Today's university classes often contain as many, or even more, women than men. But until recently most of the "important" characters in history, as it has been traditionally written, are men. So it may seem that women will have a harder time than men finding likely Kansas Characters to portray. Fortunately, this really isn't so, both because we are now recognizing the important roles many women played in larger Kansas events, and because we are recognizing that "ordinary" people (both men and women) are also well worth studying, even if they didn't do "important" things in the public sphere.

Like men, possible Kansas women characters fall into two basic catagories: ones that did/participated in something extraordinary and ones that in their lives embody the "ordinary life" of some time or place. Both can make very effective characters, whether performed or presented in webpage form. The following is a very brief survey of some of the most likely eras and topics for those of you interested in finding a Kansas woman character. It is anything but complete; rather it is intended to get you starting thinking about possible likely topics, and to suggest a few specific ones.

Earliest Kansas is hard for anyone needing to identify a do-able specific woman character (and its not very easy for male characters, either). But by the 1820s-30s it is possible at least to look into some catagories. By 1829 the Shawnee Methodist mission had been opened, closely followed in 1831 by the Shawnee Baptist mission. Both were opened by ministers accompanied by wives (Thomas Johnson and Isaac McCoy); later missionaries then followed. Anyone interested in bringing alive the missionary wife's world certainly should look at the various collections in the KSHS and consult with the archivists there to find out what other resources might be found elsewhere (most missionary societies have archives in which - often - it is possible to find the letters home from field missions, plus copies of annual reports, special leaflets, etc).

Bleeding/Territorial Kansas was an epic era, and it gives us a number of excellent candidates for Kansas Characters profiles. Clarina Nichols came to Kansas to try to get women's rights written into the not-yet-created Kansas Constitution. While she didn't get full rights, she got better rights than most already-established state constitutions recognized. And there already exists a good profile of her plus many of her letters transcribed (no reading of old handwriting required!), all published in a number of issues of Kansas History a few decades ago. At the same time Sara Robinson (wife of New England Emigrant Aid Society official Charles) published a book about both her daily life in raw Kansas Territory and her sense of the issues involved. Some of it is online, all is available in the library (reprinted). Other potentially good profiles: Julia Louisa Lovejoy who wrote letters home about Kansas in this same period and Hannah Ropes who wrote Six Months in Kansas. Also Florella Adair who lived in a cabin almost next to John Brown and embodies the great hardships women often suffered in service to their husbands' call to come to Kansas (she is profiled effectively in one chapter of Gerald McFarland's A Scattered People which used various letters from the Adair collection in the KSHS). All of these characters offer the potential to mix personal female and public "great event" experiences together: ie some glimpses/takes on the Bleeding Kansas conflict plus details of women's work and/or realities of women's subordinate status.

New land settlement continued in Kansas (moving westward) throughout the whole second half of the 19^th century. A number of diaries and other sources record women's experiences. Rose Ise definitely seems a likely Kansas Character (Sod and Stubble). Abbie Bright (chosen in 1998 to be a web profile) wrote a very useful diary.. One possibility worth investigating would be a longtime woman involved in some small newspaper or other. A good many women did "help" their husbands publish papers, or write columns for extended periods of time. One such woman might well produce a wealth of quotable experiences, opinions, and impressions of frontier Kansas. The thing to do if interested in this topic is to consult (again) the KSHS archivists who know the newspaper collections best.

Many women were active in pushing the limits of what the society of the time felt was right and natural for women - which was, in the later 19^th century, mostly staying very close to home. Basically, if well off enough (and otherwise qualified by attitude and behavior) to be a "lady," a woman was expected almost always to work and focus her interests around home and family. If working for pay (usually as an unmarried or widowed person), it was most acceptable for a woman to do something nurturing such as be a nurse or a teacher, or perhaps keep a boarding house, or maybe be a seamstress. But in general married women were expected to make a home for husband and children, and men to do the "public sphere" work to support that home. The culture of the time saw this as natural, and a good deal for women who would therefore be protected, able to do what their natures' best fitted them to do - and what was necessary for the stability and order of society.

But of course not all women agreed with this plan. Some just plain didn't agree with the assumed limits on women. Others pointed out that a good many women weren't being protected, and a good many men weren't supporting their wives and homes. Thus Carrie Nation undertook the very unladylike actions of smashing up saloons - but only because such saloons were illegal and were places in which men drank up the wages needed to support their wives and children. And so many other women campaigned in one way or another for extended women's rights and opportunities; always challenging at least some generally-held assumptions about women, but also often agreeing with others. Thus we see Argonia, Kansas's Susanna Madora Salter elected the first woman mayor in the nation - in part as a joke that misfired (when the women weren't humiliated to see a woman publically nominated, but rather went out and campaigned for her), and in part out of an expectation that women would best clean up the "wild west" corruption that many more established men wanted to see die out in Kansas towns.

Populist women didn't focus on specifically women's rights. But they did speak up publically in a very "unladylike" way for the rights of ordinary farm families, and in so doing, helped pioneer public acceptance of women playing roles in public political debate. Likely Populist women include both Mary Elizabeth Lease and Annie Diggs.

Minnie Grinstead (chosen by one member of the 1998 class already) was one of the most active women supporting prohibition through the WCTU and then working in the successful 1912 campaign that got Kansas women the unrestricted vote. In 1918 she then became the first woman ever elected to the Kansas legislature. Three other women joined her there in 1920; any of these might also make good profiles. A little later, in 1932, Kathryn O'Laughlin (later McCarthey) became the first Kansas woman to go to Congress. Although she spent only one term there, together with her husband Dan McCarthey she then spend many years in law practice and as a mainstay of the minority Democrat party. Lila Day Monroe, who never herself held office, is nevertheless another possible Kansas Character. She worked tirelessly in the 1920s to make sure politicians continued to pay some attention to women's issues and interests at a time when both Kansas political parties and their agendas remained overwhelmingly male.

Of course women did many things other than politics. Many women wrote columns for newspapers. Perhaps the most famous of these, at least around Topeka, is Zula Bennington Greene, known as "Peggy of the Flint Hills," who for over fifty years, from the 1930s into the 1980s. Perhaps most women came into business in Kansas with the help of some family connection, but that doesn't mean that they didn't carve out important lives once they got that start. Olive Ann Beech certainly did so in the Wichita aircraft business. Also Georgia Neese Clark Gray, who among other things served as Treasurer of the United States. Elizabeth "Grandma" Layton is now famous for her late-in-life art work, as well as for her example of how art could be used to break the hold of serious depression. Other such women can be identified with the help of KSHS archivists, or simply by asking around among those who know about the major figures of any town, or any field of achievement. Certainly it would be worth looking into earliest women lawyers, architects, school principals, YWCA directors, etc.

Oral histories now give us much better access to the personal qualities and lives of women for whom there probably once would not have been enough original material to construct a Character performance or webpage. Recently-collected oral interviews wamong those connected with the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education supreme court case offer possibilities; other collections altready exist for other lives.And of course it is also posible to go out and collect interviews of one's own, should a likely woman Character just not have quite enough written material already available on her life.
 

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