Catherine was a teacher and writer, an advocate of equal access to education for women and their importance of their roles as teachers and mothers. With her sister Mary, she founded the Hartford Female Seminary in 1823. She was the half-sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Isabella Beecher Hooker, a suffrage leader. In 1852 she founded the American Woman’s Educational Association to send teachers to the West to establish schools on the frontier. She opposed woman’s suffrage, unlike the rest of her family. She felt that home and school should be the focus of women’s energy. In 1869 she and her sister Harriet wrote a book called The American Woman’s Home, a follow up to the books she had written in the early 1840s. 

Debra Michals, National Women’s History Museum, https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/catharine-esther-beecher (image source)

Today in Connecticut History, https://todayincthistory.com/2019/05/20/may-20-hartford-female-seminary-opens/v 

Connecticut women’s Hall of Fame, https://www.cwhf.org/inductees/catharine-beecher 

Prudence Candall portrait by Francis Alexander

Prudence was born to a Quaker family in Rhode Island and graduated from a Quaker school in Providence.  She taught for several years and then opened the Canterbury Female Boarding School in 1831 to educate the daughters of local families. The next year she admitted a young black woman who wanted to become a teacher. When people protested her teaching a black person, she continued the school in 1833 with advice from William Lloyd Garrison, admitting only young ladies and girls of color.  This was met with local protests and violence. The state of Connecticut reacted by passing the Black Law making it illegal to teach black students.   She was tried in court several times and convicted. Her conviction was eventually overturned on appeal.  She moved with her husband, a minister, to Massachusetts and later settled in the Midwest.  The state of Connecticut repealed the Black Law in 1838 and eventually awarded her a small pension. Arguments in her court case were used in Brown v. Board of Education.

Prudence Crandall Museum, Canterbury, https://portal.ct.gov/ECD-PrudenceCrandallMuseum 

Wikipedia, Prudence Crandall,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudence_Crandall   (image source)

Britannica,  Prudence Crandall Educator https://www.britannica.com/biography/Prudence-Crandall 

          Speaking at her inauguration

 After graduating from Syracuse University with a B. S. in 1925 and an M. A.  in 1928, Ruth arrived at the Danbury Normal School (now Western Connecticut State University)  in 1931 to become the Dean of Women.  She lived on campus in Fairfield Hall as a mentor and supervisor to the students. While doing this, she enrolled in education courses at Yale University from 1934 to 1936.   She was Dean for fifteen years, gradually assuming other responsibilities.  The college president, Ralph C.  Jenkins died in 1946 and she was unanimously elected to serve as the school’s next president.  She spent twenty-eight years as president. The WCSU library on the main campus was named in her honor.   The school went through significant change and growth during her tenure, expanding to two campuses and growing toward university status. 

Western Connecticut State University Archives’ Digital Collections,  Ruth A. Haas Papers, MS033, https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/collections/show/7 

Born in New York and orphaned as a baby, Augusta was raised by a wealthy New York businessman,  Isaac Gager, in Brooklyn Heights.  She attended the best schools studying French, literature, philosophy and the classics.  When Gager suffered financial reverses, she found work doing special writing assignments for several New York newspapers. She became interested in typesetting and convinced the New York Era to hire her as an apprentice.    Conflict with the man’s typesetting union and reformers who wanted to concentrate on women’s suffrage led to the organization of the Woman’s Typesetters Union in New York in 1868 – the first trade union for women.  She married Alexander Troup in 1872 and they moved to New Haven and continued their activism.  She helped her husband with his newspaper, The New Haven Union, and also became a successful teacher.   In 1911, Augusta established the New Haven Teachers League to better teachers working conditions. She also lobbied the state for provision of pensions for public school teachers and worked to raise awareness about woman’s suffrage in her community. A New Haven public school was named in her honor. 

International Printing Museum, Women’s Typographical Union No. 1, https://www.printmuseum.org/blog/womens-type-union 

Conecticut Women's Hall of Fame, 
 
S.H.G.A.P.E. Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, A Woman Ahead of Her Time,  https://www.shgape.org/a-woman-ahead-of-her-time-augusta-lewis-troup/