Research Team 2017

Research Team 2016

Lisa Bugasch: Florence Kelley (1859-1932) was born in Philadelphia, but accomplished much of her work in Illinois. She founded the National Consumer’s League, and was integral in the passing of legislation affecting the female labor force. Kelley was an activist during the Progressive Era. At a time when many people were advocating for women’s suffrage, Kelley focused on giving women a political voice through collective action. By studying Kelley’s life, I will examine the agency of women during a time when many assume they had no political voice.

Blake Cohen: Ann Preston (1813-1872) was one of the first females to graduate from the first female medical college of Pennsylvania, which she eventually became the first female dean of.  She was a Quaker and very active in Civil Rights.

Emanuel Darby: Crystal Bird Fauset (1894- 1965)  First black woman elected to the PA state legislature (1938).

Courtney DelFelice: Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882-1961)

Pamela Kelly: Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker (1735-1807) wrote her diary beginning in 1758 up until her death in 1807, held at HSP, and transcribed and published.

Willian Kowalik: Marian Anderson: her personal papers are conveniently held at the University of Pennsylvania. I was able to find an online archive at Penn of her personal photographs, which can help to really understand and “get to know” the individual, who really was Marian? Additionally, the Marian Anderson Historical Society operates her home where she lived from 1924 until the 1940s, as a museum. I have not yet visited, but intend to soon. I have found a number of good secondary sources. I’m very interested in doing a walking tour, and based on my interest in “place.”

Kennie Lam: Mitzie McKenzie (1920 – ?) graduate of Philadelphia High School for Girls, worked from age 20 at the Chinese Christain Church and Center in Chinatown, Philadephia; went on to establish the Center’s Boys Club and Girls Club and a kindergarten and ESL program.  She has been commemorated at the Chinese Christian Church and Center at their playground, and through the renaming of Spring St. to Mitzie McKenzie Place.

Maggie Lindrooth: I will look at this assimilation through the eyes of two Native American women who spent time in and around Philadelphia: Susan La Flesche Picotte, the first female Omaha physician, and Mary A. Bailey, a student of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, whose extensive records on the Carlisle Indian School website of Dickinson College provide a glimpse into the life of a young, half-Piegan woman at the turn of the century. Both La Flesche Picotte and Bailey studied medicine, although Bailey’s career eventually settled in more domestic and “traditionally feminine” roles such as dressmaker and secretary. I hope to explore the relationship between female assimilation and the adoption of traditional Anglo gender roles, both through Bailey, who lived these roles, and La Flesche Picotte, who ardently preached for the adoption of such roles, but was herself a physician.

Meghan Madonna: Agnes Irwin

Taylor McGoldrick: Fanny Jackson-Coppin the Blockson collection also was able to provide books, and even a doctoral thesis on Coppin’s life and her contributions. In terms of primary sources, the collection holds books with her own writings to Frederick Douglass and even an autobiography that she wrote about her life and teachings. There was also some information pertaining to her husband and his work and where he lived. Jackson graduated from Oberlin College with a teaching position already offered to her with the Institute for Colored Youth here in Philadelphia. After years of teaching within the school, she eventually worked her way up to becoming principal of the institute.

Lea Millio: Emilie Davis, a free African American woman who lived in Philadelphia during the Civil War. Emilie Davis’ 3 pocekt diaries are held at the Historical Society of Philadelphia to look at her 3 small pocket diaries, and they are transcribed online.

Alisha Rivera: Carmen Aponte was born in 1919 in Puerto Rico. Her and and husband moved from Puerto Rico to Philadelphia in the late 1940’s. When she came to Philadelphia she quickly became a community activist. She was known for her involvement in creating the Norris Square Senior Citizens Center in 1977. Aponte was the director of the Community Ombudsman Office. She also is known for standing up to Mayor James H.J. Tate for not including the need of the Latino community. Aponte is a Temple Alumn, and I was able to find her picture in the 1977 Temple Yearbook. I found some news footage involving Carmen from WPVI in the Temple archives. There is also box of information about her at the Historical Society of Philadelphia. In addition to this, I have the book From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia, that talks about her at great length. She died in September of 1996. 

Deja Sloan: Francis E.W. Harper, Poet.

Nina Taylor: Sarah Mapps Douglass was a black educator, abolitionist, writer, and public lecturer. Her parents were also prominent black abolitionists in Philadelphia. Around 1827 she established a school for black children, and joined her mother as a founding member of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery society in 1833. Douglass was an avid writer and was published in various anti-slavery journals. She received basic medical training at the Female Medical College of PA, and at PA Medical University she studied female health and hygiene, which she lectured on later in life. She helped organize the Female Literary Society of Philadelphia and the Sarah M. Douglass Literary Circle. Throughout her life, Douglass was a vocal critic of racism within the Society of Friends (Quakers), which is evident in her many surviving letters with the Grimke sisters. Dozens of her formal letters and personal correspondences have survived and are available online in PDF form, mostly on the Black Abolitionist Papers archives. Her writing samples (prose and poetry published under the pseudonyms Sophanisba and Ella) are on the blessings of religion, the sin of slavery, the evils of prejudice and the plight of the slave.  Source include: Sarah Mapps Douglass, a book by Marie Lindhorst, The Pen Is Ours: A List of Writings by and about African-American Women, before 1910 by Jean Fagan Yellin and Cynthia D. Bond, and Black Quakers: Brief Biographies by Kenneth Ives.

Nicole Thomas: Esther de Berdt Reed lived from 1746 to 1780 and is responsible for forming the “Ladies of Philadelphia,” an organization in where women raised funds to help George Washington’s army during the Revolutionary War. She wrote Sentiments of an American Woman which was written in 1780. It touches on female patriotism and political action including other areas in which she was involved. Through the national archives website there is correspondences and letters between Reed, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Reed’s husband, Joseph. The New York Historical Society holds her husbands papers (the Joseph Reed papers), and they sent three reels of microfilm to Paley Library.