Cambridge Women's Heritage Project Database, W

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Cambridge Women's Heritage Project

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Mary F. Wadden (b. ca. 1925, d. March 25, 2001)
Teacher
Mary Wadden was the daughter of Dr. Joseph M. Wadden and Mary F. (McBride) Wadden. She was a lifelong resident of Cambridge and taught in the Cambridge Public schools for thirty-eight years. The Cambridge City Council passed a resolution in recognition of her life and achievements on April 2, 2001.
Reference: City Council resolution, April 2, 2001

Betsy Warrior (b. 1942?)
Feminist, Woman’s rights activist
     Betsy Warrior married her teenage husband at the age of sixteen and endured seven years of physical abuse before she was able to leave him. As a divorced single mother without child support, she began to work for women’s rights in 1971, taking the pseudonym “Betsy Warrior.” Her first experience advocating women’s rights was with Cell 16, a female liberation group she helped to found in 1968. All of the participants were leftists, who had been disillusioned with the lack of reciprocity they’d felt in their work. They published a journal, “No More Fun and Games,” in which they analyzed the power dynamic in the dating process, discussed the problems of unpaid labor and unequal access to resources, and examined the psychological damage caused by many social relationships. They obtained peddler’s licenses and passed out leaflets and pamphlets, working under the strategic motto, “Agitation and Propaganda.” Attacked on all sides, the group campaigned for childcare, reproductive rights, and equal wages.
     Her connection with the Women’s Center began on International Women’s Day, 1971, when she participated in a demonstration that marched from Boston into Harvard Square, demanding better resources to deal with women’s issues. The protesters took over 888 Memorial Drive, a largely empty Harvard-owned building, finally agreeing to relinquish the site in return for an alternative location for a female collective. With money donated from Harvard and MIT, the group ultimately bought the house at 46 Pleasant Street, where the Women’s Center is located today. Betsy Warrior was one of the first to offer classes at the center, teaching karate and self-defense. She continues to work as a counselor at the Women’s Center.
     In 1985, Warrior and her fellow activists fought the city of Cambridge itself in their attempts to place an anti-pornography referendum on the ballot. When the city refused to put the issue up for a vote in spite of petitions bearing over 6,000 signatures, the women sued. In a 1985 Human Rights Ordinance, they won their case, though they lost the referendum by a narrow margin. In an article, “Housework: Slavery, or Labor of Love?,” published in the group’s Houseworker’s Handbook, she questioned the lack of compensation women receive for their work and received letters from women across the country. Warrior also addressed domestic violence in her Battered Women’s Directory (1982) (formerly entitled Working on Wife Abuse) that listed services available throughout the country, along with articles dispelling myths and offering statistics still relevant to problems existent today. (The directory was subsequently cited in a number of books on women and violence and has gone through multiple editions).
     Warrior put together the first guidelines for establishing domestic violence shelters, after helping set up several local shelters in Cambridge. She has continued her own education at Bunker Hill Community College, taking courses in science and computer graphics, and works in a private library for a local newspaper. She volunteers her time at the women’s shelter, offering counseling and leading a support group once a week.
References: Personal Interview by Sandra Pullman, January 2003; Betsy Warrior’s work on battered women is cited in R Emerson Dobash, Women, Violence and Social Change, Routledge 1992 and R. Amy Elman Sexual Subordination and State Intervention: Comparing Sweden and the United States. Berghahn Books. 1996; Her work with Cell 16 and the Women’s Center is discussed in Flora Davis, Moving the Mountain: The Women's Movement in America Since 1960. Simon and Schuster, 1991.

Florence (Lee) Whitman (b. September 4, 1861 in Canton, NY, d. November 22, 1948 in Cambridge)
Politician (First woman elected to Cambridge City Council)
     Florence Lee was born on 4 September 1861 in Canton, New York, to John Stebbins Lee (born in VT, in 1820) and Elmira (Bennett) Lee (born in NH, in 1821). John S. Lee was Principal of the Preparatory Department at St. Lawrence University in Canton, which helped to prepare students for the university’s Theological School. (Florence’s brother, John, later became the university's president.) Oddly, a fraternity that now occupies the Lee family's Canton house claimed Florence as its resident ghost, believing she had died there tragically and her “mischievous, teasing wraith” haunted the house. In fact, Florence was a graduate of St. Lawrence and later a member of its board of trustees. Whitman Hall on the campus is named for her and her husband.
    On 27 June 1895 in Canton, Florence married Edmund Allen Whitman, who was born in 1860 in KS. By 1896, the couple was living at 23 Everett Street in Cambridge. The house is now occupied by Harvard Law School. Edmund Whitman was an 1881 graduate of Harvard College, with further degrees granted in 1882 and 1885. He practised law and had his office in Boston. He was a supporter of the environmental movement, a contemporary of John Muir, and the President of the Eastern Branch of the Society for the Protection of the National Parks.
    The Whitmans' three children were all born in Cambridge: Allen Lee Whitman in June 1897, Frederic Bennett Whitman in September 1898, and Eleanor Whitman in 1902.
     In 1925, Florence Lee Whitman became the first woman elected to the Cambridge City Council. She served a single two-year term. She died at home in 1948 aged 86 years. Her husband, Edmund, died in 1952.
Resources: St. Lawrence University website, http://web.stlawu.edu pages from the Sesquicentennial celebration "Ghost Stories" http://www.stlawu.edu/150/ghosts.htm and "Hail to the Chiefs: A Brief Look at Many of SLU's Leaders" http://www.stlawu.edu/150/presidents.htm; Burks, Sarah L. Cambridge Historical Commission memo re: 23 Everett Street, 23 June 2005.

Anne Whitney (b. Watertown, Massachusetts, 2 September, 1821 d. Boston, January 23, 1915.)
Sculptor, poet
Anne Whitney was the daughter of gentleman farmer Nathaniel Whitney and his wife Sarah (Stone). Her family moved from Watertown to East Cambridge in 1833, where her father was a justice of the peace. She was educated by private tutors and attended a girls' school in Bucksport, Maine. Soon after, at the age of twenty-five, she opened a school in Salem which she ran for two years. She began to publish her poetry in the Atlantic Monthly and Harpers’ Magazine, collected in a volume entitled simply, Poems (New York, 1859), but her interest turned to sculpture. She studied with the sculptor, and painter, William Rimmer, in Boston. In that same year that her book of poetry appeared, she opened a sculpture studio in the backyard of her family home. Subsequently, she made several visits to Rome where she studied for four years, producing two of her best works during that time. She became acquainted there with the American women sculptors, Harriet Hosmer and Edmonia Lewis.
On her return from Europe in 1873, she established a studio in Boston. There she executed busts, medallions, and statues, including a statue of Samuel Adams (for which she traveled to Paris to study), of which two copies, one in bronze and one in marble, are respectively in the capitol at Washington and in Boston (1863). Among her works, were statues and portrait busts of well-known women, including Harriet Martineau, (presented to Wellesley College but destroyed in a fire) Lucy Stone, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her statue of Charles Sumner, completed when she was eighty, is in Harvard Square. She was an active member of the woman suffrage movement and was a close friend as well as a cousin of the activist, Lucy Stone. She lived in Boston and summered in the White Mountains in Shelburne, NH until her death in 1915. She is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge. Her papers are held in the Wellesley College Archives.
References: Appleton’s Encyclopedia; Lisa B. Reitzes “The Political Voice of the Artist: Anne Whitney's "Roma" and "Harriet Martineau". American Art, 8, (2) 44-65; (Spring, 1994); Notable American Women vol. 3 (1950). Anne Whitney Papers, Wellesley College Archives.

Antoinette (Rinaldi) Williams (b. August 24, 1921)
Factory worker, PTA president, Volunteer
Born in Cambridge on Howard Street, Antoinette (Toni) Rinaldi’s family moved to Western Avenue in 1927. She attended Houghton Grammar School until 1935 and then Cambridge High and Latin School from 1935-1939. Toni was a USO hostess at the Cambridge Neighborhood House, then at 79 Moore Street, from May 1942 to July 1945. She met her husband, Irvin Williams, at the first dance, and they were married on July 22, 1945. During the Second World War, Toni worked at the silk mill in Brighton, where she wound thread for gunpowder bags, and at Dewey and Almy Chemical Co. in Cambridge, making and inspecting target practice balloons. She also worked at American Science & Engineering, Honeywell, and Bentley and Babson colleges until her retirement in 1964.
Toni was president of the Ellis and Fitzgerald schools PTA.’s in the 1950s, and she was president of the American Legion Auxiliary to Post 27, from 1963-64 and 1978-1987. Her other activities included serving as Den Mother of Pack 73 and 1 from the mid 1950s to the late 1970s and organizing five CHLS class reunions. She plays piano by ear and often entertains area nursing home residents. In the summer of 2004, the corner across the street from her house was dedicated to Toni and Irvin Williams.
Reference: Oral interview by Sarah Boyer.

The Window Shop (1939-1971)
     The Window Shop began as a consignment shop created by a group of women (many of them Harvard wives) who wished to help refugees fleeing Europe. Although many of the refugees were professionals and scholars, they often were unable to obtain positions in their own fields. The Window Shop offered a way to earn a living within the community, hiring hundreds of individuals over the years. It survived for almost half a century, developing into a profitable dress and gift shop that included a restaurant and bakery. First located on the second floor of 37 Church Street in Cambridge, it soon outgrew that location. In November of 1939, it moved to 102 Mt. Auburn Street and opened a tea room and bakery, soon offering a lunch as well. Donations from many individuals kept the shop going until it could prove its viability. It was incorporated in 1941. In the early 1940s, it was one of the few businesses in Cambridge to hire African Americans leaving the South. In 1947, the shop moved again to 56 Brattle Street, where it remained until 1971 enjoyed by generations of Cantabridgians, becoming a favorite haunt of many, including the architect Walter Gropius. Eleanor Roosevelt even wrote about the delightful food and atmosphere at the Window Shop in her newspaper column “My Day”.
     Among the women who were significant in organizing and running the Window Shop in those early days were Elsa Brändström Ulich, a founding board member from Sweden, who was president of the Window Shop from 1942 until her death, Elizabeth (Cope) Aub who was a founding board member and later president (1954-1964).: Mary Mohrer, who oversaw the dress and gift shop, and Alice Perutz Broch, manager of the kitchen and bakery. For a brief time, the Window Shop attempted to serve as a club house in off- periods for refugees, but this need soon diminished. An assistance fund for the employees that also provided scholarships for their children, was created in 1943, named after Ulich in 1948.
     For many years, the Window Shop was a profitable and attractive restaurant and gift shop until the 1960s, when its revenues declined. In early1972, the board decided to sell the building to Cambridge Center for Adult Education which still is located there. The board then established college scholarship funds, a peer-counseling program at Cambridge Rindge and Latin, which was named in memory of Mary Mohrer, and donated the corporation's papers to the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe. In March 2004, the Cambridge Women’s Heritage Project celebrated the history of the Window Shop. On March 10, 2007, the Window Shop held a meeting in honor of the publication of a book detailing its history. The Window Shop: Safe Harbor for Refugees, 1939-1972, was written by by Ellen Miller, Ilse Heyman and Dorothy Dahl, and published in 2007 by iUniverse. It is available in bookstores.
References: Finding aid, The Window Shop Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute; Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day”, May 30, 1950; Ellen Miller, Ilse Heyman, Dorothy Dahl. The Window Shop: Safe Harbor for Refugees, 1939-1972,. Diesel books, 2007; http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/cgi-bin/item/0595849873/The-Window-Shop-eBook.html

Joanna Winship (b. 1645 in Cambridge; d. November 19, 1707 in Cambridge)
First Cambridge schoolmistress
Joanna Winship was the fourth daughter of Edward Winship, lieutenant of the Cambridge militia and his first wife, Jane (Wilkinson) Winship. Her father had arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony with John Winthrop. She was the first schoolmistress in Cambridge. The epitaph on her tombstone in the Old Burying Ground in Cambridge reads, “This good school dame / No longer school must keep / Which gives us cause. / For children’s sake to weep.”
Reference: An Historic Guide to Cambridge, Appendix “Edward Winship”

Hannah (Fayerweather) Winthrop (b. ca February 1727 in Boston d. 1790 in Cambridge)
Eighteenth century woman of letters
Hannah Winthrop was the daughter of Thomas and Hannah Waldo Fayerweather. Although her exact birth date is not known, she was baptized in Boston at the First Church of Boston on February 12, 1727. She was married twice, at eighteen years of age to Parr Tolman in 1745, and after Tolman's early death, to John Winthrop in 1756. Hannah and John Winthrop lived in Cambridge, where her husband was professor of mathematics and natural history at Harvard University and a noted astronomer. Their house was located at the northwest corner of Mount Auburn and John F. Kennedy streets facing the market square, now called Winthrop Square.
Hannah provided a lively account of her life in Cambridge in a series of letters to Mercy Otis Warren and Abigail Adams. During the Revolutionary war, she described the flight of women and children from the center of Cambridge as the English advanced. “We were directed to a place called Fresh Pond, about a mile from the town, but what a distressed house did we find it, filled with women whose husbands had gone forth to meet the assailants, seventy or eighty of these, with numbers of infant children, weeping and agonizing for the fate of their husbands.” The following year, she wrote to Mercy Warren about the eagerness with which men and women sought to inoculate themselves and their children against the smallpox.: "The reigning subject is the small pox. Men, women and children eagerly crowding to inoculate is I think as modish as running away from the troops of a barbarous George was last year." A portrait of her in her late thirties, painted by John Singleton Copley, is held in the Metropolitan Museum of New York.
References: Mercy Otis Warren letters, Mass Historical Society; Kate Davies., Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren: The Revolutionary Atlantic and the Politics of Gender. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005);
http://www.cambridgema.gov/~Historic/april1.html

Ozeline Barrett (Pearson) Wise (b. in Worcester, MA, in 1903; d. in Cambridge, MA in 1988)
State employee, volunteer
     Ozeline Barrett Pearson was the second daughter of Frances Lavina (Gale) and William B. Pearson. Her father moved from Jamaica to Worcester, MA soon after the birth of his first daughter, Satya (Pearson) Barrett. Soon after Ozeline’s birth, the family moved to Cambridge where for many years he was pastor of St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church.
     Ozeline attended Cambridge public schools and graduated from Cambridge High School. She held clerical jobs until she married John Wise in 1931. The couple adopted a son, Hubert Smith, in 1961. Ozeline Wise worked for the Navy during World War II, and after the war, she was the first black woman employed by the banking department of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where she worked for nearly twenty years.
     During the 1950s, the Wises lived in Billerica, Mass., in a house which they ran as an inn that they named Galehurst. Some time after her husband’s death in 1963, she returned to Cambridge to live with her sister, Satya Barrett. She spent much of her energy at St. Paul AME Church, serving as a Sunday School teacher, trustee, and chair of the building fund. She worked with her older sister Satya in many of the same community organizations, and was a charter member of the Citizens' Charitable Health Association.
     From 1965, Wise lived with her sister, who had suffered a series of strokes, caring for her sister until her death in 1977. She contributed an oral interview to the Black Women Oral History Project of Schlesinger Library. Ozeline Wise died in 1988 and left her papers, as well as those of her sister and her father, to Schlesinger Library.
References: Ozeline (Pearson) Wise papers and biographical information, Schlesinger Library. Ozeline (Pearson) Wise interview, Black Women Oral History Project of Schlesinger Library.

Pearl (Katz) Wise (b. ca. 1901, d. August 8, 1999, in Cambridge, MA)
Cambridge community leader; politician
Pearl Katz, the daughter of Julius Katz, was born in Kovno, Russia, in 1900 or 1901. She emigrated with her mother and two older siblings to Connecticut in 1905, where her father later joined them. Although she went only through high school, she was self-educated to a remarkable degree. In 1921, the family moved to Cambridge, and in 1927 she married a young lawyer, Henry Wise. They had three children (two daughters and a son) who attended Cambridge schools. Beginning in 1942, Wise became involved in public affairs. She served first as president of the League of Women Voters of Cambridge (1942-1945). In 1945, she organized the Parent-Teachers Association at Cambridge High and Latin School and was its first president in 1947, working successfully to obtain federally funded hot lunches in the schools. In 1948, she organized and led the statewide legislative campaign of the Massachusetts League of Women Voters, fighting to allow women to sit on juries in the Massachusetts courts. In 1945, she was elected to the Cambridge School Committee, on which she served for three terms from 1949 to 1955. For one of the three terms, she was the vice chair.
Pearl Wise was responsible for the establishment of a library in each Cambridge public school. This action was memorialized by the naming of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School's library in her honor in 1983. In 1955, she became the first woman, since the Plan E form of city government was adopted, to be elected to the Cambridge City Council; she served until 1963. During this period she cast the deciding vote to reject the proposed urban renewal project in East Cambridge, which would have razed about 150 homes. Her husband, Henry Wise, had a long career in labor law and was a major proponent of public housing and legislation to restrict urban renewal in Massachusetts. After Wise’s retirement from the City Council, she worked at the Cambridge Housing Authority for many years. Her papers are held at Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute.
References: Cambridge Chronicle, August 12,1999; Schlesinger Library biography and guide to Pearl Katz Wise papers.

Alice K. Wolf (b. Austria)
State representative, former Mayor of Cambridge
     Born in Austria, Alice came to America at the age of five with her family who were fleeing the Nazis. She earned a B.S. from Simmons College earned an M.P.A. degree from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1971. She was a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics in 1994. In 2001, she received an honorary Doctor of Education degree from Wheelock College.
     She was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1996 after serving the people of Cambridge as Mayor (the second woman to be elected to that position), Vice Mayor, City Councillor, and School Committee member. Beginning her political career in 1971, she has been active in working for early childhood education, public education, affordable housing, health care, and has been consistently a strong advocate for women’s rights.
     Among her many honors and awards are: the 2002 Legislative Leadership Award from the Massachusetts Alliance for Arts Education, the 2002 Margot P. Koberg Award from the Cambridge Fair Housing Committee, the Outstanding State Legislator Award from MIRAC (Massachusetts Immigrants & Refugee Advocacy Center), Legislator of the Year Award from the JCRC (Jewish Community Relations Council), the 1996 Progressive Leadership Award from the Commonwealth Coalition, and the 1993 Woman of Courage Award from the Massachusetts chapter of the National Organization of Women. Alice and her husband Robert Wolf have two sons, Eric and Adam.
References: www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/06.02/07-hglc.htm; alicewolf.org/bio.htm

Women’s Center (aka Women's Educational Center, Cambridge Women's Center)
Community organization
The Women’s Center arose from the action by a feminist protest group, Bread and Roses that was seeking a place to situate a women’s center for under-served women in Cambridge. In 1971, the women took over an unoccupied building owned by Harvard at 888 Memorial Drive, offering free child care and classes. After ten days they were forced out, but the protest sparked community interest that led to the purchase of a house in Cambridge at 46 Pleasant St. The Women's Center (later incorporated as the Women's Educational Center) opened in January 1972. It was committed to the philosophy that empowered women could help themselves and effect change in their communities.
Staffed mostly by volunteers, the Women's Educational Center provides women with referrals to outside community resources, including doctors, therapists, lawyers, clinics, housing and job opportunities. Its newest project, Women of Action, organizes women to fight for their rights, most recently insisting that the MBTA stop to pick up women with children in baby carriages. Some groups that began by meeting at the Women's Educational Center, developed into independent organizations, including the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, Finex House, Incest Resources, and Transition House, a shelter for women and children. Archives from 1971 to 1988 are held at Northeaster University Library.
References: Central Square Walking Tour; Finding Aid, Northeastern University Library Archives; Annie Popkin Papers, Schlesinger Library.

Women’s Coffeehouse (flourished 1979-ca 1989)
Feminist community coffeehouse
The Women's Coffeehouse began in October 1979 when a small group of women from the Women's Educational Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts met to discuss plans to open a coffeehouse operated by and for women. They believed that women of all ages, nationalities, body types, economic status, and disabilities lacked a space to safely enjoy cultural activities. The stated objective of the Women's Coffeehouse was to provide "an active, participative, grass roots environment" for local women to develop their own community despite their personal political affiliations. Weekly performances were intended to spark discourse among women in the community about their shared issues and concerns. They realized that women of all ages, nationalities, body types, economic status, and disabilities lacked a space to safely enjoy cultural activities together. The objective of the Women's Coffeehouse was to provide "an active, participative, grass roots environment" according to the Women's Coffeehouse, event schedule of February through April 1989) . The intent was for local women to develop a community in spite of disparate political affiliations.
In December of 1979, the first Coffeehouse was held with Marjorie Parsons as guest speaker. For the next ten years the Coffeehouse remained open, sponsoring performances that included local musicians, writers, speakers and activists such as Hillary Kay, Nancy Aberle, Beth Hodges, Linda Brown, Pamela Gray, Sharon Kennedy, and Betsy Zelchin. These weekly performances were intended to spark discussions among women in the community in order to share their issues and concerns. Although the core organizers of the Women's Coffeehouse were feminists, they were careful to reach out to and welcome all women. The archives held by the Northeastern University Library documents the organization and activities of the Women's Coffeehouse and contains meeting minutes, photos, fliers, and audiotapes of performances and press releases.
References: Women’s Coffeehouse archives, Northeastern University Library http://www.library.neu.edu/archives/collect/findaids/m120find.htm.

Women’s School of Cambridge (1971-1992)
The Women’s School was established in 1971 by twenty women who were involved with the Women’s Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school was founded as an alternative source of feminist education, and its ideologies were based on socialist feminism. It was operated as a collective with classes taught by volunteer teachers. All collective members, students, and teachers were women. Registration fees were kept low so that all women would be able to participate. In 1973, the collective developed a formal administrative structure. Committees were created to select courses, develop special projects, and handle office work and finances. Classes were offered on anti-racism, auto mechanics, growing up female, international women’s struggles, lesbianism, Marxism, women’s aging, and many other topics. The Women’s School closed in 1992. It was the longest running women’s school of its type in the United States. The archive of the school, as well as its library, is held in the Special Collections of the Library at Northeastern University, Boston.
References: Special Collections, Northeastern University, Boston. Online guide;
The Women’s History Tour of Cambridge