoes of men. Our laws and constitutions, our creeds and codes, and the customs of social life are all of masculine origin. The true woman is as yet a dream of the future.”          – Elizabeth Cady Stanton