Greencastle is a city in Greencastle Township, Putnam County, Indiana, United States, and the county seat of Putnam County. It is located near Interstate 70 approximately halfway between Terre Haute and Indianapolis in the west-central portion of the state. The city is the home of DePauw University. The population was 9,820 at the 2020 census.
Mary Ritter Beard was an American historian, author, women's suffrage activist, and women's history archivist who was also a lifelong advocate of social justice. As a Progressive Era reformer, Beard was active in both the labor and women's rights movements. She also authored several books on women's role in history including On Understanding Women (1931), America Through Women's Eyes, and Woman as Force in History: A Study in Traditions and Realities (1946), her major work. In addition, she collaborated with her husband, historian Charles Austin Beard, as coauthor of seven textbooks, most notably The Rise of American Civilization (1927), two volumes, and America in Midpassage: A Study of the Idea of Civilization (1939) and The American Spirit (1942), the third and fourth volume of The Rise of American Civilization series. A standalone book, Basic History of the United States, was their best-selling work.
Arabella Mansfield, born Belle Aurelia Babb, became the first female lawyer in the United States in 1869, admitted to the Iowa bar; she made her career as a college educator and administrator. Despite an Iowa state law restricting the bar exam to males, Mansfield had taken it and earned high scores. Shortly after her court challenge, Iowa amended its licensing statute and became the first state to accept women and minorities into its bar.
Thomas Bowman was an American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, elected in 1872.
Jonas George Howard was an American lawyer and politician who served two terms as a U.S. Representative from Indiana from 1885 to 1889.
Jesse William Weik, was a collaborator with William Herndon in writing the first authoritative biography of Abraham Lincoln, published in 1889.
Albertus Theodore Briggs was a Methodist Episcopal minister for more than 40 years, and a District Superintendent in the Hammond and Greencastle districts in Indiana. For years, he was the President of the Preachers Aid Society, now the United Methodist Foundation of Indiana.
Mary Jane (Whitely) Coggeshall was an American suffragist known as the "mother of woman suffrage in Iowa". She was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame in 1990.
Julia Louisa Dumont was an American educator and writer of prose. Born in the U.S. state of Ohio, she resided for 43 years at Vevay, Indiana. She is remembered as the first Hoosier to become known beyond the State through prose. In the group of writers and poets who flourished in the Ohio Valley in its early history, she was one of the chief figures. Her "Life Sketches from Common Paths: A Series of American Tales," published at New York City in 1856, is considered exemplary of the day.
The Western Association of Writers was an American writers' organization founded in Indiana. It enrolled among its members men and women who were early or seasoned in their careers.
Susan F. Ferree was an American journalist and social reformer from Iowa. Ferree served as a Washington, D.C. newspaper correspondent. She favored women's suffrage and women's rights; she also affiliated with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Ferree died in 1919.
Isabella Smiley Davis Spurlock was a philanthropist.
Helen L. Bostwick was an American author and poet. Buds, Blossoms, and Berries, stories for children, was published in 1863. Some of her poems are included in a volume entitled Four O'Clocks, published in 1888. Nearly all of her literary work was done in Ohio, where her contemporaries included Alice Williams Brotherton and Kate Brownlee Sherwood. Bird died in 1907.
Amanda Ruter Dufour was a 19th-century American poet. Many of her productions were devotional in nature, and included piety and charity, these being traits she probably inherited from her father. Many of her fugitive pieces were published by the Louisville Journal, the Odd Fellows' Ark, at Columbus, Ohio, and other periodicals. She died in 1899.
Minnie Mary Lee was a pen name of Julia Amanda Sargent Wood, a 19th-century American sentimental author, of poems, stories, sketches and novels, who sometimes also wrote as Mrs. Julia A. A. Wood. She began writing very early in life, but did not publish in book form until she was in her forties. The Heart of Myrrha Lake, Or, Into the Light of Catholicity ; Hubert's Wife: a Story for You ; The Brown House at Duffield: a Story of Life without and within the Fold ; and The Story of Annette and her Five Dolls: Told to dear little Catholic Children were her published works. A convert to Roman Catholicism, Wood's novels were on Catholic themes.
Mary Holloway Wilhite was a 19th-century American physician and philanthropist. She was the first female medical graduate from Indiana, as well as the first female practitioner in the state. Wilhite made several important discoveries regarding the effects of medical pharmaceuticals in certain diseases. Her greatest success was in the treatment of women and children. A woman's suffrage and women's rights leader, she was also the founder of the Montgomery County, Indiana Orphans' home. Wilhite contributed regularly to the local newspapers.
Luella J. B. Case was a 19th-century American author. She wrote several popular books and was a contributor to various periodicals, including The Rose of Sharon, The Ladies' Repository, and The Universalist Review among others. Affiliated with the Universalist church, she also wrote hymns.
Cornelia Laws St. John was an American poet and biographer. She was the author of "Over the Shoulder to Clovernook, Being a Backward Glance at Alice and Phoebe Cary in Their Early Home". Her best known poem was "Six Little Feet on the Fender".
Margaret L. Bailey was an American anti-slavery writer, poet, lyricist, as well as newspaper editor and publisher. She served as editor of The Youth's Monthly Visitor, a children's magazine, and as the publisher of The National Era, an anti-slavery journal.
