Their legacy marches on: Celebrate the Women of the Century with a look at historic South Shore figures

"Remember the ladies." That line, in a letter from Abigail Adams to her husband, John – then a delegate from Massachusetts to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia and later the nation’s second president – resonated in 1776, when it was written. And it still rings true today.

As we celebrate the Women of the Century, it’s fitting to remember our local ladies. Many women on the South Shore have made noteworthy contributions to our nation’s history, from Pilgrim days to the 21st century – in education, religion, social reform, environmental preservation, the arts, sports and other fields.

USA TODAY SPECIAL REPORT - WOMEN OF THE CENTURY

Women of state

Quincy is a virtual who’s who of notable women. Best known is Abigail Adams (1744-1818), the Weymouth woman who became the wife of our second president and mother of our sixth president. She was a supporter of the patriot cause, a legendary letter writer and advocate for women’s rights. President Harry Truman once said that Abigail Adams “would have been a better president than her husband.” However, her role was to guide from behind the scenes in an era when women were not supposed to concern themselves with politics. This parson’s daughter educated herself by reading books in her father’s library. She was a tremendous help to her husband, John Adams, both before and after he was elected the nation’s second president. It is likely that the family stayed solvent largely through her resourceful management of the farm in Braintree (now Quincy) during his many months away from home, first at the Continental Congresses and then as president. It was when her husband was a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, which was drafting a federal constitution, that she wrote her famous letter urging him and his fellow delegates to “remember the ladies.”

Although history books devote fewer paragraphs to Louisa Catherine (Johnson) Adams than to her famous mother-in-law, Louisa made significant contributions to the nation and to the career of her husband, John Quincy Adams. During John Quincy Adams’ tenure in the House of Representatives, Louisa supported his fight for abolition by sorting and summarizing the antislavery petitions that came across his desk. She was one of the best liked and most respected first ladies. On the day she died, both houses of Congress adjourned, the only time the wife of a president was so honored.

Eliza Susan Quincy (1798-1883) was born into the wealthy family that gave Quincy its name. Her father, Josiah Quincy III, was mayor of Boston and later president of Harvard University. Eliza received an extensive education in academic subjects including literature and history as well as sewing, needlework, household management, art, penmanship, piano and dance. She wrote her father’s and mother’s memoirs and she contributed to some of her father’s published materials, including a history of Harvard University and biographies of family members. Dedicated to preserving her family's history, she donated papers to the Massachusetts Historical Society and collected family artifacts, many of which are on display in her Wollaston home, the Josiah Quincy House.

Flying high

Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) and Harriet Quimby (1875-1912) are commemorated at the Aviation History Information Center at Beechwood on the Bay in Squantum. The center is on the former site of Dennison Field, Quincy’s only commercial airport, which was open from 1927 to 1941.

Earhart, one of the five founding stockholders, flew the airport’s first official flight in 1927. Quimby, the first American woman to earn a pilot’s license, visited the site in 1912 (when it was called Harvard Aviation Field) to compete in an air show. She was killed when her new Bleriot mono-plane crashed in Dorchester Bay.

Oscar winner

Quincy native Ruth Gordon (1896-1985) was a famous Broadway and Hollywood actress from 1914 to 1985. She appeared in many films, including the 1971 cult classic “Harold and Maude,” and won an Academy Award as supporting actress in “Rosemary’s Baby.”

She was honored by the City of Quincy on her 80th birthday, and the Ruth Gordon Amphitheater was built in the city’s Merrymount Park, near the Wollaston neighborhood where she was born, and dedicated in her honor.

Standing up for freedom

Religious reformers Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) and Mary Dyer (1611-1660) made a historic trek along Indian paths through the woods of Southeastern Massachusetts when they were exiled from the state for expressing their religious beliefs.

The Hutchinsons, originally from England, lived in Boston until their banishment in 1638. They owned a 600-acre farm in Wollaston. A plaque in front of the fire station at Beale and Arlington streets marks the approximate site of their farmhouse.

Social reformers

The Rev. Olympia Brown (1835-1926), who became pastor of the First Universalist Church of Weymouth Landing in 1864, holds the distinction of being the first female pastor in any church in Massachusetts. In addition to her work as a parish minister, she was an active campaigner for women’s suffrage and one of the few early organizers for women’s rights who lived long enough to see passage of the 19th Amendment. The church where she served in Weymouth Landing was destroyed by fire, and the congregation moved to the present Unitarian Universalist church at Route 3A and Sea Street in North Weymouth.

Another crusader for human rights was Weymouth native Maria Weston Chapman (1806-1885). She married in 1830, raised a family and became involved with the abolitionist movement as an organizer, writer and editor of antislavery publications. In 2004, the Maria Weston Chapman Middle School in Weymouth was named for her.

Blanche Ames (1878-1969), of Easton, was a multitalented woman. She designed her own fireproof home, illustrated botany books, painted portraits, sketched political cartoons supporting women’s suffrage, co-founded the Birth Control League of Massachusetts and wrote a biography of her grandfather, Adelbert Ames, one-time governor of Mississippi. She was also an inventor, and one of her inventions – a method of hanging cables from balloons over London to snare enemy bombers’ propellers – was accepted by the Army during World War II. When the men of Massachusetts voted “no” to women’s suffrage in the Nov. 5, 1915, state referendum, Ames vowed to ring the bell every day at noon until women won the right to vote. The bell she rang now hangs from a brace attached to the roof of the Ames mansion, which is part of Borderland State Park in Easton.

Leading educators

Anna Boynton Thompson, Thayer Academy’s first female faculty member, was a leading educator in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her methods at Thayer Academy in Braintree were so highly regarded that they were used as entrance requirements for history at Harvard College.

Another advocate for education was Sarah Langley Hersey Derby (1714-1790). In 1784, she founded the Derby School in her hometown of Hingham. It was the first co-educational school in New England.

First best-seller in America

Hull’s two famous daughters are author/actress/educator Susanna Haswell Rowson (1762-1828) and opera singer Bernice James DePasquali (1873-1925). English-born Rowson was the author of “Charlotte Temple,” the first best-selling novel in America.

Rowson came to America when she was 5 and spent most of her childhood in Hull. Her house was where the Hull Public Library stands today.

DePasquali was a coloratura soprano who sang with Enrico Caruso and under the baton of Gustav Mahler. She received 26 curtain calls after her debut with the Metropolitan Opera in 1908. Every Christmas she returned to Hull to sing “Silent Night” in Elm Square, at Main and Spring streets. DePasquali was the great-niece of the lifesaver Joshua James, who is commemorated at the Hull Lifesaving Museum. She is buried in Hull Cemetery, on Gallop’s Hill behind the Lifesaving Museum.

Adelaide Phillips (1833-1882) was another well-known opera singer who lived on the South Shore. Born in Bristol, England, she bought a farm in Marshfield in 1880 that became her permanent home. Phillips is buried in Winslow Cemetery in Marshfield. There is an oil portrait of her near the entrance to the Ventress Memorial Library in Marshfield.

Turning back the troops

Abigail and Rebecca Bates were the daughters of the keeper of Scituate Light. During the War of 1812, they spotted boats loaded with British soldiers heading toward their lighthouse from a British warship. The resourceful young women (who were 17 and 21 at the time) played military tunes on fife and drum so the British would believe American soldiers were drilling nearby. The British decided not to chance a landing and rowed back to their ship.

Painters of merit

The South Shore has been home to many female artists over the years, among them portrait painter Josephine Miles Lewis (1865-1959). Lewis was the first woman to receive a bachelor of fine arts degree from Yale University, in 1891. After college, she studied at the Julian Academy in Paris. She maintained a studio in New York and a summer studio in Scituate.

Lewis’ portraits of two Scituate children, Frank and Mary Vinal, as well as a self-portrait are on display at the Scituate Historical Society. Lewis is buried at Union Cemetery in Scituate.

Another notable artist who lived on the South Shore was Elizabeth Weber-Fulop (1883-1966), whose paintings were exhibited in Vienna, New York, Boston and posthumously at the Duxbury Art Complex Museum. Her studio was in the rear wing of the house, which is now owned by the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society.

Mary Bradish Titcomb (1858-1927) was a prominent painter at Fenway Studios in Boston, a building that continues to serve as studio and living space for artists and was recently designated a National Historic Landmark. Titcomb was director of drawing for Brockton Public Schools from 1887 to 1901 and was a regular exhibitor at the annual exhibits at the Woman’s Club of Brockton.

After resigning her position with the Brockton Public Schools in May 1901, she lived in Quincy until moving to Boston in 1902. She attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, where she studied with important Boston painters, including Edmund C. Tarbell, Frank W. Benson and Philip Hale. Her paintings were exhibited in national and local art shows, including the Copley Society (during her lifetime) and Vose Galleries of Boston (posthumously, in 1998). One of her paintings, “Portrait of Geraldine J,” was purchased by President Woodrow Wilson for the White House. Titcomb’s paintings are in the collections of major museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Saving the natural world

Olga Owens Huckins (1901-1968), a retired literary editor for two Boston newspapers, was upset about the deaths of numerous birds and harmless insects caused by the aerial spraying of pesticides over her Duxbury home and adjoining 2-acre private bird sanctuary. She wrote a letter about the incident to the Boston Herald, where it was published in 1958, and she sent a copy to her friend, Rachel Carson, who worked with the Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington.

Carson went on to write “Silent Spring,” a book that caught the attention of the American public and led to a ban on the insecticide DDT and controls on other contaminants. In the preface to the book, Carson credited Huckins for her role in inspiring it.

Two other South Shore women who worked on behalf of their feathered friends were Harriet Lawrence Hemenway (1858-1960) and Mildred Morse Allen (1903-1989).

Hemenway and her cousin Minna Hall founded the Massachusetts Audubon Society, the oldest organization dedicated to bird conservation and public education in the United States. Hemenway lived in Canton for the last 29 years of her life.

Allen was a pioneer in the field of natural history filmmaking. She won the Grand Award in the 1966 New York International Film and TV Festival for her first movie, “Nature Remains.” The 28-minute color film about environmental destruction and pollution was filmed on 130 acres of woodland behind her Canton home, which she bequeathed to the Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary.

Plymouth’s female leaders

A number of sites in Plymouth are connected with women’s contributions to Native American and early Colonial history. When you visit the Wampanoag homesite at Plimoth Plantation, be sure to ask about two female Wampanoag chiefs – Awashonks and Weetamoo – and the role that women played in Wampanoag life.

Awashonks (circa 1620-1684), was female sachem, or leader, of the Saconnet band of the Wampanoag people. She was an important figure in the Native American uprising known as King Philip’s War.

Unlike Awashonks, who befriended the English, Weetamoo, female sachem of the Pocasset band of the Wampanoag, sided with King Philip. She was the widow of King Philip’s brother (who was widely believed by the native inhabitants to have been poisoned by the English) and sister of King Philip’s wife.

Her loyalty had tragic consequences: The English chased her from her lands, and she drowned while trying to escape across the Taunton River on a small raft.

Barbara Leudtke (1948-2000), a professor of anthropology at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and a Quincy resident for 25 years, conducted the first major archaeological survey of the Boston Harbor Islands, in 1975.

Luedtke also directed archaeological projects at World’s End in Hingham and at the Wampanoag homesite at Plimoth Plantation, where many of her findings are used by the Wampanoag program.

On display at Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth is the first embroidered sampler in America, made by Loara Standish (1627-1655 or 1656), daughter of Myles Standish, and a needlework table once owned by Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814).

Warren is best known for the poetry and plays she wrote in support of the American Revolution and for her three-volume history of the war. In 1754, she and her husband, Gen. James Warren, bought the gambrel-roof house at 65 Main St., which remained in the family until 1828. The grave of Mercy Otis Warren is in the Burial Hill cemetery in Plymouth.

Also from Plymouth was Hannah Thomas, who is believed to be America’s first female lighthouse keeper. While her husband was fighting in the American Revolution, she carried on his duties at the twin towers of Gurnet Light at the end of Duxbury Beach in Plymouth.

A cookie is born

Ruth Wakefield (1904-1977), co-owner (with her husband) of the Toll House Restaurant in Whitman, is famous for having invented the chocolate chip cookie in 1930. According to the story, she was experimenting with a Colonial cookie recipe and decided to substitute bits of semi-sweet chocolate for nuts. It became the most popular cookie in America and later was designated the official state cookie of Massachusetts. The restaurant burned in 1985, after she and her husband had sold it.

Revolutionary imposter

Deborah Sampson Gannett (1760-1827) believed so strongly in the patriot cause that she disguised herself as a man and fought in the American Revolution, using the name of her deceased brother, Robert Shurtlieff. She was one of America’s first female soldiers and was designated the official heroine of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Deborah Sampson Gannett Day is celebrated on May 23, the day she enlisted in the Continental Army. She is buried in Rock Ridge Cemetery in Sharon.

Spiritual leader

Mary Baker Patterson (1821-1910), who later would become world famous as Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Christian Science Church, lived for 18 months in 1868-70 in a farmhouse in Stoughton. There, she taught spiritual healing and wrote treatises that would become the basis of Christian Science. The Wentworth family home, at 133 Central St., is operated as a museum and contains a number of objects, including a writing desk, that were owned by Eddy. A plaque on the front lawn memorializes her time there.

Writer of note

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930), of Randolph, produced a large quantity of literature during her long writing career. She wrote novels, poetry and children’s books but is best known for her stories published in Harper’s Bazaar and Harper’s New Monthly magazines. She wrote about life in New England villages that were experiencing an economic decline (like her hometown, which was affected by the shift of the shoe industry to Brockton) and about the character of the people who chose to remain. Freeman, one of the first American women to earn a living as a writer, won the Howells Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts in 1926 and was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

Heroines of health care

Hilda LaRocca (1901-1994), of Milton, was a state epidemiologist responsible for cancer study clinics throughout Massachusetts and a pioneer in home health care. In 1946, she founded South Shore Homemaker Services in Quincy, the first home health care program in the state (later part of what is now the South Shore Visiting Nurse Association). A statewide award is presented in her name to the home health aide of the year.

Amy W. Sylvester, of Norwell, was a leader in health care. She arranged for a dentist, nutritionist and physician specialists to come to town to see patients, helped to establish a well baby clinic, and brought X-ray and tuberculosis testing, the Salk polio vaccine and blood typing to Norwell. She was the first president of the Norwell Visiting Nurse Association, which, at its founding in 1920, served as a model for other rural communities. Due to Sylvester’s leadership and the contributions of the many people who assisted her, Norwell was rated in the top 10 percent of the healthiest communities in the state in 1950.

Her own property

Ann Vinal (1609-1664) was a landowner in her own right, a rare occurrence for a woman in 17th-century America. At that time, unmarried women had few legal rights and low social standing. A widow fared somewhat better; “dower rights” gave her one third of her husband’s estate if he died without a will. Vinal, a widow and accomplished weaver, came to Scituate from England with her three young children. In 1646, she bought a 1/30 share, about 60 acres, of the Conihasset Land Grant, which encompassed an area of present-day Scituate. She and the other 26 landowners organized themselves into a voluntary association called the Conihasset Partners, in which they had full say about the land, including the construction of roads. Ann Vinal Road in Scituate is named for Vinal, the sole female member of the Conihasset Partners.

Woman-ing the homefront

“Winnie the Welders” is a nickname for the 2,000 women who worked at the Fore River and Hingham shipyards in jobs that had been vacated by men who went off to fight in World War II.  Florence “Woo Woo” DiTullio Joyce (1921-2014) led the pack as the first female shipbuilder at the Fore River shipyard. “They really didn’t know how women would fare until they tried them,” she told the Ledger in 2009. “Once we were there, they hired women burners, women painters, women everything.”

Modern achievements

Therese Murray, a longtime Plymouth resident, led the charge for welfare reform starting in 1993, her first year in the state Senate, and she wrote the sweeping bill that passed in 1996. She also wrote bills to increase funding for mental health treatment, and to financially support families of children with expensive, catastrophic illnesses. By 2003, she was chairwoman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, and in 2007 she was elected the Senate’s first female president.

Mary Pratt (1918-2020) spent five summers pitching in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League from 1943 to 1947 and saw that story told in the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own.” A longtime Quincy resident, she went on to build a career in physical education that lifted thousands of girls and young women to new heights in sports. She taught physical education for 46 years, including 42 years in Quincy and several in Braintree; worked for the Quincy Recreation Department summer programs; and was a school coach and referee in several sports. She has been inducted into the New England Sports Museum, the Boston University Hall of Fame and the Boston Garden Hall of Fame.

Donna Halper, an associate professor of communication at Lesley University, is credited with discovering the Canadian rock trio Rush when she was a disc jockey in Cleveland in the 1970s.  Before that she became the first female announcer at Northeastern University's campus radio station when she was a student at the school in 1968. Halper has taught courses in broadcasting, media criticism and media history. Her work focuses on women and minorities. She is the author of a number of books, including the first book-length study devoted to the history of women in American broadcasting, “Invisible Stars: A Social History of Women in American Broadcasting.” She lives in Quincy. 

Grammy-winning singer Susan Tedeschi is a graduate of Norwell High School. She co-fronts the Tedeschi-Trucks Band with her husband, Derek Trucks, and she plays a mean blues-based electric guitar. 

A mother five, Stoughton's Lori McKenna is one of Nashville’s premier songwriters. McKenna has amassed nine career Grammy nominations, winning best country song twice: for 2015's “Girl Crush,” performed by Little Big Town, and “Humble and Kind,” Tim McGraw’s 2016 hit.

Soccer phenom Sam Mewis, a Whitman-Hanson graduate, has won three National Women’s Soccer League titles, plus the World Cup crown last summer in France with the U.S. National Team. She will next play for Manchester City of the FA Women’s Super League in England.