Almanac

November 19 - November 25

Birthdays

November 19

• In 1847, Mary Anna Hallock Foote. She illustrated and wrote of life in mining towns and California. Often regarded as a writer equal in descriptive ability to Bret Harte, she was required by her publishers to "feminize" and "idealize," which destroyed much of her writing's effectiveness.
  

November 20

• In 1885, Olive D. Wetzel Dennis. As service engineer with Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, she was responsible for such unheard of things as air conditioning, reclining seats, and dressing rooms to be installed on trains. She had an MA in mathematics and a civil engineering degree.

• In 1923, Nadine Gordimer, South African writer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for literature. One of her most notable books is A Guest of Honor.

November 21

• In 1850, Isabel Florence Hapgood, pioneer translator of Russian literature in bringing Tolstoy, Dostoevski and Chekhov to English readers. Editorial writer for the magazine Nation.
• In 1870, Mary Johnston, reputed friend of Ellen Glasgow, novelist of extraordinary power wrote primarily Virginia period pieces although her works became more complex as time went on. She was a active suffragist and peace advocate. Her second novel, To Have and To Hold was a runaway bestseller in 1900. In all she published more than 20 novels and had one play produced on Broadway, The Goddess of Reason.
• In 1894, Cecil Murray Harden, who in 1948 became the first woman elected U.S. Representative to Congress.
  

November 22

• In 1819, George Eliot. One of England's foremost novelists of the 19th century, Mary Ann (Marian) Evans, wrote under the masculine penname of George Eliot. She wrote realistically of English country and village life in her novels Silas Marner and The Mill on the Floss. Her Middlemarch explored new ideas that were changing the English lifestyle. Raised mostly in boarding schools, she took charge of her home, the Griff House. Relations with her family were never good and when she began to openly live with G. H. Lewes (who could not get a divorce), her family stopped all contact and many of her friends were alienated. After Lewes' death, she married a man 20 years her junior.
• In 1898, Sarah Gibson Blanding. After 85 years, Vassar, the all- female college, got its first women president. She served 1946-64.
• In 1943, Billie Jean Moffitt King, American tennis player. The first woman professional athlete to be paid more than 100,000 dollars in a single year (1971). A feminist, she helped to organize the Women's Tennis Association and to establish a women's pro tour in the early 1970s in which women insisted on equal prizes to those paid men. She gained personal notoriety when a female lover sued her for palimony.
  

Happenings

November 19

• In 1887, Emma Lazarus US poet ("Give us your tired and poor"), died in NY at age 38.
  

November 20

• In 1961, the Supreme Court upheld a Florida law which exempts women from jury duty, unless they volunteer. In all, 18 states allow the jury duty exemption while three state, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina outright barred women from jury duty. However, on February 7, 1966, a federal court rules that such laws should end on June 1, 1967 because such laws "deny to women the equal protection of the laws in violation of the 14th amendment." In January of 1975 the Supreme Court says a Louisiana law forbidding women serving on juries is unconstitutional. The first woman juror served in the State of New York in 1936.
  

November 22

• In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Reed v Reed that it was unconstitutional to give preference to men as executors of estates. Argued by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who herself would become a Supreme Court judge 22 years later, the decision marked the FIRST time a high court decision overturned a law based on sex, according to Justice Ginsburg.

November 23

• In 1848, Female Medical Educational Society was founded in Boston.
  
• In 1942, Coast Guard Woman's Auxiliary (SPARS) authorized.

November 24

• In 1930, Ruth Nichols began the first transcontinental flight from New York to California by a woman. It took seven days.

November 25

• In 1715, Sybilla Masters, who divided her time between England and the United States, did not receive English Patent #401 for her machines and methods for preparing Indian corn. It went to her husband Thomas because of the strictures against women. The patent documents clearly state Sybilla invented the process and her signed drawings show the method of operation. She also invented a method for using palmetto leaves to make hats, the patent again going to her husband, who formally acknowledged her as the inventor.
  On July 15, 1717, the State of Pennsylvania granted Sybilla patent rights in her own name.
  

For more information, check out Women of Achievement and Herstory.