ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Birth: 1906 -

Death: 2001
Achievements: Arts, Science


Anne Morrow Lindbergh first won literary acclaim when she was very young.

At her graduation from Smith College, she won the Mary Augusta Jordan Prize for the most original literary piece and the Elizabeth Montagu Prize for the best essay on women of the 18th Century. The novels, essays and diaries she later composed have been described as 'small works of art." In 1929, her life dramatically changed with her marriage to America's "last hero," aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. Throughout their marriage the legendary pair flew together constantly on goodwill tours and on business trips to explore transcontinental routes for commercial aviation. In the early 1930s, she became the first woman in the United States to obtain a glider pilot license.

In 1931, she received her private pilot's license. Later, they covered 30,000 miles over five continents. For her part in the expedition, Lindbergh received the United States Flag Association Cross of Honor. In 1934, she became the first woman to receive the National Geographic Society Hubbard Gold Medal, one of several awards won for her piloting and navigational skills. Throughout her aviation career, Lindbergh continued to write.

Her first book, North to the Orient, chronicled the couple's flight in a single engine airplane over uncharted routes through Canada and Alaska to Japan and China.

Listen! The Wind documents their 30,000-mile survey of north and south Atlantic air routes.

In all, Lindbergh published 11 major works. Her 1955 essay, "Gift from the Sea," led the non-fiction bestseller list for many weeks, and a special anniversary edition was reissued 25 years later.

ANNE HUTCHINSON

Anne Hutchinson

Birth: 1591 - Death: 1643
Born In: , England
Died In: New York, United States of America
Achievements: Humanities
Educated In:
Countries Educated In:
Schools Attended:
Worked In: Massachusetts
Countries Worked In: United States of America

"She was a woman of haughty and fierce carriage, a nimble wit and active spirit, a very voluble tongue, more bold than a man," said Governor John Winthrop of religious pioneer Anne Hutchinson, whom he expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638 for her insistence on practicing religion as she chose, and on preaching herself. An émigré from England who settled in the New World in 1634,

Anne Hutchinson came under fire from the colony elders when she began expounding her theology at meetings in her home.

She believed in a "covenant of grace," in which faith alone was enough to achieve salvation. Others disagreed, and when Winthrop became governor, Hutchinson was banished and excommunicated.

She moved with her family to the area of the country that became Rhode Island, and after her husband's death, she moved to Long Island, where in 1643 she and five of her six children were killed in an Indian attack. This advocate of freedom of religion, the right to free assembly and women's rights was honored in the naming of the Hutchinson River and the Hutchinson River Parkway.

ANNE DALLAS DUDLEY

Anne Dallas Dudley

Birth: 1876 - Death: 1955
Born In: Tennessee, United States of America
Died In: Tennessee, United States of America
Achievements: Humanities
Educated In: Tennessee
Countries Educated In: United States of America
Schools Attended: Ward Seminary, Prince College
Worked In: Tennessee
Countries Worked In: United States of America

In the final years of the struggle to pass the 19th Amendment to the Constitution giving women the right to vote, Anne Dudley was central to both the national campaign (serving as National Director) and the critical struggle in her home state of Tennessee, which was to become the 36th and final state to support women's suffrage, thus making the Amendment the law of the land. Dudley, a woman of elegance and high social standing, ignored the natural constraints of her position to speak out with great force and persuasion on behalf of suffrage. She viewed women's voting as "a matter of simple justice," and became the founder and first president of the Nashville Suffrage League, and president of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association. In 1917 she was chosen Vice President of the National American Women's Suffrage Association, working closely with President Carrie Chapman Catt in planning the master strategies of the campaign that finally succeeded in 1920. Dudley became a vigorous and outspoken campaigner throughout the South, matching her speeches with articles for publication and work introducing legislation. Dudley became the first woman in Tennessee to make an open-air speech, given after she led a march of 2,000 women from downtown Nashville to Centennial Park -- the first suffrage parade in the South, in May 1914. She was also the first female associate of the Tennessee Democratic Committee, and the first female delegate-at-large of the National Democratic Convention in 1920. Throughout her life and political career, Dudley lived and modeled her conviction regarding women and the rights they were due: "This is a government of, by and for the people, and only the law denies that women are people!"

ANNIE JUMP CANNON

Annie Jump Cannon

Birth: 1863 - Death: 1941
Born In: Delaware, United States of America
Died In: Massachusetts, United States of America
Achievements: Science
Educated In: Delaware, Massachusetts
Countries Educated In: United States of America
Schools Attended: Wilmington Conference Academy, Wellesley College, Radcliffe College
Worked In: Massachusetts
Countries Worked In: United States of America, Peru

Astronomer Annie Jump Cannon perfected the universal system of stellar classification still in use today, and compiled the largest accumulation of astronomical information ever assembled by an individual - the Draper Catalog. Cannon was an assistant at the Harvard Observatory beginning in 1896, and working with Williamina Fleming, she undertook a continuation of the project of recording, classifying and cataloging all stars down to the ninth magnitude.

The resulting classification system by temperature was her concept, and was universally adopted. More than a quarter of a million stars were so classified, and published as The Draper Catalogue in nine volumes, from 1918 to 1924. Cannon became curator of astronomical photographs of the Observatory in 1911 and professor of astronomy in 1938.

She published the Draper Catalogue Extension in two volumes (1925 and 1949), with thousands more stars catalogued. These works were of enormous value to the science of astronomy, and forever secured Cannon's place in scientific history. Cannon was a women's suffrage advocate and a member of the National Women's Party.

ANTOINETTE BLACKWELL

Antoinette Blackwell

Birth: 1825 - Death: 1921
Born In: New York, United States of America
Died In: New Jersey, United States of America
Achievements: Humanities
Educated In: New York, Ohio
Countries Educated In: United States of America
Schools Attended: Monroe County Academy, Oberlin College
Worked In: Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey
Countries Worked In: United States of America

As the first woman minister of a recognized denomination (Congregational), Antoinette Brown Blackwell worked throughout her life to validate women's public role by challenging traditional barriers that restricted them. Blackwell encountered traditional restraints on women's intellectual endeavors and social action when she was not permitted to participate in classroom discussions, attend graduation or be awarded a preacher's license when studying theology at Oberlin College in l850 (the institution later awarded her honorary master's and doctoral degrees). Following ordination, she served as a pastor in Wayne County, New York and later as a visiting pastor - serving as role model to other young women seeking a life's work in the ministry. Blackwell married and had seven children. Throughout her life, she engaged in philosophical and scientific studies, publishing eight books and many essays. Blackwell was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was a leader in the women's rights movement. She was one of the few movement pioneers who lived long enough to cast her ballot in 1920 when the suffrage Amendment was enacted.

ANN BANCROFT

Ann Bancroft
Birth: 1955 -

Born In: Minnesota, United States of America
Achievements: Education, Science
Educated In: Oregon
Countries Educated In: United States of America
Schools Attended: University of Oregon
Worked In: Minnesota
Countries Worked In: United States of America, Greenland, North Pole, South Pole (Antarctica), Canada

A lifelong athlete and educator whose love for the wilderness includes sharing it with others, Ann Bancroft is the first woman to travel across the ice to the North Pole (as the only female member of the Steger International Polar Expedition) in 1986. One of the world's most respected polar explorers, Bancroft also was the first woman to travel east to west across Greenland on skis, leading the first American women's team (1992). She was team leader of the AWE (American Women's Expedition), a group of four women to have skied over 600 miles pulling heavy sleds to the South Pole (1993). A teacher who triumphed over her own struggle with dyslexia, Bancroft also coached numerous sports. She is an instructor for Wilderness Inquiry, an organization that helps disabled and able-bodied individuals experience wilderness adventure. She has developed educational curricula for teachers from elementary school through college, in mathematics, science, geography, the environment and women in non-traditional roles. Bancroft is committed to and involved with numerous health concerns, including multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and those with learning disabilities. Bancroft has also worked as an active volunteer for women's health research, literacy efforts and the Special Olympics.

ANGELINA GRIMKE WELD

Angelina Grimk Weld

Birth: 1805 - Death: 1879
Born In: South Carolina, United States of America
Died In: Massachusetts, United States of America
Achievements: Humanities
Educated In:
Countries Educated In:
Schools Attended:
Worked In: Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey
Countries Worked In: United States of America

Sarah and Angelina Grimke eloquently fought the injustices of slavery, racism and sexism during the mid-19th century. As daughters of a prominent South Carolina judge and plantation owner, the Grimke sisters witnessed the suffering of slaves. Determined to speak out, they were eventually forced to move to the North, where they continued to appeal to northerners and southerners to work toward abolition.

They also urged white northerners to end racial discrimination.

The Grimke sisters were pioneering women. Among the first female abolitionists, they were the first women to speak publicly against slavery, an important political topic. Faced with criticism from clergy and others that they were threatening "the female character," they continued their crusade. In 1838, Angelina became the first woman to address a legislative body when she spoke to the Massachusetts State Legislature on women's rights and abolition. Active in the women's movement, they helped set the agenda later followed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and others, calling for equal educational opportunities and the vote. One historian said of Sarah's writings: "[They were] a milestone on the road to the Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls" and "central to the feminist writings in the decades that followed." Sarah was one of the first to compare the restrictions on women and slaves, writing that "woman has no political existence . . . . She is only counted like the slaves of the south, to swell the number of lawmakers." After the Civil War, they continued to champion the causes of equality and women's rights. Through their examples and their words, the Grimke sisters proved that women could affect the course of political events and have a far-reaching influence on society.