By Heather B. Moore, Author of HER AMERICA: Eight Women Who Transformed the Nation
Researching women in history always takes me into interesting avenues of information. A simple internet search brings up a plethora of women and their courageous accomplishments throughout history. I imagine these women living their lives, moving through their ordinary days, and not knowing how their actions will affect future generations. They might not even know how much courage they are displaying as they form beliefs and make decisions. Women like Deborah Sampson, who in 1782 disguised herself as a man in order to enlist in the Continental Army, displayed great courage. She fought in multiple battles and became the first American woman to receive a military pension. Deborah is certainly impressive to our minds today, although she was likely following her heart-felt desire to fight for her beliefs.
You might recognize the name of Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who calculated the trajectories that helped launch John Glenn into orbit and sent the spacecraft Apollo 11 to the moon in 1969. Katherine’s story, alongside her colleagues Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan, was popularized by the book and film Hidden Figures. Another courageous story as these women excelled in a field dominated by gender bias.
In my own ancestry, my great-grandmother Lavina Pascoe Oblad wrote hundreds of poems and pieces of music throughout her life. One of her greatest desires was to have her poetry and music published. In 1901, she sent a manuscript of 500 poems with several hundred dollars to a publisher in New York. They wrote back to her and requested $200 more. Lavina felt this was a rejection and immediately wrote a letter to the publisher and requested that they send back her manuscript. When the manuscript arrived, she felt very dejected. She believed that if she couldn’t get her life’s work published, then she might as well burn it all. She took her manuscript of 500 poems into her back yard, along with all of the music she’d written, plus all of her notebooks from years of writing down ideas. In the yard, she set everything on fire.
A few blocks away, her husband, working at his blacksmith shop, saw the smoke. He thought the house was on fire. He sprinted home and discovered what his wife was doing. He was able to rescue about fifty poems from the fire, which her son (my grandfather) later compiled, and my uncle eventually published into a book.
My great-grandmother might not have seen her collection of work published in her lifetime, but her courage to submit to a publisher and spend years working on her craft became an example to her descendants.
Sometimes courage doesn’t get noticed by the wider world. Some of our stories of courage are only known by our family members. And some of our stories stay silent. Whatever the case, we can find inspiration and motivation when studying women in history. We feel more grateful for the opportunities and freedoms that are the result of the hard work of those who came before us. I am personally grateful to our foremothers who kept walking forward despite roadblocks and plenty of stumbling, and I’m also grateful for their foresight and courage to stay dedicated day after day. Because of those who have sacrificed, today we enjoy greater freedom and opportunity than any other era in history.
NEW! Her America: Eight Women Who Transformed the Nation: From award-winning, starred-review author Heather B. Moore comes a powerful portrait of eight American women whose courage and conviction drove them to smash stereotypes and build a nation.
Heather B. Moore is a USA Today best-selling and award-winning author of more than seventy publications. She has lived on both the east and west coasts of the United States, including Hawaii, and attended school abroad including the Cairo American College in Egypt, and the Anglican School of Jerusalem in Israel. She loves to learn about history and is passionate about historical research.
