Ellen Spencer Mussey

Born this day in 1850: Ellen Spencer Mussey (1850–1936), lawyer, educator, women’s rights activist

Mussey was born Ellen Spencer in Geneva, Ohio. Her father operated a penmanship school and promoted his method of handwriting (Spencerian penmanship). At a very young age, Mussey helped her father teach classes. Her father died while she was still a teenager, and Mussey lived with several different siblings and attended various seminaries for the next several years.

In 1869 Mussey moved to Washington, D.C. and managed the women’s department of her brother Henry’s business school (Spencerian Business College). The school trained young women for government work and was well-known in Washington.

In 1871 she married Reuben Mussey, a lawyer, and eventually began assisting him in his practice. After her husband’s death in 1892, Mussey wished to formally practice law in order to support herself and her family. No law schools in the area would accept her as a student because—really, do I have to tell you? She took the bar exam anyway the following year and qualified to practice law. She was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1876 and to practice before the U.S. Court of Claims the following year. Her practice included probate law, general commercial law, and international law. She also served as counsel to the American Red Cross and to the Norwegian and Swedish legations for 25 years.

Discovering young women who wished to study law (and who, like her, were denied admission to law schools on the grounds that they had lady parts), Mussey, along with lawyer Emma M. Gillett, established a law school—the Washington College of Law (1898)—that accepted both women and men as students.

Mussey was also active in the fight for women’s rights, including playing a prominent role in securing married women’s property rights, and drafted the Cable Act of 1922, which granted independent citizenship to married women.

Mussey’s other contributions included playing a leading role in establishing public kindergarten and the juvenile court system in the District of Columbia. She also established a school for developmentally disabled children.

I welcome your feedback! React, comment, subscribe below.

Patty Smith Hill

Born this day in 1868: Patty Smith Hill (1868–1946), pioneering educator

Patty Smith Hill, a native of Anchorage, Kentucky, brought a progressive philosophy to kindergarten education. Her approach stressed creative play—deviating from the more rigid Froebel method popular at the time. She engaged both boys and girls in creative play that encouraged them to participate in activities typically reserved for one gender. Hill also promoted nursery school education, helping to organize the National Association for Nursery education in 1925. For 30 years she was a faculty member of Columbia University’s Teachers College and helped found Columbia’s Institute of Child Welfare Research. She developed large colorful blocks, known as “Patty Hill Blocks,” that were widely used for creative play in kindergartens across the nation. Also, she co-wrote, with her sister Mildred Hill, the tune for “Happy Birthday to You.” (They originally wrote the song as a classroom greeting song—“Good Morning to All.”)

I welcome your feedback! React, comment, subscribe below.

Alice Putnam

Born this day in 1841: Alice Putnam (1841–1919), kindergarten pioneer who brought kindergarten to Chicago public schools

Alice Putnam was born Alice Whiting in Chicago. She was educated at home by her mother and at Dearborn Seminary. In 1868 she married Joseph Putnam, and the couple had four children.

Putnam’s desire to educate her young children drew her to the kindergarten movement. In 1874 she formed a parents group at her home, and together with about a dozen women and men studied the theories and techniques of German educator Friedrich Froebel. She then completed formal training and began running a kindergarten class from her home.

Her parents group evolved into the Chicago Froebel Association in 1880. By that time, interest in kindergarten had been growing. Between 1880 and 1910, Putnam supervised a kindergarten training school sponsored by the association. At the invitation of Jane Addams, some of this training was offered at Hull House. In addition to teaching kindergarten classes and training kindergarten teachers, she wrote articles and lectured about incorporating education into the lives of young children.

Putnam was instrumental in the establishment of public kindergartens in Chicago. In 1886 the Froebel Association talked the Chicago school board into allowing it to run 10 private kindergartens in public school settings. The experiment was a success, and the school board needed no further convincing to include kindergarten as part of the public school program at both the city and county level.

I welcome your feedback! React, comment, subscribe below.

Caroline Severance

Born this day in 1820: Caroline Seymour Severance (1820–1914), social reformer, suffragist, women’s club pioneer

Caroline Severance was born Caroline Seymour in Canandaigua, New York. She was educated at various female seminaries and taught briefly at a boarding school for girls. In 1840 she married Theodoric Cordenio Severance. The couple moved to Cleveland and had five children.

The influence of her reform-minded husband and his family kick-started Severance on a career of reform work lasting  seven decades. Severance was at the center of many reforms, including abolitionism, women’s rights, temperance, dietary reform, and religious liberalism. Literary figures were also welcomed in the Severance home. Severance was active in women’s rights conventions and was president of the first convention of the Ohio Women’s Rights Association (1853).

She was deeply impressed by the traveling lecturers from New England, so when her husband was offered a job in Boston, the family jumped at the chance to relocate. Severance surrounded herself with the city’s leading literary figures and reformists. She became a lecturer on behalf of the mounting abolition movement and was a close friend of William Lloyd Garrison.

Severance was involved in a wide range of reform activities. In 1862 she joined the board of directors of the New England Hospital for Women  and Children. In 1867 she cofounded the American Equal Rights Association with Susan B. Anthony, and the following year she helped found the Free Religious Association. She also founded that year what one of the earliest women’s club in the nation, the New England Women’s Club. In 1869 she helped found the American Woman Suffrage Association.

In 1875 Severance and her husband moved to California, where she continued her tireless reform efforts. She organized women’s clubs and presided over the Los Angeles County Woman Suffrage League for several years, giving it a much-needed shot in the arm. She was a driving force in California’s kindergarten movement and the establishment of juvenile courts. She promoted Christian socialism, Progressivism, and anti-imperialism. She was also a pacifist. In 1911, after California passage state suffrage for women, Severance, at age 91, became the first woman in California to register to vote.

I welcome your feedback! React, comment, subscribe below.

Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper

Born this day in 1835: Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper (1835–1896), pioneer in the kindergarten movement

Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper was born Sarah Brown Ingersoll in Cazenovia, New York. She was educated at Cazenovia Seminary and at Emma Willard’s Troy Seminary. At Cazenovia she met her future husband, Halsey Fennimore Cooper, whom she married in 1855. The couple had four children, two of whom died in infancy.

Before marrying, Cooper taught school and worked as a governess. After marrying, she moved with her husband to Tennessee. He was editor of the Chattanooga Advertiser and she worked as assistant editor. When the Civil War broke out, they fled North. 

In 1864 her daughter Mollie died. Cooper fell ill, and did not begin to recuperate until the family moved to San Francisco. Cooper became active in San Francisco society. She began writing, taught bible classes, and engaged in philanthropic work. She was active in women’s clubs and worked for suffrage and other women’s causes. The bible class she taught became wildly popular, but she was eventually brought up on charges of heresy. She defended herself against the charges, gaining both strong support and national attention. She chose to leave the Presbyterian Church on her own account and took up with the Congregationalists. 

She was a tireless reformer and a sought-after public speaker. Her greatest efforts went into the kindergarten movement. She opened her first kindergarten in 1879, serving the poor preschoolers of San Francisco’s  infamous “Barbary Coast.” It was the first free kindergarten in the western United States. In 1884 she founded the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association to administer the several kindergartens she had opened by then. In little more than a decade the association boasted 40 kindergartens. Her schools became models for hundreds of other kindergartens in the U.S. and abroad. In 1891, Cooper was elected as the first president of the international Kindergarten Union.

Cooper’s husband, who had suffered a humiliating job loss, committed suicide in 1885. Cooper’s daughter Harriet was her companion and dedicated secretary. Harriet’s own depressive episodes worried Cooper’s friends, but Cooper refused to institutionalize her. Harriet axsphysiated them both with gas in their shared apartment in 1896.

I welcome your feedback! React, comment, subscribe below.