Highlights Archives
Wisconsin Women Make History
The stories of the many remarkable women of Wisconsin's past are scattered throughout history books, many times listed as merely a footnote. These were strong, talented women who led tribes, served the country during wartime, fought for equal rights, and held together their families during the most difficult of circumstances. Though women have played an integral role in the development of the state of Wisconsin, their collective voices were not always heard. Until now.
Women's Wisconsin: From Native Matriarchies to the New Millennium will make history as the first single-source history of Wisconsin women when it is released this month. Published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, this unique women's history anthology features dozens of excerpts of articles as well as primary sources, such as women's letters, reminiscences and oral histories, previously published over many decades in the Wisconsin Magazine of History and other Society Press publications.
Some of the women featured in the book were well known, and even quite famous. Others were everyday women who had an interesting story to tell. Hear the story of Ho-poe-kaw (Glory-of-the-Morning), an 18th-century Ho-Chunk woman chief. Ho-poe-kaw was married to a French trader who eventually deserted her and his sons, taking her only daughter with him. Yet Ho-poe-kaw stayed all her life in Wisconsin, her homeland, leading her people.
Juliette Magill Kinzie wrote a memoir titled Wau-Bun, the "Early Day" in the North-west describing her life at Fort Winnebago (Portage) in the 1830s. Her account provided invaluable insight on the meaning of the Black Hawk War for the Indian people. Kinzie described the devastation of the Ho-Chunk, the lives lost and the surrender of sacred tribal land.
Lavinia Goodell of Janesville, was the first woman lawyer in Wisconsin in the latter 1800s. While women in other states in the Midwest were admitted by their courts without question, the Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to admit a woman. Goodell launched a campaign to gain admission to the Wisconsin State Bar, a campaign that lasted three and a half years. Because of Goodell's perseverance the State Bar finally became open to women in 1879.
Another remarkable woman, who researched and selected the stories appearing in the book Women's Wisconsin, is editor and historian Genevieve G. McBride, director of women's studies and an associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. A Milwaukee native, McBride teaches women's history and is the author of the award-winning book, On Wisconsin Women: Working for Their Rights from Settlement to Suffrage.
:: Posted August 24, 2005
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