Mary Anna Cooke Thompson was a leader in the first generation of women's rights activists in Oregon and one of Oregon's pioneer doctors, who broke through the barriers to women in medicine.[1]
Mary Anna Cooke Thompson was born in New York on the 14th of February 1825.[1] Her parents, Horatio Cooke (1797-1869) and Anna Bennett (1794-1881) were both from England.[2] Mary was their first daughter and second child. The couple met while emigrating to New York, where they would get married later on, in 1821. Of ten children the Cookes had, only seven survived to adulthood. After Mary turned eight, she was removed from school in order to help her mother with her siblings.[3] A year later, after moving to New Jersey and remaining in charge of taking care of her brother and sisters, Mary started selling wooden novelty items handmade by her father on the streets of Newark, helping with the income of her household.[4]
A view of LaSalle, Illinois
In 1837, when Mary was about twelve, she moved to Chicago with her parents and there she met a carpenter from Pennsylvania who became her husband, Reuben Thompson (1815-1885).[2] They got married on November 14, 1848. Then they moved to LaSalle, Illinois, where they lived for 18 years. The couple had five children, three boys, and two girls but the girls didn't survive. They also adopted a niece. In 1866, they passed through the Isthmus of Panama to settle in Portland, Oregon. Mary's parents and other relatives had already left Chicago and moved there before 1860.[1] As we can see on the website Ancestry, created by an American genealogy company, it was in Portland that Mary's last son, James R., was born in February 1871.[2] Based on Thompson's diary, Ward states that she had a difficult domestic relationship with her husband, and she feared that her struggles with mental health would limit her work. Reuben Thompson's health deteriorated because of an injury, and he died in 1885. After her husband's death, Mary continued to work, and she also took in boarders. In November 1918, Mary Anna Cooke Thompson suffered a paralytic stroke, and she died six months later, on May 4, 1919, in Portland, Oregon.[1]
Career in the medical field
In the 19th century, women were not allowed to study medicine, since most of the medical schools only accepted men. As L. Magner says in his article Medical Education for Women During the Nineteenth Century, the first female medical colleges were opened in the late 1940s. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman in the United States to earn a medical degree in 1849. Unfortunately, many of these schools were short-lived because of all the stereotypes and criticisms they were facing, which were an obstacle to the opening of the medical profession to women.[5] For that reason, Mary Anna Cooke Thompson didn't have any degree, and, according to Ward (2012), she began her medical studies a year after her marriage, in 1849.[3]
Two physicians from Illinois, Dr. Lyman B. Larkin, a homeopathic physician, and Dr. Frances Bry, a graduate of the University of Missouri, allowed her to study medicine with them. They became her tutors and Mary could learn in their practices in LaSalle.[1] She then became the first woman to practice medicine in Illinois, and Iowa as well.[6] In 1855, Thompson joined the first women's rights society in Illinois and a year later, in 1856, she formed, along with three other women, the first women's club in the same state. The new association rapidly spread, and in 1861, these efforts were rewarded with the Women's Property Act, which granted women control of the property they brought into the marriage.[3] In 1867, she began placing advertisements in Portland's newspapers.[1] She started by calling herself an "Electrician & Eclectic Physician", and then "Dr. Mary A. Thompson, Physician and Accoucheur".[3]
Mary Anna Cooke Thompson practiced medicine in Portland for more than 40 years and was able to manage her career as a physician while raising her family, which represented a great achievement and a model of success for women.[1] Despite the absence of a formal degree that allowed her to be considered a "regular doctor", Mary Thompson was deeply respected and Abigail Scott Duniway said that she was making "a permanent impression on the medical profession of Oregon, in pioneer days, by opening the way for other women physicians of the state, but few of whom realize the importance of her work as a path-breaker".[7] Mary's experience as a physician led her to be concerned with the condition of women and children, especially about childbirth.[8] She also helped with the Underground Railroad and saved the lives of several children and mothers that were being pursued. The Thompsons opened their home to well-known leaders of the Abolitionist Movement, such as Parker Pillsbury.[3]
According to Ward, apart from being an advocate for human rights, Mary Thompson also toured the Pacific North-West in the fall of 1871, helping organize the Multnomah County Woman Suffrage Association at Portland's Oro Fino Hall.[9] According to Ward (2012), who found her information in the archives of The New Northwest, Duniway's newspaper, Thompson was always a central figure through all of Oregon's suffrage campaigns, until the victory in 1912.[3] Although she was a truly admired pioneer in Portland, she never reached the celebrity status of her colleague Duniway, distinguished then (and now) as Oregon's "Mother of Equal Suffrage". The two women had much in common personally and worked hard for several shared causes. However, there were often battles between the two women since they disagreed about the movement's goals. Indeed, Mary was in favor of temperance and prohibition.[10] H. P. Thompson defines this movement as "a social reform movement that pursued many approaches to limit or prohibit the use and/or sale of alcoholic beverages" and "arguably the longest-running reform movement in US history, extending from the 1780s through the repeal of national prohibition in 1933.".[11]
Mary Anna Cooke Thompson was really involved in this movement along with her friends, Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair, an American physician, and Frances Fuller Victor, an American historian and author.[1] They thought that the prohibition of alcohol would reduce the number of cases of women and children being abused by their alcoholic husbands or fathers. On the contrary, Abigail Scott Duniway thought that it would not help the women's suffrage movement but rather be an obstacle, driving away male voters.[8] Yet, Duniway was convinced that men were the key to winning women's suffrage.[12] After Oregon's first defeat of woman suffrage in 1874, Thompson, along with other movement mates, challenged Duniway's leadership of the Oregon State Woman Suffrage Association.[3]
In her later years, was known, thanks to her journal and personal introspective passages, that she had a difficult domestic relationship with her husband and struggles with mental health that she feared would limit her work. Ward (2012) cites Mary Anna Cooke Thompson's journal: "The same terrible depression comes over me from this letter that affected me before I left home" and "may the loved ones who watch over me guide and direct me into the right paths, and may my judgement be quickened that I may accomplish the work that is for me to do". Thompson was pleased with the proceedings and her role. "I represented 'The Pacific Slope and the Claims of the Working Class'," she wrote in her journal.[3]
Beliefs and tendencies
Thompson's work for equal rights was grounded in her belief in the moral superiority of women, paired with faith in the ballot as an essential and powerful weapon to stop corruption. Thompson claimed that "women were the conscience of the nation".[22]
She believed that the influence of women would purify the laws of the land and it would effectively address the social and economic issues that the nation faced. Thompson's rhetorical exigence for woman suffrage was based on both, justice, recognizing the right of women to exercise the political power of the ballot, and expediency arguments, claiming that society as a whole would benefit from the exertion of women's moral influence through suffrage.[3]
Intellectually, Thompson combined a traditional and progressive way of thinking, and aside from what might be refuted today as the myth of women's innate moral superiority over men, her defense of women's rights was in accord with the beliefs of most women and men of her time.[23]
Related Research Articles
The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women's rights convention. It advertised itself as "a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman". Held in the Wesleyan Chapel of the town of Seneca Falls, New York, it spanned two days over July 19–20, 1848. Attracting widespread attention, it was soon followed by other women's rights conventions, including the Rochester Women's Rights Convention in Rochester, New York, two weeks later. In 1850 the first in a series of annual National Women's Rights Conventions met in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was formed on May 15, 1869, to work for women's suffrage in the United States. Its main leaders were Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was created after the women's rights movement split over the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, which would in effect extend voting rights to black men. One wing of the movement supported the amendment while the other, the wing that formed the NWSA, opposed it, insisting that voting rights be extended to all women and all African Americans at the same time.
The New Northwest was an American weekly newspaper published in Portland, Oregon, from 1871 to 1887 by Abigail Scott Duniway, and for another two years by O. P. Mason. One of the first newspapers in the Western United States to champion the cause of women's rights, during its 16-year run, The New Northwest emerged as a vigorous voice for women's suffrage and for liberalization of marriage law and property rights for women. The newspaper's motto was Free Speech, Free Press, Free People.
Abigail Scott Duniway was an American women's rights advocate, newspaper editor and writer, whose efforts were instrumental in gaining voting rights for women in the United States.
Anna Howard Shaw was a leader of the women's suffrage movement in the United States. She was also a physician and one of the first ordained female Methodist ministers in the United States.
Women's suffrage, or the right to vote, was established in the United States over the course of more than half a century, first in various states and localities, sometimes on a limited basis, and then nationally in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) was a single-issue national organization formed in 1869 to work for women's suffrage in the United States. The AWSA lobbied state governments to enact laws granting or expanding women's right to vote in the United States. Lucy Stone, its most prominent leader, began publishing a newspaper in 1870 called the Woman's Journal. It was designed as the voice of the AWSA, and it eventually became a voice of the women's movement as a whole.
Lucretia Mott was an American Quaker, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position of women in society when she was amongst the women excluded from the World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in 1840. In 1848, she was invited by Jane Hunt to a meeting that led to the first public gathering about women's rights, the Seneca Falls Convention, during which the Declaration of Sentiments was written.
Kentucky Equal Rights Association (KERA) was the first permanent statewide women's rights organization in Kentucky. Founded in November 1888, the KERA voted in 1920 to transmute itself into the Kentucky League of Women Voters to continue its many and diverse progressive efforts on behalf of women's rights.
The College Equal Suffrage League (CESL) was an American woman suffrage organization founded in 1900 by Maud Wood Park and Inez Haynes Irwin, as a way to attract younger Americans to the women's rights movement. The League spurred the creation of college branches around the country and influenced the actions of other prominent groups such as National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).
This timeline highlights milestones in women's suffrage in the United States, particularly the right of women to vote in elections at federal and state levels.
Lucy Elmina Anthony was an internationally known leader in the American woman's suffrage movement. She was the niece of American social reformer and women's rights activist, Susan B. Anthony, and longtime companion of women's suffrage leader, Anna Howard Shaw. She served as a secretary to both women, as well as on the committee on local arrangements for the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA)
Amanda M. Way was a pioneer in the temperance and women's equal rights movements, an American Civil War nurse, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church in the 1870s, and a Society of Friends (Quaker) minister by the mid-1880s. Way, a founding member of the Indiana Woman's Rights Association, called for the state's first women's rights convention in 1851 and served as vice president of the proceedings. Way remained active in the Association, including service as its president in 1855, and helped reactivate it in 1869, renamed as the Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony dubbed her the "mother of 'The Woman Suffrage Association' in Indiana" for her early leadership and efforts in initiating the first women's rights convention in the state.
Catherine Amanda Coburn was an American pioneer of the long nineteenth century associated with the Oregon Territory. Entering the workforce after the untimely death of her husband, she became a teacher and school principal and, later, a newspaper editor. A century after her birth, she and her elder sister were described by an Oregon historian as "probably Oregon's two greatest women journalists." Coburn was active in civic life, especially in her later years. Though she did not identify as a "suffragette", she did actively support the cause of women's suffrage, among various charitable and civic causes.
Mary Priscilla Avery Sawtelle was an American early Oregon doctor and rights champion.
Eugenia McKenzie Bacon (1853-1933) was an American suffragist and advocate for public libraries in Illinois.
Mary Laurinda Jane Smith Beatty was an African-American abolitionist and suffrage advocate who joined Abigail Scott Duniway, Maria P. Hendee, and Mary Ann King Lambert in 1872 to cast ballots in Portland, Oregon when women were not yet afforded the right to vote. She was one of the first Black women to publicly agitate for women suffrage west of the Mississippi River.
Native American women influenced early women's suffrage activists in the United States. The Iroquois nations, which had an egalitarian society, were visited by early feminists and suffragists, such as Lydia Maria Child, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These women discussed how Native American women had authority in their own cultures at various feminist conventions and also in the news. Native American women became a symbol for some suffrage activists. However, other white suffragists actively excluded Native American people from the movement. When the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in 1920, suffragist Zitkala-Sa, commented that Native Americans still had more work to do in order to vote. It was not until 1924 that many Native Americans could vote under the Indian Citizenship Act. In many states, there were additional barriers to Native American voting rights.
↑ Duniway, A.S. (1914). Path Breaking: An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States. Portland, Ore., James, Kerns & Abbott co., 1914.
↑ Campbell, K.K. (1989). Man Cannot Speak for Her: A Critical Study of Early Feminist Rhetoric. (New York: Praeger, 1989).
↑ Gordon, A.D. (2003). The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. (New Brunswick, N.J. Rutgers University Press, 2003).
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
