Welcome to A Little HerStory

After a very steep learning curve and a not entirely pleasant experience with my publisher, I have cut all ties with them. Big thanks to all those near and dear who have supported me during this adventure. I am painfully aware that there are typo's in the book - part of the reason I have a new publisher. The fault may lie with me, the editor, or the publisher, but at this point it is moot, the book is published (2017). I beg your forgiveness and ask that you read for content. My friend, a Navajo grannie and weaver, assures me that in every rug there is a deliberate error, and the purpose is to let spirit in. While the errors in the book are certainly not deliberate, please, let the spirit

In March 2016 it was announced that the al-Qarawiyin Library in Fez, Morocco, the oldest working library in the world, founded ed 859 CE, around the time early forms of algebra were being invented just to lend some perspective, would re-open after restoration. The library was founded by Fatima Muhammad Al-Fihri Al-Quraysh, the daughter of a rich immigrant from al-Qayrawan (Tunisia today). Well educated and devout, she vowed to spend her entire inheritance on building a mosque and knowledge center for her community. Fittingly, El-Fihriya attended the university she helped to found. The library still has her original diploma: a wooden board. The medina, or old city, of Fez, Morocco, is the kin

Lavinia Dock was born on February 26, 1858 to an upper middle class family. She was one of six children and they lived comfortably, receiving a proper Victorian education in art, music, literature, and language. She knew at an early age that she wanted to become a nurse and after high school she went on to study at the Bellevue Hospital school for nurses in New York City. After graduation, she worked as a visiting nurse for a variety of charitable organizations, supervised a ward in a temporary hospital for those suffering from yellow fever woking with Jane Delano at a Florida hospital. Jane later founded the Red Cross Nursing Association. Lavinia also went to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where

Elizabeth Barker Johnson During World War II, there was a significant shortage of soldiers who were able to manage the postal service for the U.S. Army overseas. In 1944, Mary McLeod Bethune worked to get the support of first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, for "a role for black women in the war overseas.” Black newspapers, too, challenged the U.S. Army to "use black women in meaningful Army jobs.” The women who signed up went to basic training in Georgia. Women who were already in the WAC, like Alyce Dixon, served at different locations, including the Pentagon before they joined the 6888th. Alyce Dixon, the nation’s oldest female veteran, who expedited mail delivery in World War II and later work

Martha Ellis Gellhorn was the only woman journalist who landed on the beach in Normandy during World War II. She was born on November 8, 1908, in St. Louis, Missouri. She was the daughter of Edna Fischel Gellhorn, a suffragist and George Gellhorn who was a German born gynecologist. Her older brother Walter, became a noted law professor at Columbia University and her younger brother Alfred was an oncologist and former dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. In 1926 she graduated from John Burroughs School in St. Louis and enrolled in Bryn Mawr College. A year later she left Bryn Mawr without graduating, in order to pursue a careen as a journalist. Her first published arti

A big thank you to my friend, Karen Callahan, for introducing me to this amazing woman. Adeline Gray was the daughter of German immigrants, Martin and Pauline Gray, born in 1917 and raised in Oxford, Connecticut. Adeline had two brothers and two sisters. From a very young age she was infatuated with the idea of parachuting. As a girl she was inspired by reading about parachute jumps. Later in her life when interviewed by the St. Petersburg Times of Florida, she said: "Back home in Oxford, I used to take an umbrella and jump off the hayloft holding it over my head like a parachute. But I ruined many umbrellas." After graduating high school, she regularly went with her father to New Haven, w

Mary was born into a Quaker family on March 8th, 1856 in Richmond, Indiana. She was the daughter of Jonathan Wright Plummer (a wholesale druggist) and Hannah Ann (Ballard) Plummer. Mary graduated from Friends Academy and studied for a year at Wellesley College before she began teaching in Chicago. She was an avaricious reader and fluent in German, French, Spanish and Italian. She wrote many poems that were published in the Atlantic Monthly and Scribners. She graduated in 1888 from the first class of the first established library school, “the first class in library science on the planet” the Library School of Columbia College where she was a student of Melvil Dewey’s and had excelled. I

It was certainly not customary for women to accompany their husbands to construction sites during the nineteenth century, or to ever go to a construction site for that matter. For one thing, their long skirts and multiple layers of petticoats would certainly get in the way. For another thing, it just wasn’t done. However, Emily Warren Roebling was an exception, in many ways. Emily Warren Roebling was born on September 23, 1843 in Cold Spring, Putnam County, New York. She was one of a dozen children born to New York State assemblymen Sylvanus Warren and his wife Phebe Lickley Warren. Emily was unusually close to her older brother, Gouverneur Kemble Warren, who was a graduate of the United

Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated. ...For far too long we have been seduced into walking a path that did not lead us to ourselves. For far too long we have said yes when we wanted to say no. And for far too long we have said no when we desperately wanted to say yes. . . When we don't listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don't, others will abandon us. ~ Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations o