A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life

Foltz, Clara Shortridge

Clara Shortridge Foltz was a pioneering woman attorney who opened the California bar to women lawyers. She practiced law until the age of 80 and innovated the idea of an office of public defender. Foltz was active in the fight for suffrage…

Bittenbender, Ada M.

In 1891 and 1893 Ada M. Bittenbender was a candidate for Supreme Judge of Nebraska. Bittenbender, a lawyer, practiced in Nebraska and before the U.S. Supreme Court. She was a suffragist and attorney for the Woman's Christian Temperance Uni…

Todd, Marion

In 1881, a year after she had been widowed, Marion Todd ran for the office of California attorney general as a candidate of the Greenback Labor Party. She lost but ran ahead of her ticket, having conducted an active campaign of speeches ac…

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

In 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton initiated the call for a woman's rights meeting at Seneca Falls, New York. The members of this historic convention issued the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, among them the demand for woman suffrag…

Diehl, Cora Victoria

Cora Victoria Diehl was elected Register of Deeds for Logan County, Oklahoma in 1890. She was the People's Party candidate and was also endorsed by the Democrats. Diehl was the first woman to be elected to public office in the state of Okl…

Baxter, Annie White

Annie Baxter was elected County Clerk of Jasper County, Missouri in 1890. Her electoral opponent, Julius Fischer, contested the election on the grounds that women were not eligible.Baxter, however, remained in the race; the Greene County […

Lowman, Mary D.

Mary Lowman, a teacher, re-entered public service in 1885, as the Oskaloosa, Kansas deputy register of deeds, after raising a family. Three years later the women of Oskaloosa organized to improve the town and its governance. They establish…

Garner, Eliza A.

Eliza A. Garner campaigned for the office of County School Commissioner in Union County South Carolina in 1888 and 1890. She was not elected in either race. Garner ran on a platform of extending the school and supplying free books to the s…

Peattie, Elia Wilkinson

A well-known writer and literary critic, in 1894 Peattie was nominated to become a member on the Omaha (Nebraska) board of education. Two years later, with five parties contesting the office, she was nominated as a candidate for state univ…

Henry, Josephine K.

Josephine K. Henry was the Prohibition Party candidate for the office of Clerk of the Court of Appeals, in Kentucky in 1890 and 1894. Henry did not win these races. She was also named as a candidate for State Superintendent of Instruction …