Daring to Be Different: Missouri's Remarkable Owen Sisters (Missouri Heritage Readers) - Softcover

Mueller, Doris Land

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826218970 ISBN 13: 9780826218971

Verlag: University of Missouri Press, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

In the 1800s, American women were largely restricted to the private sphere. Most had no choice but to spend their lives in the home, marrying in their teens and living only as wives, mothers, and pillars of domesticity. Even as the women’s movement came along midcentury, it focused more on gaining legal and political rights for women than on expanding their career opportunities. So in that time period, in which the options and expectations for women’s professional lives were so limited, it is remarkable that three sisters born in the 1850s, the Owen daughters of Missouri, all achieved success and appreciation in their careers.

Doris Land Mueller’s Daring to Be Different tells the story of these exceptional sisters, whose contributions to their chosen fields are still noteworthy today. Mary, the oldest, followed a childhood interest in storytelling to become an internationally recognized folklorist, writing about the customs of Missouri’s Native Americans, the traditions of its African American communities, and the history of St. Joseph’s earliest settlers. The middle daughter, Luella, became a geologist, breaking into the “old boys club” of the nineteenth-century scientific community; her book, Cave Regions of the Ozarks and the Black Hills, was for over fifty years the only reference to include Missouri caves and is still a valuable resource on the subject. And the youngest Owen girl, Juliette, was a talented artist who painted images of birds and studied and wrote about ornithology. An ardent conservationist, Juliette was an animal advocate during the early days of the humane movement.

Through a compelling narrative driven by thorough research, Mueller showcases the different personalities of the three sisters who all eschewed marriage to pursue their callings, putting their accomplishments in context with the place and times in which they lived. With family stories, illustrations of early St. Joseph, and images of the Owen family to enrich the story, this book pays tribute to the Owen sisters’ contributions to the Show-Me State. The latest addition to the Missouri Heritage Reader Series, Daring to Be Different will appeal to anyone interested in Missouri history and the early years of the women’s movement.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Doris Land Mueller teaches at St. Louis Community College and is the author of M. Jeff Thompson: Missouri’s Swamp Fox of the Confederacy (University of Missouri Press), as well as five children’s books, including Small One’s Adventure, The Best Nest, and Marryin’ Sam. She lives in Valley Park, Missouri.

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Daring to Be Different

Missouri's Remarkable Owen SistersBy Doris Land Mueller

University of Missouri Press

Copyright © 2010 The Curators of the University of Missouri
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8262-1897-1

Contents

Acknowledgments..........................................................................xiiiChapter One An Introduction.............................................................1Chapter Two St. Joseph: The Place and Its People........................................6Chapter Three The Early Years...........................................................30Chapter Four Mary Alicia Leads the Way..................................................52Chapter Five Luella: Geologist, Explorer, Painter, Family Historian.....................74Chapter Six "Miss Juliette": Ornithologist, Botanist, and Artist........................94Chapter Seven The Twilight Years........................................................100Chapter Eight The Legacy of the Owen Sisters............................................118Epilogue 124 For Further Reading and Research...........................................127Index....................................................................................131

Chapter One

An Introduction

For a female child born in the mid-1800s in St. Joseph, Missouri, or for that matter anywhere in the United States, opportunities available to her as she grew up would have been severely limited by her sex. The struggle for woman's rights in the United States had just begun, and a long and difficult battle lay ahead for women who sought the right to own property, get an education, or work in fields long reserved for men. The right of women to vote or receive equal pay for equal work lay many years in the future. This was the period in which the Owen sisters were born and grew up.

From about the middle of the nineteenth century, women's vague longing for greater freedom became more specifically focused on issues such as access to professional and legal equality. The year 1848 is often cited as the beginning of the movement for woman's rights. At Seneca Falls, New York, three hundred women and men gathered and developed a document called the "Declaration of Rights and Sentiments," which was based on concepts established in the Declaration of Independence. It included a plea to end discrimination against women in all spheres of society. Sixty-eight women and thirty-two men signed the historic document, which included the first formal demand for women's right to vote.

Opposition to woman's suffrage became fierce. It included the liquor interests (mostly working underground), political machines, the Catholic hierarchy and other religious leaders, and business interests. Many industrialists feared that women would use the right to vote to improve the conditions of working women. Not until 1890 did the first state—Wyoming—grant women the right to vote in all elections. In April 1919, Missouri governor Frederick D. Gardner signed a law to allow Missouri women to vote in the presidential election, and on August 26, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified by Congress, giving all women the right to vote. Only one signer of the 1848 Seneca Falls resolution lived to see women get the vote. Charlotte Woodward Pierce had been a teenager when she drove a horse-drawn wagon from her home in Waterloo, New York, to attend the historic gathering. In her lifetime she witnessed a revolution in the role of women in American society.

In the 1800s, a woman's role was largely restricted to the private sphere, where she was expected to personify the virtues of piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. The primary expectation for a girl child was marriage, usually while still in her teens, followed by the birth of a baby every two or three years until her childbearing years were over. If she came from a well-to-do family, she would be a better "catch" and have a better opportunity to marry because any property or money she had or inherited would automatically come under the control of her husband. She could not sign a contract, make a will, or sue in a court of law. Her husband could arbitrarily apprentice her children or assign them to a guardian of his choice. Any effort by married women to retain any legal identity or independence had little chance of succeeding.

Middle-class women of the nineteenth century could share the economic and social status of the men but were excluded from the economic opportunities that maintained that status. The glorification of the go-getter businessman and the intrepid pioneer coexisted with an increasing restriction of middle-class women to domestic and ornamental functions. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the early leaders in the woman's rights movement, detailed the legal disadvantages of married women in an address to the New York legislature. A wife had "no civil existence, no social freedom.... She can own nothing, sell nothing. She has no right even to the wages she earns; her person, her time, her services are the property of another.... She can get no redress for wrongs in her own name."

Should a woman be unable or unwilling to become a wife, few alternatives were open to her. If she had acquired an education, she might look forward to teaching in elementary grades—but usually not in higher grades, which would be taught by a male teacher, however poorly qualified, if any were available. As a teacher, she would continue to live with and care for her aging parents or perhaps board in the homes of her students, in some cases moving from home to home during the year. If she was not prepared to teach, her outlook was still more bleak. Skill with a needle and thread might offer her the opportunity to sew for the more affluent ladies of the community, at least as long as her eyesight held out. Or, possibly, she could operate a boarding house. If all else failed, she could hope to live with a relative, who might expect her to serve as an unpaid maid of all work. Career opportunities open to women were few indeed and certainly did not include becoming a physician, a lawyer, a business executive, or even a stenographer or a bank teller. When considering employment for women, most men did not think of educated middle-class women who might want to pursue a career but only of those from poor families who had to work to survive. Michael Katz, in "The Origins of Public Education: a Reassessment," published in the 1876 winter issue of Education Quarterly, concluded that there were four occupational alternatives for women: domestic service, dressmaking, work in a mill, and prostitution.

But some exceptions occurred, and after the Civil War women gradually were able to move into the public arena, especially as writers or artists. In their book Hardship and Hope: Missouri Women Writing about Their Lives, 1820–1920, editors Carla Waal and Barbara Oliver Korner identify several well-known women writers, among them Kate Chopin and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Sculptor Vinnie Ream, who attended school in St. Joseph during the 1850s, was the first woman, as well as the youngest person, to receive a federal art commission for her official statue of Abraham Lincoln. During the same period, three sisters in St. Joseph dared to be different in spite of the limited opportunities available to them in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In so doing, they transcended their time.

Mary Alicia, born in 1850, Luella Agnes, born in 1852, and Juliette Amelia Owen, born in 1859, were the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Missouri Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0826218970
• ISBN 13: 9780826218971
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 3
• Anzahl der Seiten: 133
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar