Anna Elizabeth Dickinson, Famed Orator of the Civil War Era

In the annals of 19th-century America, few figures burned as brightly — and as briefly — as Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842–1932). She was born into a Quaker family in Philadelphia, a background that shaped her deep commitment to abolitionism and women’s rights. Raised in a household that mingled with leading abolitionists, Dickinson became an activist at an early age. When she was just 13, she...
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Pittsburgh’s Designing Women

A man does not marry an artist, but a housekeeper …. I put away my brushes; resolutely crucified my divine gift, and while it hung writhing on the cross, spent my best years and powers cooking cabbage.” So wrote Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815-1884) of Wilkinsburg, Allegheny County. Swisshelm’s bittersweet memoirs recall the painful sacrifice that she made to the Victorian code of...
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