Emily Howland was a philanthropist and educator. Especially known for her activities and interest in the education of African-Americans, she was also a strong supporter of women's rights and the temperance movement. Howland personally financed the education of many black students and contributed to institutions such as the Tuskegee Institute and Kowaliga Institute in Kowaliga, Alabama where Howland Hall was named for her.
Dr. Helen Magill White was an American academic and instructor. She was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in the United States.
Rebecca J. Cole was an American physician, organization founder and social reformer. In 1867, she became the second African-American woman to become a doctor in the United States, after Rebecca Lee Crumpler three years earlier. Throughout her life she faced racial and gender-based barriers to her medical education, training in all-female institutions which were run by the first generation of graduating female physicians.
Friends Select School (FSS) is a college-preparatory, Quaker school for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade located at 1651 Benjamin Franklin Parkway at the intersection of Cherry and N. 17th Streets in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. With Friends (Quaker) education dating to 1689, Friends Select, which was founded in 1833, has been located on this site since 1885. The current building, which includes an office building owned by the school, was built in 1967-69. An adjacent campus building is located across the street at 1700 Race Street. The Race Street Meetinghouse, built in 1856, is used by students and faculty for Meeting for Worship each Wednesday and Thursday. The school is under the joint care of both the Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting and the Monthly Meeting of Friends of Philadelphia and is governed by a board of trustees comprised equally of the two.
Abigail Hopper Gibbons, née Abigail Hopper was an American abolitionist, schoolteacher, and social welfare activist. She assisted in founding and led several nationally known societies for social reform during and following the Civil War.
John Hunn was an American farmer and abolitionist who was a "station master" of the Underground Railroad in Delaware, the southernmost stationmaster and responsible for slaves escaping up the Delmarva Peninsula.
Deborah Fisher Wharton (1795–1888) was an American Quaker minister, suffragist, social reformer and proponent of women's rights. She was one of a small group of dedicated Quakers who founded Swarthmore College along with her industrialist son, Joseph Wharton. She was a contemporary and friend of Lucretia Mott and had many of Mott's sympathies but did not actively pursue the women's rights cause, rather she was a proponent of liberal Quaker spirituality.
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.
Margaret Hope Bacon was an American Quaker historian, author and lecturer. She is primarily known for her biographies and works involving Quaker women’s history and the abolitionist movement. Her most famous book is her biography of Lucretia Mott, Valiant Friend, published in 1980.
Graceanna Lewis was an American naturalist, illustrator, and social reformer. An expert in the field of ornithology, Lewis is remembered as a pioneer female American scientist as well as an activist in the anti-slavery, temperance, and women's suffrage movements.
Fair Hill Burial Ground is a historic cemetery in the Fairhill neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded by the Religious Society of Friends in 1703, it fell into disuse until the 1840s when it was revived by the Hicksite Quaker community of Philadelphia, which played an important role in the abolition and early women's rights movements. The cemetery is currently operated by the Fair Hill Burial Corporation, which is owned by Quakers and neighborhood community members.
Martha Ellicott Tyson was an Elder of the Quaker Meeting in Baltimore, an anti-slavery and women's rights advocate, historian, and a co-founder of Swarthmore College. She was married to Nathan Tyson, a merchant whose father was the emancipator and abolitionist Elisha Tyson. She was the great-great grandmother of Maryland state senator James A. Clark Jr. (1918–2006). She was inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 1988.
Hannah Hallowell Clothier Hull was an American clubwoman, feminist, and pacifist, one of the founders and leaders of the Women's Peace Party and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Mildred Scott Olmsted was an American Quaker pacifist, in leadership positions with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in the United States.
Elizabeth Powell Bond was an educator and social activist who was the first Dean of Women at Swarthmore College.
Mary Elizabeth Pidgeon was an American woman suffrage activist and labor economist.
Mary Townsend was an early American science writer and abolitionist. Born into a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family, she, her parents, and her siblings were educated at the Westtown School. From childhood, Townsend had an interest in insects. She conducted various studies and experiments, examining specimens under a microscope and evaluating their habits. Because illness and the loss of her sight kept her confined to her bed, Townsend taught herself how to write with a braille-like card. In 1844, she published Life in the Insect World: or, Conversations upon Insects, between an Aunt and Her Nieces, which became popular and influential, particularly in influencing other women to pursue science.
David Townsend was an American banker, botanist, and civic leader from Chester County, Pennsylvania. He was a lifelong friend and business associate of noted botanist William Darlington and was a founder and chief cashier of the National Bank of Chester County. The plant genus Townsendia was named in his honor.
Lucy Biddle Lewis was an American Quaker suffragist and peace activist, one of the American delegates to the International Congress of Women meeting at The Hague in 1915, and in Zürich in 1919. She was American national chair of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). She helped to create the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, which includes the papers of many notable pacificists, including those of Jane Addams.
Dorothy Hewitt Hutchinson was an American peace, civil rights and environmental activist, lecturer and author during the twentieth century. An advocate of nuclear disarmament, she became the president of American branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in 1961 and the international chair of WILPF in 1965, the first American woman to hold that position since Jane Addams co-founded the organization in 1915.
