Jane Swisshelm was born
in
Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania,
Jane Cannon Swisshelm was a journalist, abolitionist and women’s
rights advocate at a time when women were discouraged from holding
those positions. She also became one of the most infamous women in
the United States.
Swisshelm’s father died when she was eight, leaving her and her
mother to support the rest of the family. She did lacemaking and
became a school teacher at age 14. In 1836 she married James
Swisshelm but soon found that married life, where she constantly had
to leave major decisions up to her husband, did not suit her.
In the
1840s, Swisshelm established her own anti-slavery newspaper, the
Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter. In time, the paper also began to
advocate women’s rights as well. She was paid $5 a week, a large sum
in those days, to write a column for Horace Greely’s newspaper, the
New York Tribune, and eventually became the paper’s
Washington,
D.C.
correspondent. She became the first woman to sit in the Senate press
gallery, an unheard of thing for a woman at that time; this angered
many men in the press.
Shortly
before the Civil War, Swisshelm moved to Minnesota and began another
newspaper, the St. Cloud Visiter. She also ran a column in the paper
that advised women on how to deal with their husbands. Between her
anti-slavery views and her thoughts on women’s rights, she angered
so many people that her newspaper office was attacked and her
printing press destroyed. Instead of giving in, Swisshelm bought a
new press and began the St. Cloud Democrat, another anti-slavery
paper.
On the outbreak of the American, Swisshelm sold her paper and worked as a nurse
for the Union army. She served in
Washington
D.C., as well as at the battles near Fredricksburg. At the end of
the war, she moved to Swissvale, Pennsylvania, a suburb of
Pittsburgh. There she wrote her autobiography, "Half A Century," in
1880. She died in Swissvale several years later, still pushing for
women’s rights, including the right to vote.
Letters
The Library of Congress : Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books
from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910. Crusader and
feminist; letters of Jane Grey Swisshelm, 1858-1865
