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Selected history of women in
Kentucky and the United States.
(Kentucky events are highlighted
in green)
1500s
/ 1600s
1700s
1800s
1900s
1500s / 1600s
1587
Virginia Dare becomes the first child in America born of non-Native
parents.
1607
Pocahontas is said to have saved Jamestown colonist Captain John Smith
from execution by Algonquin chief Powhatan, her father.
1619
A proposal to give women an equal portion in colonial lands is rejected
by the Virginia House of Burgesses.
1630
Anne Dudley Bradstreet leaves Europe for the Americas and becomes known
as the first European-American poet.
1700s
1770
First known African American poet, Phyllis Wheatley, arrives in the U.S.
on a slave ship.
1775
Rebecca Boone and her daughter Jemina arrive in Kentucky, becoming the
first white women to settle here.
1776
American Declaration of Independence signed.
Jane
Coomes credited with starting the
first elementary school at Fort Harrod.
1791
Esther Whitley
and husband build first brick house west of the Allegheny Mountains in
Crab Orchard.
1792
Kentucky becomes a state and a Constitution is drafted.
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1800s
1805
Sacajewea accompanies the Lewis and Clarke expedition as they head west,
helping them to obtain needed supplies and communicate with other Native
Americans.
1809
Jane Todd Crawford
rides horseback 60 miles to Danville to have a 20-pound ovarian tumor
removed with no anesthesia.
1813
First textile mills built in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Textile mills became the primary option for women in need or want
of work outside the home; working conditions spark female labor
organizing.
Catherine
Spalding helps start Roman Catholic
order of Sisters of Charity of Nazareth near Bardstown and is elected
Mother of these pioneer nuns.
1825
Julia Tevis
opens Science Hill Female Academy in Shelbyville, emphasizing science
and mathematics.
1828
Women comprise 90% of New England textile workers.
1833
Julia Dinsmore
born; keeps daily diary of her Burlington farm until death in 1926.
Oberlin
College is founded in Ohio, the first co-educational college in the U.S.
1837
Mount Holyoke is founded in Massachusetts, and is now the oldest
continuing women’s college in the nation.
1838
Kentucky becomes the first state to permit suffrage of any kind;
property-owning widows and single women were given the right to vote in
school board elections.
1844
Delia Webster
helps 3 slaves escape across Ohio River; she was caught and sentenced,
but later pardoned.
1846
Carry Nation
is born in Garrard County; later, becomes temperance movement leader.
1847
Maria Mitchell discovers a new comet; in 1848, becomes first women
elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1848
First American Women’s Rights convention held at Seneca Falls, New
York; considered birth of American Women’s Rights Movement.
1849
Elizabeth Blackwell becomes first U.S. woman to receive a medical
degree.
1851
Sojourner Truth delivers her famous “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech
in Akron, Ohio.
1852
Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s
Cabin.
1853
Lucy Stone, suffrage leader, speaks in Louisville.
1855
Berea college was founded with the aim of educating Appalachians,
regardless of race or sex.
1856
Margaret Garner
escapes from slavery, is captured in Ohio, and kills her infant daughter
rather than see her returned to slavery.
Her story is later immortalized in Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel, Beloved.
1860-1865
Civil War. During the Civil
War, women in both the North and South were active in all spheres of
life—they acted as farmers, businesswomen, soldiers, and healthcare
providers.
Read
the diary entries of two Kentuckians writing during the Civil War.
1861
The Marcum family home is attacked by Confederate soldiers; Julia
Marcum successfully fights off soldier with an ax.
1864
Nancy Moore
becomes Eldress of Shaker community at South Union.
1865
Belle Mitchell Jackson becomes first black teacher at Camp Nelson,
Kentucky.
1866
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony form the American Equal
Rights Association.
1867
Suffrage association forms in Hardin County then disappears.
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1869
Wyoming, while still a territory, becomes first to extend full
voting rights to women. Wyoming
becomes a state in 1890, becoming the first state to allow women to
vote.
American suffragists
split over the 14th and 15th Amendments to the
U.S. Constitution. The
National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) is formed by Susan B.
Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Martha Coffin Pelham Wright.
The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) is formed by Lucy
Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and others.
John Stuart Mill
publishes The Subjugation of Women, an early work examining the
treatment of women in western culture.
1872
Susan B. Anthony and 8 other women vote in Rochester, New York and
are arrested; Sojourner Truth is turned away from polls at Grand Rapids,
Michigan.
1874
Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) formed to fight evils of
alcohol.
1879
Susan B. Anthony gives “Bread, Not the Ballot” speech to
suffrage association at meeting in Richmond.
Madison County Suffrage Association started as result.
1880
Suffragist Anna Howard Shaw becomes first woman minister of the
Methodist Protestant Church.
Women
first admitted to the University of Kentucky.
Kentucky
legislature denies women the right to be admitted to the bar.
Paiute
Indian leader Sarah Winnemucca protests conditions on Indian
reservations.
1881
American Woman Suffrage Association meets in Louisville; at the
close of the convention, Kentucky Woman Suffrage Association is formed
with Laura Clay
as president.
Spelman
College in Atlanta opens as liberal arts institution for African
American women.
The
American Association of the Red Cross is formed by Clara Barton.
1883
Mary Miller
becomes first female licensed riverboat captain.
Mary
Barr Clay is elected president of the
American Woman Suffrage Association.
1888
The Kentucky Woman
Suffrage Association fails to grow; the Kentucky Equal Rights
Association (KERA) is formed to replace it, with goals broader than
suffrage alone; Laura Clay
serves as president until 1912.
View
photographs and primary documents from the
suffrage movement in
Kentucky.
Mary
E. Britton
teaches school in Lexington and writes for Our Women and Children,
Kentucky’s premier Black magazine.
1890
The National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman
Suffrage Association combine to form the National American Woman
Suffrage Association (NAWSA).
Rev.
Louisa Woosley of Caneyville publishes
Shall Women Preach? after becoming the first female preacher in
the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.
Sculptor
Enid Yandell
helps create statuary for the grounds of the 1891 Chicago World’s
Fair.
Mary
Desha and 2 other women found
Daughters of American Revolution in Washington, D.C.
Jane Addams and Ellen
Gates Starr found Hull House, a settlement house project in Chicago's
19th Ward; the settlement house movement begins.
1891
African American journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett begins her
nationwide anti-lynching campaign.
1892
Sophonisba Breckinridge
becomes first woman admitted to the Kentucky bar.
1892
Gymnastics instructor Senda Berenson Abbott introduces women’s
basketball at Smith College.
1893
Composers Mildred and Patty Hill
publish song book; one was re-written in 1935 as “Happy Birthday to
You.”
1894
Linda Neville
begins work to eradicate trachoma in eastern Kentucky mountains; in
1944, she wins Leslie Dana Medal for her work.
The
Married Women’s Property Act
is signed into law, because of the work of Kentuckians such as Josephine
Henry.
School
suffrage laws extended to women of 3rd class cities:
Lexington, Covington, and Newport.
Louise
Southgate
opens medical practice in Covington, becoming first female licensed
physician in Covington.
1895
Part I of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman's Bible is
published (Part II in 1898). Stanton
and other women’s rights advocates, such as Kentucky’s Josephine
Henry, were ostracized by more conservative suffragists for
their involvement.
Annie
Fellows Johnston publishes The Little Colonel, based on Peewee
Valley in Oldham County.
1896
Emma Guy Cromwell
becomes first woman elected to statewide office in Kentucky.
1900s
1902
Kentucky becomes only state to take away suffrage once given when
the legislature reverses school suffrage law based on fears of Lexington
Black women voting in block.
May
Stone and Katherine
Pettit found Hindman Settlement
School.
1903
Caroline Taylor
opens the Mrs. A.H. Taylor Co. in Bowling Green, a successful
dressmaking and designing business.
1904
Ora Porter
graduates from Tuskegee College School of Nursing.
Effie
Waller Smith
publishes first book of poems, Songs of the Month.
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Kentucky
legislature passes Day Law, effectively segregating all Kentucky schools
based on race.
Bertha
Kapernick becomes the first woman to give a bronco riding expedition.
1905
Nettie Stevens, through her study of meal worms, identifies the X
and Y chromosomes, which determine sex.
1907
Suffragist
and author Eliza Calvert Obenchain
publishes popular Aunt Jane of Kentucky.
1909
The Women’s Motoring Club holds the first all-female auto-race,
from New York City to Philadelphia and back.
1910
Feminist playwright, Rachel Crothers, produces first feminist play
on Broadway, A Man's
World.
1911
Fire at Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City kills 146
people, mostly women and children, because fire escape doors were
locked.
Harriet
Quimby becomes first American woman to earn pilot’s license.
Moonlight
Schools open in Rowan County, initiated by Cora
Wilson Stewart.
1912
Kentucky suffragists organize float in Louisville parade; believed
to be the first suffrage parade in the South.
1913
Katherine Pettit
and Ethel de Long Zande found Pine Mountain Settlement School.
1914-1918
World War I.
1914
As a dedicated geographer, Ellen
Semple wins Cullum Medal in
recognition of her contributions to science.
1916
Margaret Ingels
becomes the first woman to receive an engineering degree.
1917
McCracken Co. native Alma Lesch
born; spends lifetime creating award-winning fabric collages made with
signature antique clothing.
Loretta
Walsh becomes the first woman to enlist in the U.S. Navy.
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1919
Kentucky suffragists split on issue of whether suffrage should be
granted by individual states or by Federal Amendment.
Lena
Madesin Phillips founds
National Federation off Business and Professional Women’s Clubs in
Washington, D.C.
Ruth
Booe and Rebecca Gooch open
Rebecca-Ruth Candies in Frankfort.
1920
On January 6th, the first day of the legislative session,
Kentucky ratifies the 19th Amendment.
Tennessee becomes 38th state to ratify the 19th amendment; woman
suffrage becomes constitutional law across the U.S.
National American
Woman Suffrage Association dissolves and reorganizes as League of Women
Voters to operate on local, state and national levels.
Kentucky Equal Rights Association becomes L.W.V.
1921
Mary Elliott Flanery
becomes Kentucky and the South’s first female legislator when she is
elected to the House of Representatives.
1923
Lucy Furman publishes The Quare Women, based on her
experiences working at Hindman Settlement School for 17 years.
Alice Paul drafts the
Equal Rights Amendment to the constitution in 1921.
Beginning in 1923, the ERA was introduced into every session of
Congress until 1972.
1924
International Women's Sports Federation is formed and hosts its
version of the Olympics.
Marie
Caroline Brehm becomes first woman to run for Vice President of the U.S.
with a minor party, the Prohibition Party.
1925
Mary Breckinridge
founds Frontier Nursing Service at Hyden.
1926
Paducah native Mary Wheeler
begins documenting and collecting the music of the eastern Kentucky
mountains; later, she collects songs of the Ohio River packet boat era.
Kentucky writer Elizabeth Madox Roberts publishes The Time of Man,
which gained her an international reputation.
1927
Katherine Gudger-Langley
becomes Kentucky’s first U.S. Congresswoman.
1928
Kathleen Mulligan becomes Kentucky’s first woman judge.
Anthropologist
Margaret Meade publishes Coming of Age in Samoa.
1929
Ella May Wiggins killed in textile workers strike in North Carolina
and becomes martyr for struggle to unionize.
1930s
Sarah Ogan Gunning begins writing
and singing Appalachian-style ballads to draw attention to plight of
coal miners, poverty, and union activity.
1932
Coach Audrey Peterson
helps Woodburn High School win the title in the last girls’ high
school basketball state championship until 1975.
1933
Alice Slone
establishes Lotts Creek Community School.
1934
Kevil native Sarah Gertrude Knott
organizes first National Folk Festival in St. Louis.
1935
Lily May Ledford
leaves Powell County to join all-female band, the Coon Creek Girls, and
sing on Chicago radio station.
National Council of
Negro Women founded by Mary McLeod Bethune as a national coalition of
black women’s organizations
1937
Helen Humes
begins singing the Blues all over U.S.
Amelia Earhart
disappears somewhere over the Pacific Ocean during her attempt to fly
around the world.
1938
Congress passes Fair Labor Standards Act.
Willa
Beatrice Brown Chappell earns
pilot’s license.
Pearl
Carter Pace
becomes sheriff of Cumberland Co.
1941
Wonder Woman comic book heroine created.
1941-1945
US involvement in WWII. Women
from Kentucky and all over the U.S. were involved in the War as
laborers, WACs, WAVES, WASPs, and entertainers.
Kentuckians
such as Helen Evans
and Lois Gray
were part of this effort.
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1943
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is launched;
includes 10 teams and lasts 10 years.
1944
1st Lt. Anna Mac
Clarke
and other officers
de-segregate Arizona Army base movie theater.
1946
Jean Ritchie
graduates from the University of Kentucky and heads for New York City;
her music career is launched.
1947
Alice Allison Dunnigan
becomes 1st African American female correspondent to receive
White House credentials.
1948
Gretchen Fraser becomes first American to win an Olympic medal in
Skiing.
1949
Caroline Conn Moore
becomes Kentucky’s first female state Senator.
1950
Janice Holt Giles
publishes her first novel, The Enduring Hills.
1954
An explosion destroys the home that
Anne
Braden and her husband Carl had
purchased in a white Louisville suburb and sold to the Wades, an African
American family.
1955
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, thereby
initiating the Montgomery bus boycott.
1957
Dr. Louise Caudill
opens Morehead’s first family health clinic.
1959
Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, becomes the first
play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.
1960
Kentucky Commission on Human Rights established.
1961
Representative
Amelia Tucker becomes the first
African American woman elected to the Kentucky State Legislature.
President’s
Commission on the Status of Women is established, headed by Eleanor
Roosevelt.
1963
U.S. Congress passes Equal Pay Act.
1964
U.S. Congress passes Civil Rights Act.
Georgia
Powers, Lucretia Ward, and many others march on Frankfort
demanding access to public accommodations.
Kentucky legislators fail to pass bill until the 1966 session.
Kentucky
Commission on Women established by Executive Order; becomes official
state agency in 1970.
Packard
native Patricia Neal wins Academy Award for role in Hud.
1967
Senator Georgia Davis (Powers)
becomes first African American elected to the Kentucky Senate.
1968
Lois Morris
begins first term as Louisville Alderman.
1968
Wyomia Tyus becomes first Olympian to win consecutive gold medals in
any event, winning the 100 meter event in the 1964 and 1968 Olympics.
1970
Boston Women's Health Collective publishes Our Bodies, Ourselves;
now in its 7th edition, still the most comprehensive book on
women's health.
Diane
Crump becomes first female jockey in Kentucky Derby.
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1971
Alice
“Dolly” McNutt
is elected mayor of Paducah, becoming the first female mayor of a
Kentucky second class city.
1972
Congress passes Education Amendments, including Title IX.
Although Title IX requires gender equity in all educational
activities receiving federal funding, girls sports were most affected.
The passage of Title IX allows young women like Geri
Grigsby to participate in high school sports.
House
Bill 27, sponsored by Representative
Mae Street Kidd,
becomes law, creating the Kentucky Housing Corporation which promotes
and finances low-income housing in Kentucky.
The ERA passes out of
Congress and goes to states for ratification; when the time limit runs
out it in 1982 (after Congress allows for an extension) it is still 3
states short of the 38 needed to become an Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution.
Jean Westwood becomes
the first U.S. woman to chair a national political party and manage a
presidential campaign when she is elected as chairperson of the
Democratic National Committee.
1973
U.S. Supreme Court hears Roe. v. Wade.
1974
Mandatory maternity leave for teachers is outlawed by the U.S.
Supreme Court.
Girls
are allowed to join Little League Baseball teams.
1975
Thelma Stovall
becomes
Kentucky’s first female Lt. Governor.
The
United Nations declares 1975-1985 the Decade for Women, Equality,
Development, and Peace.
Karren
Stead, 11, becomes the first girl to win the All-American Soap Box
Derby.
The
U.S. Congress passes bill authorizing the admission of women to U.S.
military academies, beginning in the fall of 1976.
1976
Legislation sponsored by Representative
Mae Street Kidd passes, closing a dark
chapter of Kentucky history by ratifying the 13th, 14th,
and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
1977
Janet Guthrie is the first woman to compete in the Indy 500.
Rosalyn
Yalow becomes the first American woman to win Nobel Prize for medicine.
1978
“Take Back the Night” first used as slogan for national protest
march against pornography that promotes violent crimes against women.
1978
The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence is founded.
The first female U.S.
astronauts are selected: Anna
Fisher, Shannon Lucid, Judith Resnick, Sally Ride, Margaret Seddon, and
Kathryn Sullivan.
1979
Verna Mae Slone publishes
What My Heart Wants to Tell.
The
U.S. Treasury issues the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
The
Kentucky Women’s Writers Conference is established at the University
of Kentucky.
1980
Coal Miner’s Daughter,
award-winning film about the life of Kentuckian Loretta
Lynn, released.
Small group of
California women form Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which
becomes a national organization.
1981
Sandra Day O'Connor is appointed first woman U.S. Supreme Court
justice.
1982
Eula Hall
opens Mud Creek Clinic in Grethel.
1983
Governor Martha Layne Collins
becomes Kentucky’s first woman governor.
Louisville
playwright Marsha Norman
wins Pulitzer Prize for “‘night, Mother.”
Tamara
McKinney
wins World Cup for skiing.
Sally
Ride becomes first American woman to travel in space.
1984
Linda Boileau
becomes first female editorial cartoonist in Kentucky when she begins as
cartoonist for Frankfort’s State Journal.
Swimmer
Mary T. Meagher
wins 3 gold medals at Olympic Games.
Gaylia
Rooks
ordained as Rabbi at Hebrew Union College and joins Adath Israel
B’rith Shalom Temple in Louisville.
Jane
Fonda stars in Harriette Arnow’s
The Dollmaker.
Geraldine Ferraro
becomes the first woman to run for Vice President of the U.S. as a major
party candidate.
1985
Sallie Bingham
gives $10 million to found the Kentucky Foundation for Women.
Libby
Riddles becomes the first woman to win the Alaskan Iditarod.
Tania
Aebi, 18, becomes the youngest person to sail around the world,
accompanied only by her cats.
1986
Jane Stephenson opens the New
Opportunity School, which gives women a fresh look at their
opportunities and conflicts.
Laura
Freeman
opens Laura’s Lean Beef, the pacesetter for low-fat beef grown with no
pesticides nor antibiotics.
1987
Helen
Lang
opens Crane House in Louisville.
1988
Loretta Lynn
inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
1990
Anne Braden
wins American Civil Liberties Union Medal of Liberty for life
pursuit of social and racial justice.
Belinda
Mason
becomes first person living with HIV to be appointed to the National
Commission on AIDS.
1991
Writer and activist Belinda Mason
dies.
1992
Evelyn Williams
sits down in front of gas trucks on her property at Red Fox, protesting
their entrance onto her property.
1993
Sara Combs becomes the first female member of the Kentucky Supreme Court.
Julie
Krone becomes first female to win a Triple Crown race by capturing the
1993 Belmont Stakes.
Poet
Maya Angelou reads poem at William J. Clinton’s 1993 inauguration.
1994
Vicki Van Meter, 12, becomes the youngest person to fly across the
Atlantic Ocean from Augusta, Maine, to Glasgow, Scotland.
1996
Corinne Whitehead
wins Earth Day Award for her work as an environmental activist, focusing
on air, water, soil and ground water around Calvert City industrial
complex and Paducah Diffusion Plant.
Terri
Cecil-Ramsey
joins fencing team for 1996 Paralympics.
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Governor
Paul Patton creates Governor’s Office of Child Abuse and Domestic
Violence; Mrs. Judi Patton
is appointed special advisor.
1996
The WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association) is formed.
1997
Nelda
Barton-Collings
ends 27-year stint as Kentucky National Committeewoman for the
Republican Party.
Alexis
Herman, an Alabama native, becomes the first African American Secretary
of Labor.
1997
Lucille Markey
Charitable Trust dissolved after distributing half a billion dollars to
institutions nationwide, including $5.25 million to build Markey Cancer
Center in Lexington.
Kentucky
Legislature passes HB 864, creating Office of Women’s Health.
Mary
Breckinridge
is commemorated with U.S. postal stamp.
Elizabeth
Heaston becomes the first woman to play and score in a college football
game.
1999
The U.S. Treasury issues the Sacajewea coin, replacing the Susan B.
Anthony dollar.
Tori
Murden becomes first woman and the first American to row solo
across the Atlantic Ocean.
Nicki
Patton and Ellen Williams become chairpersons of the Democratic and
Republican parties of Kentucky, respectively.
For the first time, both parties are lead by women.
This timeline is based
on information gathered from History of Woman Suffrage, vols.
1-3, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage,
eds., vol. 4, Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper, eds.,
and vols. 5,6, Ida Husted Harper, ed.; The Timetables of
Women’s History, Karen Greenspan; Gutsy Girls: Young Women Who
Dare, Tina Schwager and Michelle Schuerger; and The Kentucky
Encyclopedia, John E. Kleber, ed.
This
timeline is not meant to be comprehensive, but to represent selected
highlights in the history of women in the United States and Kentucky.
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