Annie Cohen emigrated from Riga to the United States as a child. She was married to Max Kopchovsky and had three little children, when she stumbled upon an opportunity to become rich and famous, and promote feminism, all together. At the decade of America’s bicycle hype, she took on the challenge presented by two Boston businessmen to be the first woman to cycle around the world. Without prior cycling experience, she set for the road in 1894. 15 months later, she returned home as an international sensation, even though she skipped large parts of the journey by sailing. Her biggest talent was for storytelling: she reported back about a range of exotic and mostly fictitious adventures. Nonetheless, the gift of imagination secured her a series of lectures and a newspaper column upon her return. Another skill which she demonstrated was entrepreneurship: she adopted the name Londonderry as part of a paid sponsorship by a water company and used herself and her bike as a mobile billboard in France. At the end of the 19th century, Annie Londonderry was an icon of the “new woman” – an independent, liberated, and self-reliant person. Her story was soon forgotten, but after her great-grandnephew discovered that her brief death notice in the 1947 New York Times read: “devoted grandmother of Mary”, he published a book about her, 60 years after her death. Read more...

Lucy Stone grew up in a rural household that practiced patriarchy, and so she devoted her life to women’s liberation. She saved money for nine years, by working as a teacher and a housekeeper, to fund her higher education. Stone enrolled in Oberlin Collegiate Institute, Ohio – the first college in the US where female and black students could study together. She co-founded a secret debating society for women, who met in the woods. At the age of 29, she became the first woman from Massachusetts to graduate with a Bachelor degree. Her talent for public speaking took her touring the country, advocating for women’s rights and speaking against slavery. In 1850 she took part in organizing the National Woman’s Rights Convention, attended by more than 1,000 participants. The convention attracted international attention when advocating for the rights of black women. She took her politics home as well, and when marrying Henry Brown Blackwell, she decided to keep her last name. She was the first married woman in the US to keep her maiden name, and those who followed her used the term “Lucy Stoner,” popular for married women who didn’t change their family names after their husbands.’ The couple established and edited the Woman’s Journal, the newspaper of the “American Woman Suffrage Association.” She was the first person cremated in Massachusetts.   Read more...