""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" November 13/14, 1995 - Episodes 472-3 - Women of Achievement and Herstory compiled by Irene Stuber """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" OUR weekend double edition; we post two days in advance. 11-13 Anniversaries ........................................... B. Nov. 13, 1860, Helen Archibald Clarke* with lifetime partner Charlotte Endymion Porter founded, edited, and published _Poet Lore_ which introduced Americans to a number of European modern poets. Both were prolific writers and editors of writings by Shakespeare, Browning, Longfellow, and others. Ms Clarke was also a talented musician and composer. B. Nov. 13, 1862, Mary Henrietta Kingsley, English traveler who explored and collected flora and fauna in equatorial and western Africa when convention said women of her class should be serving high tea. B. Nov. 13, 1896, Virginia Kneeland Frantz, medical educator and surgical pathologist. When a student, M. Carey Thomas encouraged her to go into medicine. She entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, which in 1917 allowed women for a short period because of the drop in male enrollment during WWI. She turned to pathology so as not to compete with her physician husband, but their marriage still failed as her fame grew. Her monograph _Armed Forces Atlas of Tumor Pathology_ (1959) remains a standard text. She studied chronic cystic tumors in women's breasts. She discovered exidized cellulose, which when placed directly into a wound is absorbed by the body and reduces bleeding. From 1924-1962 she taught surgery at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, finally becoming full professor in 1951. Her mother was a trustee of a major hospital. B. Nov. 13, 1876, Alice Spencer Geddes, educator, builder of a college, a community center, and a legend in the eastern Kentucky hills around Troublesome Creek. A landowner there had offered her and her mother 50 acres to teach his children. Within five years she had opened seven other high schools in the surrounding area. In her 30 years there, she also founded what is now Alice Lloyd College, which accepted no federal or state funds... and charged no tuition to the poverty-stricken youth of the area. B. Nov. 13, 1897, Tily Edinger, paleoneurologist, vertebrate paleontologist, German-born American of prominent family (her mother's bust was in a Frankfurt park and a street was named after her father) was forced to flee Germany because she was Jewish. In 1927 she had become curator of the vertebrate collection at the Senckenberg Museum. In 1940 she joined the Museum of Comparative Zoology where she continued the rest of her life. Her groundbreaking work was in the study of fossil brains, which proved that each species evolved its brain to its own needs. B. Nov. 13, 1924, Sarah Jeannette Jackson, American-born Canadian sculptor represented in numerous permanent collections in U.S. and Canada. B. Nov. 13, 1938, Jean Seber, tragic American-born International film star, who was systematically defamed and hounded into suicide for an alleged interracial relationship that never even occurred. 11-14 Anniversaries ........................................... B. Nov. 14, 1805, Fanny Cacilia Mendelssohn (Hensel), a brilliant composer but an obedient daughter so we'll never know how much was her brother's work and how much Fanny's. Her early works were published under Felix's name because of family opposition to a woman being notorious, i.e, having any name or reputation of her own. It is believed much of her work is unknown and unpublished although there are a number of works recognized as hers and that were published under her name after her marriage. Felix said he often consulted with Fanny on his own compositions. Queen Victoria once sang the very popular _Halien_ in Felix's presence thinking it was his composition, but he admitted that Fanny had written it. Oddly, Felix's music remains a part of the modern orchestral repertory, but Fanny is only a footnote. B. Nov. 14, 1813, Louise Van der Schrieck, superior-provincial of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, who oversaw the starting of about 50 parochial schools in the early US. B. Nov. 14, 1860, Isabel Bevier founded and headed the Home Economics Department of the University of Illinois. B. Nov. 14, 1876, Yekaterina Vasilyevna Geltzer, prima ballerina who helped preserve the techniques and traditions of the Imperial Russian Ballet in the bad times following the Russian Revolution. B. Nov. 14, 1884, Camille A. Gutt, international banker, headed the International Monetary Fund 1946-51. B. Nov. 14, 1885, Constance Mayfield Rourke, author and critic, renowned authority and preservationist of folk tales, music, and traditions. B. Nov. 14, 1907, Astrid Lindgren, Swedish writer primarily of children's books. B. Nov. 14, 1930, Dame Elisabeth Jean Frink, British sculptor best known for her naturalistic figures in monumental size. Event Nov. 14, 1984, a $38 million settlement was announced in the class action suit against A. H. Robbin's Dalkon Shield. Robbin's agreed to pay to have the intrauterine device removed. Robbin's, almost six months later, established a multi-million dollar fund to compensate women who were injured while using the Dalkon Shield. A number of deaths were reported attributable to the device. Quotes du jour ................................................ "Why is it so shocking to see a woman kiss another woman (on TV) but not to see a woman raped, mutilated, and murdered every two seconds?" -- Roseanne Barr, commenting on the controversial kiss between two women on the March, 1994 _Roseanne_ episode. ....................... * ........................ Don't let anyone tell you there weren't notable and effective women throughout history. They were always there, but historians failed to note them in our histories so that the women of each generation has had to reinvent themselves. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- >>(C) 1995, All Rights Reserved, Irene Stuber, PO Box 6185, Hot Springs National Park, AR 71902, voice mail or fax, 501-624-5262 ID #300, or email irenestuber@delphi.com with comments and suggestions. Distribute verbatim copies freely with copyright notice for non-profit use. We are accepting *limited* donations (only what can be spared) to help offset the online costs of posting WOA.<<