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October 9

This Day in Women's History

By Jone Johnson Lewis, About.com

    1436: Jacoba of Bavaria died (defended her claim as countess of Holland, Zeeland, and Hainut against Philip the Good of Burgundy)

    1709: Barbara Villiers, Countess of Southampton and Duchess of Cleveland, died (mistress of King Charles II of England)

    1830: Harriet Hosmer born (sculptor born)

    1832: Elizabeth Chase Akers Allen born (journalist, poet)

    1864: Jessica Blance Peixotta born (economist, university educator, executive chairman of the Child Welfare Department, Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense, World War I)

    1890: Aimee Semple McPherson born (evangelist)

    1934: Jill Ker Conway born (historian, first woman president of Smith College)

Quote for Today

    You may believe Aimee Semple McPherson to be a messenger direct from God Almighty to save His erring world. Or you may believe her to be the most unblushing fraud in the public eye today. Some do one, some the other; and there is every shade of opinion between. But the one fact that stands out is that her influence is incredible, that it carries as that of few evangelists has ever carried, that she is to-day one of the most amazing phenomena of power in this feverish, power-insane United States.

    — Sarah Comstock, Harper's, 1926

    Given that Western language and narrative forms have been developed to record and explicate the male life, how can a woman write an autobiography when to do so requires using a language which denigrates the feminine and using a genre which celebrates the experience of the atomistic Western male hero?

    — Jill Ker Conway

    Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
    And make me a child again, just for to-night!

    — Elizabeth Chase

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This Day in Women's History Calendar © 1999-2006 Jone Johnson Lewis.

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