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Birth Control Pioneer Born
Birth Control Pioneer Born
On this day in 1890, birth control pioneer John Rock was born in the small Massachusetts town of Marlborough. He was a deeply religious Catholic even as a child. After college and medical school at...
Deborah Sampson Performs in Boston
Deborah Sampson Performs in Boston
On this day in 1802, a performance of "The American Heroine" took place in a fashionable Boston theater. The audience watched spellbound as a middle-aged farmwife, dressed in the uniform of a Continental soldier, loaded...
Jordan Marsh Announces New Store
Jordan Marsh Announces New Store
On this day in 1947, Jordan, Marsh and Company announced that it was going to build "the greatest department store in the world" in downtown Boston. Almost a hundred years earlier, in 1851, Eben Jordan...
Dorothea Dix Begins Her Crusade
Dorothea Dix Begins Her Crusade
On this day in 1841, Dorothea Dix visited an East Cambridge jail and was appalled to see mentally ill women confined alongside hardened criminals. The 40-year-old teacher and writer had been exposed to the work...
Concord Women Cast First Votes
Concord Women Cast First Votes
On this day in 1880, Louisa May Alcott and 19 other women attended the Concord Town Meeting. The year before, the Massachusetts legislature had made it legal for women to vote in school committee elections....
Frances Perkins Born in Boston
Frances Perkins Born in Boston
On this day in 1880, Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold a cabinet position, was born in Boston. Raised in Worcester, she attended Mt. Holyoke College, where she became committed to improving the lot...
"Mill Girl" Writer Lucy Larcom Dies
"Mill Girl" Writer Lucy Larcom Dies
On this day in 1893, Lucy Larcom died. A popular poet during her lifetime, she would be forgotten today except for a work of prose that she wrote in 1889. Her autobiography, A New England...
Telephone Operators Strike
Telephone Operators Strike
On this day in 1919, striking telephone operators in Massachusetts won the right to negotiate with the New England Telephone Company. The young, single women who had flooded into the industry in the early 1900s...
Rosie Ruiz Steals Boston Marathon
Rosie Ruiz Steals Boston Marathon
On this day in 1980 Rosie Ruiz tried to steal the Boston Marathon. Crowned the women's champion when she crossed the finish line, Ruiz looked surprisingly well-rested for someone who had just run 26.2 miles...
Poet Anne Sexton Publishes First Book
Poet Anne Sexton Publishes First Book
On this day in 1960, Massachusetts poet Anne Sexton had her first collection of poems published, To Bedlam and Part Way Back. Just before the manuscript was to go to press, she made major changes...