Connecticut's Heritage Gateway

Women of Connecticut

By Barbara E. Lacey, Saint Joseph College

Women in colonial Connecticut lived under English law, with its tradition of female subordination. Although single women had property rights and some public rights, married women were limited in their freedom by the concept of coverture. When a woman married, her legal existence merged with that of her husband. Her property, inheritance, and any wages she earned legally became her husband's. Too, she could not sign contracts nor sue in courts. Finally, her children were under her husband's control, and she could not easily escape a bad marriage via divorce since it was believed that no human law could dissolve marriages performed in accordance with God's law.

Nevertheless, the American environment modified the English common-law tradition and served to improve the status of women. The active economic role played by colonial women in preindustrial society gave them greater power and prestige than that enjoyed by women in England or even in later periods in America. The principal roles of women were to bear and rear children and to prepare food and make clothing. But there were also women who owned property, managed businesses, and engaged in trade. Wives might be counted on occasion as separate individuals and some were given grants of land by the colony. Prenuptial agreements, and in time postnuptial agreements, came to protect a woman's property. And, if a husband disappeared for three years and thus totally neglected his family responsibilities, a woman could obtain a divorce.

The early days of home production did much to prepare Connecticut women for their role in the Revolutionary War. Connecticut has been called the "Provisions State" of the Revolution, and the success of Connecticut in keeping the American troops clothed and fed depended in large part on the efforts of Connecticut women who worked the looms and gathered the harvest.

Connecticut had its Revolutionary War heroines, and two "midnight rides" by young women are worthy of note. In 1775, at the age of twenty-two, Deborah Champion of New London was asked by her father to deliver a message to General Washington in Boston. Riding with the family slave as an escort, she headed north up the Quinebaug Valley to Canterbury, then east to Pomfret and Boston. Disguised as an old woman, she evaded the British and found friends who brought her to George Washington. The General was glad "to compliment me most highly both as to what he was pleased to call the courage I had displayed and my patriotism," she wrote. Another young woman helped to save the burning town of Danbury which was under British siege. At the age of sixteen, Sybil Ludington rode twenty miles from her New York home to round up the militia in Connecticut commanded by her father. Her venture enabled Colonel Ludington to cross over the New York border and unite with regiments at Danbury, where he engaged in battle with the British.

After the Revolution, the American economy expanded, closing some fields of activity to women while opening up others. Production moved out of the household and into the factory and office. There were fewer women who worked in family businesses as printers, blacksmiths, and coopers, and fewer still who achieved recognition as industrial entrepreneurs. However, Connecticut farm girls formed part of the original labor force of the region's textile mills.

Early in the history of the textile industry, factory wages were reasonable, especially for women. Young girls made up to seven times as much in the mills as they could in teaching, and they had more freedom and companionship than in domestic service. However, wages began to fall in the 1840s. Early Connecticut mill owners, such as Sam Wilkerson and David Humphreys, had hoped to construct a humane as well as profitable factory system, avoiding the evils of the English industrial cities. They created exemplary factories, excellent housing, and hired entire families who labored in close proximity to one another.

But improved machinery speeded up the pace of work, and the women who tended two looms in the early 1820s were replaced by other young women who were responsible for three, four, or even five looms by the time of the Civil War. Increased productivity flooded the market with cotton and woolen goods, and competition forced prices down. In order to maintain profits, corporations held the line on wages or even reduced their pay scales. Moreover, most new owners and stockholders were not paternalistically concerned about their plants and factory towns. In the family mills of Connecticut, operatives who relied on their employers for jobs, houses, and, through the mill store, even for food, were unable to organize to protect their interests. Long hours, low wages, and dangerous working conditions prevailed for women as well as men, until late in the nineteenth century when strikes increased and factory inspection was instigated.

While working-class women bore the brunt of increasing industrialization, laboring both at home and in the workplace, middle-class women benefited from the changing economy. Relieved of the necessity to produce food and clothing, which were purchasable at stores, and able to delegate domestic drudgery to immigrant and black help, they enjoyed a new leisure and material comfort. The home, no longer a center of production, became a sanctuary devoted to religion, morality, and culture and was defined as the "proper sphere" for a woman. In these new circumstances, which were both restricting and exalting, women turned their attention to gracious housekeeping, intensive child care, and artistic endeavors.

Fashionable schools prepared middle-class girls for a leisured domestic life. An outstanding institution of this kind was the Litchfield Female Academy, founded in 1792 by Sarah Pierce (1767-1852), who taught in the dining room of her home until public-spirited townspeople provided a building. The quality of its academic instruction and the training in manners and conduct gave the school a national reputation. Another notable academy, Miss Porter's School, was established in Farmington in 1841. Sarah Porter (1813-1900) emphasized character development and religious training more than intellectual development and equipped her students to be cultivated homemakers rather than scholars. However, most academies and seminaries of the period devoted their efforts simply to teaching fancy needlework, watercolor painting, and proper etiquette.

Catherine Beecher (1800-1878) prepared the public for a change in attitude regarding the education of women. After the death of her fiance, Beecher felt called to an occupation beyond that of wife and mother. In 1824 she opened the Hartford Female Seminary to train girls to be teachers, a vocation viewed as an expansion of women's nurturing role. Soon after, she established a similar institution in Cincinnati, Ohio. Though she never kept house, she wrote numerous books for women on household science, nutrition, and health. While she advocated teacher training, she continued to believe that women's sacred role was primarily in the home.

Other Connecticut women pushed forward the frontier of women's education. Emma Willard (1789-1870), born and educated in Berlin, in 1821 established the Troy Female Seminary in New York, introducing into the secondary curriculum many studies then offered at the college level. Prudence Crandall (1803-1890) began a school for black girls in Canterbury. Her neighbors objected in 1833 and urged the General Assembly to pass a law making it an offense to establish a school for blacks without the consent of the town involved. Crandall was arrested, imprisoned in the Brooklyn county jail, and brought to trial. A series of legal battles ended in her acquittal, but angry townspeople continued their harassment. Her well was poisoned, her out-of-state students were threatened with prosecution under strict vagrancy laws, and the school building was vandalized. Crandall gave up her mission in 1842 and moved to the West.

The cause of reform was also adopted by women, especially those who wrote. The profession of writing, conveniently practiced by women within their homes offered a way to enlighten a public which was growing more literate. The most significant anti-slavery novel in nineteenth-century America was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896). Born in Litchfield and mothered by her sister Catherine Beecher, she grew up inspired by her minister father to attain distinction in the world. Marriage brought her seven children and a plethora of domestic duties, but she still managed to find time to write. Uncle Tom's Cabin, the bestseller of its era, was a passionate response to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. It depicts cruelty, hope for redemption, and maternal suffering in an epic enacted by the archetypal personalities of Tom, Little Eva, and Simon Legree. When President Lincoln met Stowe, he is supposed to have said: "So this is the little lady who made this big war."

Most women who turned to writing did so to earn a living. The reading public was at first limited, and women writers had to be versatile, composing novels, magazine stories, books for children, and works about etiquette. Lydia Sigourney (1791-1865), the so-called "Sweet Singer of Hartford," was one of the most prolific, and one of the first women to make a successful career in popular literature. A few women writers were able to establish a reputation as scholars. Delia Bacon (1811-1859), raised and educated in Hartford, originated the theory that Shakespeare's plays were the work of Francis Bacon, and thus began a controversy which continued into the twentieth century. Frances Caulkins (1795-1869), author and historian, wrote classic studies of Norwich and New London which earned her membership in the Massachusetts Historical Society. (She was the only woman so honored for over a century.) However, most female Connecticut authors who flourished, such as Ann Stephens, Louisa Tuthill, and Abigail Whittelsey, did so by composing moralistic tales and domestic melodramas which all but took over the market for novels dominated by female readers.

The Civil War helped to bring women permanently into major activities outside the home, as all over the country woman plunged into war work. The first units of soldiers had their clothes, knapsacks, and bedding made by their families or volunteers. Three hundred Norwich women met a few days after the fall of Fort Sumter in order to make uniforms for their town's company. New Haven women turned out 500 uniforms while East Hartford women made 6,000 yards of bandages and hundreds of compresses. Organization was needed to coordinate these efforts, and the United States Sanitary Commission was formed to avoid waste and duplication. For some time, however, Connecticut associations preferred to work independently. The Ladies Soldiers' Relief Society of Bridgeport gathered hospital supplies and sent vegetables and provisions south to combat scurvey and malnutrition. The Hartford Society of Women paid $20,000 in cash and sent $60,000 worth of goods to the troops.

Voluntary as well as official effort was also required for the care of the wounded. Harriet Hawley, who accompanied her husband south with the First Connecticut, originally planned to open a school for blacks at his post in Beaufort, North Carolina; instead she went into hospital work. Beginning as a visitor, she came to serve as supervisor of a ward and organizer of women volunteers. Innumerable other women cared for family members who were injured, journeyed to recover bodies of their men, or helped permanently disabled veterans to live at home. The work of women with the wounded during the Civil War helped establish nursing as a profession for women.

With the end of the fighting, women utilized their newly-developed skills to deal with the problems of poverty in an industrial order. Middle-class women could acceptably leave the home and engage in "friendly-visiting" with the poor because, according to contemporaries, their superior moral sensibilities would help uplift society. Mary Mumford (1842-1935), native of Connecticut and graduate of the State Normal School in New Britain, was a prominent civic leader in Philadelphia after her marriage. Virginia Smith (1836-1903), born in Bloomfield, became head of the Hartford City Mission, established to dispense clothing and advice to the needy. She also placed orphans in adoptive homes and founded a hospital for handicapped children in Newington.

Other Connecticut women also worked with children. Josephine Dodge (1855-1928) of Hartford devoted her life to the day-nursery movement, which aimed to relieve the overburdened working mother and inculcate immigrant children with middle-class American values. Emily Huntington (1841-1909) of Lebanon founded the "kitchen garden" movement, which taught domestic skills to young girls of the working class.

The plight of working-class women and children was also addressed by changes in the law. Factory employment of children under fourteen years of age was finally forbidden in 1895. Previous attempts to regulate child labor had met with little success because laws were rarely enforced and both parents and employers found it profitable to avoid such legislation. A sixty-hour week for women factory workers was enacted in 1888 in spite of opposition from employers who resented a perceived invasion of their private rights. Such protective legislation for women, establishing limits on hours, night work, and loads to be lifted, was viewed by reformers and social welfare leaders as necessary to preserve the health and well-being of women.

No real effort was made to legislate equal pay for equal work during the nineteenth century, and working-class women in every field experienced gross discrimination. In the bakeries, women received $4.96 a week, while men were paid $12.52. In the cotton mills, the lowest weekly rate paid to a man was $4.81, while a woman received only $2.86. Some men complained about unequal pay, claiming that women willing to work for low wages increased unemployment among men. Other men recognized the injustice and supported the working woman's cause. Not until 1947 did Connecticut prohibit discrimination based on sex or marital status in employment practices including compensation. Even with this legislation, women in Connecticut as elsewhere continue to earn in all occupational categories an average of 69¢ for every dollar earned by a man.

Labor unions grew in size and strength, and women played a role in their activities. Beatrice Bonifacio (1913- ), a union leader for over forty years, began working in the needle trades in Connecticut at the age of fourteen, earning 25¢ for every two dresses she was able to sew. A fifty-five hour work week, including half-days on Saturdays and Sundays, yielded eight or nine dollars for her, while her mother and sister earned even less. At work, Bonifacio found distasteful prohibitions regarding talking and unnecessary physical movement. She took her fight to the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and helped organize a strike of more than 5,000 garment workers in a total of twenty-two factories, culminating in a massive walkout in August of 1933. After two weeks of picketing, employers signed a contract guaranteeing a thirty-five hour week at 63¢ an hour and offering improvement in working conditions. "It was like a dream [come true]," Bonifacio recollected.

In the 1890s, middle-class women concerned with social problems founded settlement houses to provide immigrants and working-class women with needed services and to give college-trained women an outlet for their talents. Anna Branch (1875-1937) of New London had a life-long association with Christadora House, while Jane Robbins (1860-1946) of Wethersfield worked at the Neighborhood Guild and the College Settlement in New York City. Robbins later lobbied for minimum-wage legislation, tenement house laws, and public parks. The Women's Christian Temperance Union enjoyed a rapid growth in membership, and under the direction of Mary Hunt (1830-1906), a native of South Canaan, the WCTU secured by 1901 laws in every state requiring the public schools to teach the evils of alcohol.

As women took part in political action, the case for women's rights grew stronger. Women continued in late nineteenth-century Connecticut to be second-class citizens in many respects, but their legal position had advanced somewhat since the Civil War. By an act of the General Assembly in 1877, married women were given control of their own property. Moreover, the earnings of the wife were to be hers alone, and the wife had power to make contracts and dispose of her real and personal estate. Twenty years later, Connecticut law permitted married women to be the executrix of wills and guardians of minors. Legislators were reluctant, however, to give women politic rights. Not until 1893 were women allowed to vote for school officers and not until 1909 were they permitted to vote on school or library issues. Even then, they had to cast ballots in a box marked "For Women's Ballots," an arrangement that violated the secrecy of voting.

From Reconstruction to World War I, women all over the state worked for the right to vote. Some outstanding women in this area of activity were Abby (1797-1878) and Julia (1792-1886) Smith of Glastonbury who went from anti-slavery work to women's rights. They engaged for years in litigation which protested taxation without representation after some of their land and livestock were sold at auction to cover delinquent taxes. Accounts of their plight were collected and published in 1877 by Julia Smith in a pamphlet, Abby Smith and Her Cows. The Smith sisters attracted the attention of national leaders, including Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822-1907), who helped establish a fund for their defense. Isabella Hooker, born in Litchfield into renowned Beecher family, grew interested in the philosophy of the women's suffrage movement after raising her family in the fashionable Nook Farm area of Hartford. She became an activist in the National Woman Suffrage Association. Other concerned women founded clubs and attended state and national suffrage conventions. An Equal Rights Club, established in Hartford in 1885, held frequent meetings, participated in demonstrations and marches, and published numerous tracts and fliers concerned with political issues.

It was the war work of Connecticut women which convinced state politicians that women were patriots and should be granted the vote. During World War I, many women worked in factories. Remington Arms alone employed 4,000 women, about one-quarter of its total work force. Others helped conduct the military census, sold Liberty Bonds, and wrapped bandages for the Red Cross. When three women were added to the State Council for Defense in July 1918, women accelerated their campaign. Activists hired a professional publicity bureau to help them pressure state and national leaders; suffragists from other parts of the country, including Carrie Chapman Catt, came to Connecticut to speak at rallies; and early in May 1920 more than forty public meetings were staged to generate support. By the end of the year, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, and women throughout America were able to vote.

In the arts and letters, women continued their work as artists, performers, and writers. Raising the occupation from dilettante to professional artist has never been easy. Nevertheless, numerous women of varied backgrounds have produced contributions. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1865-1935), born in Hartford of Beecher family lineage, published "The Yellow Wallpaper" in 1892, narrating the story of women's nervous breakdown with psychological precision far ahead of its time. In Women and Economics, a feminist manifesto which shocked the public in 1898, Gilman argued that women could improve their status in society if they relied on earning their own living, rather than attracting and holding men. Ann Petry, black novelist born in Old Saybrook in 1911, was winner of the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship for 1945. Author of The Street, which powerfully portrayed life in Harlem, Petry has written successful novels, children's books, and short stories. Marion Anderson (1903- ), though not a native of Connecticut, for most of her life has been a resident of Danbury, close to the cultural centers of the East Coast. Recognized as one of the world's great living contraltos, she courageously overcame racism during her concert career. And Fidelia Hoscutt Fielding (1827-1908), an Indian woman born in Mohegan, worked with scholars at Columbia University to record what remained of the Mohegan-Pequot language. Four of her diaries are preserved in the archives of the Museum of the American Indian in New York City, recording traditions of the once-powerful Mohegan nation. The creative productions of these women have broken through barriers of race and sex.

After the battle for the vote had been won in 1920, activist women were optimistic and anticipated full entrance into the country's political arena. These expectations were unrealized, however, because women were simply not accepted in politics. Women voters did not vote in concert on political issues or vote as a block for women candidates. As late as 1962, only 46 out of 294 seats in the Lower House of the General Assembly, and 4 of the 36 Senate seats, were filled with women. The delay in achieving leadership was caused by social sanctions, economic limitations, and ostracism from constituency-building political clubs. Nevertheless, in time a number of leaders have emerged.

Claire Booth Luce (1903- ) was the first congresswoman from Connecticut, and later served as ambassador to Italy. Chase Going Woodhouse (1890- ) was the first Democratic woman Secretary of the State and a member of the Office of Price Stabilization where she fought inflation and unemployment in the period following World War II.

Ella Grasso (1919-1981), who in 1974 was the first woman elected governor without succeeding her husband, served the public for over thirty years. Originally a Republican, she switched to the Democratic party and won every election in which she was a candidate. As governor, Grasso devoted much of her effort to open government, abolition of Connecticut's county government, and reform of the court systems. These women and others in Connecticut have begun to move into political office in significant numbers and have emerged among the country's leaders in this slow victory.

World War II brought more women out of the home and into the workplace. In addition to those who volunteered for the Red Cross, almost 35,000 women, most of them married and with children, took jobs in industry. For the first time black women in significant numbers found work in plants and factories, though they still experienced discrimination from co-workers. Labor laws were relaxed to allow women to work ten hours a day and as many as 55 hours a week in certain jobs. Nevertheless, "Rosie the Riveter" was paid less than men, denied opportunities for advanced training, and was expected to give up her job when men returned from war.

Following World War II women in Connecticut had to accept a subordinate position in the economic, professional, and social life of the state. In 1966 the average yearly salary of working women was $3,382, about half the median salary of men. The leading occupations were office workers, domestic servants, and sales clerks, and there were few women engineers, doctors, ministers, lawyers, or business leaders. Only occasionally did women reach significant decision-making levels in business as did Beatrice Fox Auerbach (1887-1968) who became president of Hartford's G. Fox & Company in 1938, after the death of her father. She instituted a five-day, forty-hour week, hired blacks in meaningful jobs, and incorporated the latest innovations in retailing at the store. In general, however, administration and management continued to be dominated by men, though at present this is the fastest-growing occupational sector for women.

During the 1960s, inspired by the example of the civil rights movement, Connecticut women grew more assertive about their condition. Consciousness-raising groups encouraged women to take action, and a branch of the National Organization Women was formed. Members lobbied for passage of a national Equal Rights Amendment, free day-care centers, and legalized abortion. Previously all-male colleges such as Yale yielded to pressure and opened their doors to women who then pushed for end to sex quotas in admission. Business and the professions accepted more leaders, and by the end of the decade there were twenty ordained women ministers in the state. Legal changes were made which reflected the new life styles, as laws restricting sexual conduct were revoked. In 1967 the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a state law forbidding the use of contraceptives, making Connecticut the next-to-last state in the union to legalize birth control. In 1972 a Federal court set aside 1860 Connecticut law prohibiting abortion.

Legislation affecting the status of women continues to be passed. In the 1970s laws were enacted prohibiting discrimination in credit transactions, assuring maternity leave, and adding an Equal Rights Amendment to the state constitution. A program of day-care for children was made available, shelter services for victims of household abuse were established, and funds allocated for training women in non-traditional jobs. In the early 1980s, legislation has been directed toward eliminating discrimination in insurance, setting up shelter homes for unwed mothers, and establishing rape crisis centers.

Nevertheless, there remain serious problems for many women in Connecticut. Their economic status continues to be a major concern, and more employment training programs are needed to enable women to enter the job market at reasonable salary levels. Child care and transportation, flexible working hours, and pay equity require attention if women are to become more self-sufficient. To help women stay off public assistance rolls, child support and marital property laws need more effective regulation. And poverty among elderly women, a rapidly developing crisis, requires reform of social security and pension plans. While many Connecticut women are now able to enjoy new opportunities to develop their talents and abilities, others remain plagued by need and discrimination, suggesting that remedial action is still urgently required.

For Further Reading

Andersen, Ruth O.M. From Yankee to American: Connecticut, 1865-1914. Chester Connecticut, 1975.

De Pauw, Linda Grant, et at. "Symposium: Women and the Law, A Retrospective View." Human Rights 6 (Winter, 1977): 107-34.

Fennelly, Catherine. Connecticut Women in the Revolutionary Era. Chester, Connecticut, 1975.

James, Edward R., et al. Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary. 3 vols. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971.

Janick, Herbert F. A Diverse People: Connecticut 1914 to the Present. Chester, Connecticut, 1975.

Permanent Commission on the Status of Women. Great Women in Connecticut History. Hartford, Connecticut, 1978.

______. Summary of Connecticut Legislation Affecting the Status of Women, 1973-1982. Hartford, Connecticut, 1982.

Rugoff, Milton. The Beechers: An American Family in the Nineteenth Century. New York, 1981.

Sklar, Kathryn Kish. Catherine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity. New Haven, Connecticut, 1973.

Trecker, Janice Law. Preachers, Rebels, and Traders: Connecticut 1818-1865. Chester, Connecticut, 1975.

* Entry under revision.