Today we honor women’s contributions to history, culture, and society by recognizing some of the women of Manitowoc County History that have helped shape our community.
How was National Women’s History Month started?
According to the National Women’s History Alliance, Molly Murphy MacGregor, Mary Ruthsdotter, Maria Cuevas, Paula Hammett, and Bette Morgan formed the National Women’s History Project. These 5 women noticed that less than 4% of the content in textbooks was devoted to women and in 1980 lobbied for Congress to recognize women’s role in history on an annual basis.
As a result, the week of March 8th was designated as Women’s History Week and just 7 years later they were able to secure the entire month of March as National Women’s History Month.
Thank you to the Manitowoc County Historical Society for recognizing the women of our local history.
Eva Mills Anderson
Eva Mills Anderson was born in Lancaster, Wisconsin, the only daughter of Circuit Judge J.T. Mills of Grant County. She attended private schools and graduated with honors from Lawrence University in Appleton. She taught school before her marriage to Judge Anderson of Manitowoc in 1873. She quickly became a leader in her adopted city, and in 1891 organized a circle of 20 women who met and read current literature. This was the beginning of the Clio Club.
Anderson served as president of the club during its first 15 years. During discussion at their meetings, the members reorganized the need for a library in Manitowoc to succeed the old K.K. Jones Library on York Street. Working with civic leaders in the city, funds were raised to establish a public library in two rooms over the post office in the building on the north end of Eighth Street Bridge. This library opened in 1900 and was too small from the beginning.
Mrs. Anderson was also vice president of the city library board. She wrote several letters to philanthropist Andrew Carnegie requesting funds for a library in Manitowoc. Finally, in December 1902, she received words from Carnegie’s secretary that the philanthropist would be glad to donate $25,000 to build a new library. The property was purchased at the northwest corner of North Eighth and Chicago Streets and ground was broken for the new library August 3, 1903. A year later the doors to the library opened. It served the city until 1966 when a new library was built on Hamilton Street.
Grace Gleason
Grace Arlie Barber Gleason was born in Monticello in 1867. Music and books were two of the loves of Grace Gleason’s life. The wife of early Manitowoc physician Dr. Charles Gleason, she was active in music clubs at the local and state levels. Gleason was the fourth president of the Monday Music Club, which was organized in Manitowoc in 1899. Gleason was also active in the Clio Club, a women’s study group that was active in promoting educational and cultural initiatives in the community. Gleason was a charter member and the first president of the Manitowoc Federation of Women, which was organized in 1917 through efforts of the Clio Club. The Gleasons lived at 624 N. Eighth Street in Manitowoc.
Sister Thomas More Bertels
Sister Thomas More Bertels is well known locally and in the state as a teacher, author, and public speaker. After graduating from high school in 1935 in Michigan, she worked at a grocery store for years to pay off her family’s debt from the Great Depression.
She joined the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity in Manitowoc in 1939. In 1960, Sister Thomas More was assigned to the faculty of the Arts and Sciences division of Silver Lake College. To acquaint herself with local politics, she joined the League of Women Voters. She is the co-founder of Wisconsin Women for Agriculture and in 1988 she wrote a 350-page book titled “In Pursuit of Agri-Power: The One Thing North American Farmers and Ranches Can’t Produce.” Sister has received many awards. In 1993 she received the Distinguished Service Award from the American Agricultural Editors’ Association for her “heartfelt dedication to the agricultural community.”
Lucy Ell Conant
Lucy Ell Conant moved to Two Rivers from Milwaukee in 1910 when her husband John F. Conant became the manager of the Two Rivers Woodenware Co. Before moving to De Pere in 1922, she had organized The Ladies of the Roundtable, The Two Rivers Woman’s Club, the Leisure Hour Club, the Beaux Art Club, the MacDowell Club, and the Campfire Girls.
The Roundtable and the Women’s Club remain active groups in Two Rivers. Family was important to Lucy. She had a husband and two sons, both achievers. But she felt women should be just as concerned with food for the spirit as with food for the body.
At first, The Ladies of the Roundtable was known as “Mrs. John F. Conant and Friends” but she soon convinced them to change the groups’ name to Ladies of the Roundtable. The purpose of the club was “to study art and travel in respect to enjoying the painting, sculpture, architecture and other objects of beauty.”
Jessie Lee Eggers
When Jessie Lee (Madden) Eggers ran for public office in 1922 she was following a family tradition, being the great-granddaughter of Henry Dodge, first territorial governor of Wisconsin and a U.S. Senator.
Born in Dodgeville, Wisconsin in 1871, Jessie graduated from the Platteville Normal School in 1889 and married Frank Eggers of Manitowoc County in 1893. She became an active worker for the enfranchisement of women and organized the first women’s suffrage society in Manitowoc. After the passage of the Women’s Suffrage Amendment to the Constitution in 1920, she ran for the state assembly, one of the first women in Wisconsin to run for office. Her campaign advertisement in the local newspaper, headed “When a Woman Thinks,” read: “The just women will want to vote for and support a woman who has worked for Progress for All Women. She trusts the Future to woman, who has made our present what it is. For 20 years I have worked with my time, money, and sacrifice to raise myself and All Women to Equal Rights.”
Although Eggers lost this election, her work in the field of women’s rights makes her a true pioneer in raising women’s consciousness.
Diantha Jane Smith Hamilton
Diantha Jane Smith was the daughter of Hezekiah Huntington Smith, known as “Deacon Smith,” founder of Two Rivers. She opened the first school in Two Rivers in 1845. It was a private school with 18 students. Classes were held in a frame building that stood between River and 15th streets. Diantha married Henry Carter Hamilton in 1849. Mr. Hamilton was killed in the Civil War in 1864.
Two of their sons, James and Henry, later founded the Hamilton Manufacturing Company. In 1876, Diantha helped establish a kindergarten supported by public funds. Two Rivers was the second school system in the state to start a kindergarten. Through her efforts, a new grade school and high school were built in 1877 and another high school, named for her son H.P. Hamilton in 1903. She also helped establish a public library in 1891, with her sons as carter members of the Joseph Mann Library Association. She died in 1913 at the age of 83 and is buried in Pioneer Cemetery.
Marge Miley
Marge Miley retired in 1986 as the managing editor of the Herald Times Reporter. She started her Milestones Column in 1979 and continued until 2009. Miley began working for the newspaper in 1943, six months after graduation from Lincoln High School. She began as a proofreader but her talents, dedication, and commitment took her to the top spot of managing editor in 1982. She was the first and only female editor of the HTR.
Frances B. Rankin
Hundreds of high school-age students from foreign countries have spent a year in our schools because Frances B. Rankin took the initiative to launch the American Field Service Scholarship program here. In 1950 she read an article in a Milwaukee newspaper about the AFS program. In 1951 three students were able to come to Manitowoc under the program. Mrs. Rankin was also the first woman elected to the board of education for the Manitowoc Public School District in the 1950s. She was also awarded the Thanks Badge by the Girl Scouts – the highest award given to an adult in Scouting.
Audrey Sickinger
Audrey O’Connell Sickinger was born in 1934 near Grimms. Growing up on the family farm, Audrey did her share of chores and credits her father with her interest in farming. After graduating from Valders High School, Audrey attended Milwaukee Business Institute and three months later she married Jerome Sickinger. After much hard work, their farm had grown to 2,750 acres and 135 dairy cows. Audrey and her husband realized that no matter how hard she worked, Audrey was not receiving proper credit for her accomplishments. In 1974, Audrey purchased 200 acres and farmed her own land. She overcame many problems encountered by a woman operating a business and especially a farm business where the word “farmer” has been designated as a male.
Ruth Richter
For more than a quarter-century, summertime in Manitowoc included a pie and ice cream social in Ruth Richter’s back yard. It began in 1953 when the Memorial Hospital Auxiliary decided to hold a pie and ice cream social as its first fund-raiser and Richter offered to host it. It became an annual event, drawing hundreds of people to the garden behind the Richter home at 846 N. Eighth Street, Manitowoc. Richter was the wife of Oscar Richter, whose family founded the Richter Vingegar Corp., in Manitowoc, now Fleischmann’s Vinegar. Ruth Richer’s support of the hospital wasn’t limited to hosting the social, and her community involvement extended far beyond the hospital. She was on the planning committee for the building for the hospital and was a charter member of the hospital’s board of trustees. She served as a member of the board until 1986.
Richter was born in 1891 in New York and moved to Chippewa Falls at a young age to live with relatives when her parents died. She moved to Manitowoc after the Richters’ marriage in 1921. She died in 1987 at the age of 95.
Lilian Louise Chloupek Schmidt
Lilian Louise Chloupek Schmidt was a leader in the educational field in Manitowoc County for many years. She was born in 1888 in Francis Creek, the third of five children of attorney Adolph S. and Anna Tesarik Chloupek. The family moved around 1896 to Mishicot where she grew up. She attended the Manitowoc County Teacher Training School, which is now the Heritage Center. She graduated in 1906 and taught in Mishicot and in the county until 1912. Then saddened by the death of a brilliant younger sister, also a teacher, she left home to teach in Washington state for two years. In 1915, she became Manitowoc County’s first supervising teacher, assisting the superintendent in visiting the county’s rural schools. In 1920 she became the first woman to serve as the Manitowoc County Superintendent of Schools.
Lilian introduced a club that was later called 4-H to boys and girls all around the county. She died in 1960.
Ruth West
Ruth West came to Manitowoc in 1932 after her marriage to John West in New York. In 1934, Ruth West started developing the West of the Lake gardens on a barren tract of land on Memorial Drive north of Manitowoc. After initial plowing with a team of horses, the entire six acres was spaded by hand by William Mueller, West’s faithful gardener. Starting in 1936, the annual Tulip Teas at the gardens attracted thousands of visitors each spring. In 1970 she became involved with the Rahr Civic Center in Manitowoc. For the next twenty years, she was its chief benefactor and patron.
Ruth West died in 1990. The West’s famous gardens surrounding their beautiful home remain open to the public.
Information on local women in history shared by the Manitowoc County Historical Society.
