Sorosis

Last updated
Sorosis Club rules in 1869 Sorosis Club rules.jpg
Sorosis Club rules in 1869

Sorosis was the first professional women's club in the United States. It was established in March 1868 in New York City by Jane Cunningham Croly.

Contents

Origin of the club's name

Sorosis is a latinate word meaning 'aggregation' (from the Greek sōros, meaning ‘heap’). Its object was to further the educational and social activities of women by bringing representative women of accomplishment in art, literature, science, and kindred pursuits. The club's name, Sorosis, would be founded by Jane Croly through searching countless of dictionaries. [1] Jane was fond of "its full, appropriate signification, its unhackneyed character and sweet sound". [1] Briefly, Kate Field, one of the 14 beginning charter members, would change the club's name from Sorosis to the "Women's League", but after much consideration and a second ballot, Sorosis would be restored to become the club's final name. [1] As a result, Kate Field and others would withdraw themselves from the club. [1] The meeting would conclude with Alice Cary presenting her inaugural address. [1] The following week, Alice would resign from presidency due to the strain the disputes caused on her health. [1]

History

In March 1868, a group of women were denied the ability to purchase a ticket to attend the all-male New York Press Club hosted dinner for author Charles Dickens at Delmonico's. [2] In response to being excluded by the New York Press Club, Sorosis was organized. [2] On April 20, 1868, Sorosis hosted its first lunch meeting at the same restaurant. [2] They extended an invite to Dickens, but he declined to attend. [2] At the meeting, the 14 charter members of Sorosis were Alice Cary, Jane "Jennie" C. Croly, Kate Field, Phoebe Cary, Ella Clymer, Celia M. Burleigh, Josephine Pollard, Ellen Louise Demorest, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Anne Botta, "Fanny Fern" Parton, Henry M. Field, Lucy Gibbons, and James T. Field. [3] In January of 1869, Sorosis would become incorporated meaning it became a legal institution. [4] Within one year, Sorosis had 83 members. [4] Along with Boston's New England Woman's Club (also founded in 1868), Sorosis inspired the formation of women's clubs across the country. [4]

The Sorosis ... was organized ... to promote "mental activity and pleasant social intercourse," and in spite of a severe fire of hostile criticism and misrepresentation, it has evinced a sturdy vitality, and really demonstrated its right to exist by a large amount of beneficent work. ... These ladies pledged themselves to work for the release of women from the disabilities which debar them from a due participation in the rewards of industrial and professional labour ... I believe it has been the stepping-stone to useful public careers, and the source of inspiration to many ladies.

Emily Faithfull, 1884 [5]

Early members of Sorosis were participants in varied professions and political reform movements such as abolitionism, suffrage, prison reform, temperance and peace. Sorosis expanded into local chapters beyond New York City in the early twentieth century and the various chapters went on to organize war relief efforts during both World Wars. Peacetime activities included philanthropy (such as support for funding the MacDowell Colony), scholarship funds, and social reforms (such as literary training for immigrant women). In later years, Sorosis focused its activities on local projects, raising money for the aid of other women's clubs, funding scholarships for women, and aiding local rescue missions. [4]

In 1890, Sorosis invited other women's clubs to attend a ratification convention in New York City. [6] Sixty-three clubs were in attendance and formed the General Federation of Women's Clubs. [7] Together, these women's clubs would push for social and political reform on the local, state, and national level. [6]

The University of Texas at San Antonio houses a collection of records for the San Antonio chapter of Sorosis. The collection spans the years 1923 through 1991 and provides information about the club's members and activities primarily through minutes, photographs, scrapbooks and yearbooks. [4]

Club and meeting structure

Each month, with the exception of a summer recess, Sorosis hosted symposiums on the following topics: literature, science, philosophy, art, drama, and education. [8]  Members of Sorosis formed committees that conducted work and research on the various symposium topics. [8] Each committee was granted one day each year to present their work. [8] The club also hosted business meetings two weeks after each monthly symposium. [8]

Viewpoints

The viewpoints of Sorosis leaned more conservative than other women's groups of the time. [9] Though many of its members were suffragists, the group did not actively work towards the advancement of women's suffrage. [10] Sorosis was known to support abolition movements, [9] temperance, [10] women's education, [9] dress reform, [11] and rights for working women. [9] In general, Sorosis accepted traditional ideas about the differences in sexes. [12] This included the idea that men and women have naturally different temperaments, and that men are less spiritually pure than women. [12] They also held the viewpoint that serving others was more important than acting in self-interest for women. [12] Sorosis and other women's clubs believed that it was these inherent gender differences, such as women's naurally higher morality and nurturing tendencies, that made it so women should take active roles in reform and bettering society. [12]

Member achievements

Scientific achievements

Literary and journalistic achievements

Business achievements

Notable members

See also

Related Research Articles

Copley is an unincorporated community in Summit County, in the U.S. state of Ohio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cynthia Holmes Belcher</span> American journalist

Cynthia Holmes Belcher was an American journalist born in Lunenburg, Vermont.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Vickroy Boyd</span> American poet

Louise Vickroy Boyd was an American writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">M. French Swarthout</span>

Mary French Swarthout was an American educator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sadie Park Grisham</span>

Sadie Park Grisham was an educator and municipal public office-holder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Delaplaine Wilson</span> American author (1830–1915)

Jane Delaplaine Wilson was an author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebecca A. Morse</span>

Rebecca A. Morse was an American club leader.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sallie M. Mills Johnson</span> American author

Sallie M. Mills Johnson was an American writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harriet Beecher Conant</span> American physician (1852–1941)

Harriet Beecher Conant was an American medical doctor who was the resident physician in the South Dakota Hospital for the Insane in Yankton, South Dakota.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ozella Shields Head</span> American novelist

Mary Ozella Shields Head was an American writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phoebe Jane Babcock Wait</span> American physician (1838–1904)

Phoebe Jane Babcock Wait was an American physician.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Foot Seymour</span> American journalist

Mary Foot Seymour was a 19th-century American businesswoman and journalist. In 1879, in New York City, she started the Union School of Stenography, the first women's secretarial school in the United States. She also published a magazine devoted to the interest of women. Seymour served as president of the Union Stenographic and Typewriting Association, commissioner of the United States Court of Claims, commissioner of deeds of New Jersey, and notary public of New York County, New York. She served three different terms in as many offices, and handled a large proportion of the writing done for the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Though she preferred journalistic work, she carried on her stenographic establishment as it paid better than correspondence or reporting. She was a member of the Woman's Press Club of New York City and Sorosis. Seymour died in 1893.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennie Lozier</span> American physician

Jeanne de la Montagnie Lozier was an American physician and educator from New York City. She worked as an instructor of languages and literature in Hillsdale College from the age of nineteen, and after earning her medical degree from New York Medical College, became a professor of physiology. She was a delegate to the International Homoeopathic Congress in Paris in 1889 and was president of Sorosis Club from 1891 to 1894.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maude Gillette Phillips</span> American author, educator and animal welfare activist

Maude Gillette Phillips was an American author, educator and animal welfare activist. She was the author of Popular Manual of English Literature. Phillips was a prolific writer for magazines in fiction and criticisms under pen names. Known for her wide social experience, she seemed to be more a woman of the world than a scholar or author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth M. Olmsted</span> American poet (1825–1910)

Elizabeth M. Olmsted was an American poet of the long nineteenth century. Her poems were well known during the Civil War, and appeared in the newspapers and magazines of that period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Ives Breed</span> American social leader, salonnière and clubwoman

Alice Ives Breed was an American social leader, salonnière, and clubwoman. She excelled as an organizer, using her executive abilities in religious, philanthropic, literary and social channels, aiming to improve the community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">May Riley Smith</span> American poet and clubwoman (1842–1927)

May Riley Smith was an American poet and clubwoman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Bassett Clarke</span> American writer (1831–1908)

Mary Bassett Clarke was an American writer of the long nineteenth century. She was a contributor to The Flag of Our Union, Rural New Yorker, as well as periodicals issued by the Seventh Day Baptists. Autumn Leaves was published in 1894.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Baker Bohan</span> American journalist

Elizabeth Baker Bohan was a British-born American author, journalist, artist, and social reformer. She had a special interest in the reconstruction of the penal system. She published two novels, Un Americano, a story of the mission days of California (1895) and The Drag-Net, a prison story of the present day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sue Harper Mims</span> Christian Science practitioner and teacher

Sue Harper Mims, C.S.D., was a social leader in Atlanta, Georgia and the wife of Livingston Mims, the 37th mayor of Atlanta. She was a member of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and helped found its branch church in Atlanta.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Croly, Jane Cunningham (1886). Sorosis: its origin and history. New York, N.Y.: J.J. Little & Co. pp. 6, 7, 11, 13, 28.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Freedman, Paul (2014). "Women and Restaurants in the Nineteenth-Century United States". Journal of Social History. 48 (1): 1–19. ISSN   0022-4529.
  3. Croly, Jane Cunningham (1886). Sorosis: its origin and history. New York, N.Y.: J.J. Little & Co. pp. 6, 7, 11, 13, 28.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "Collection: Sorosis records | Smith College Finding Aids". findingaids.smith.edu. Retrieved 2020-05-13. Creative Commons by small.svg  This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 3.0 license.
  5. 1 2 Faithfull, Emily (1884). Three Visits to America. New York: Fowler & Wells Co., Publishers. pp.  18–21.
  6. 1 2 White, Kate (2015). ""The pageant is the thing": The Contradictions of Women's Clubs and Civic Education during the Americanization Era". College English. 77 (6): 512–529. ISSN   0010-0994.
  7. "History and Mission". GFWC. Retrieved 2020-05-13.
  8. 1 2 3 4 "Concerning Clubs, Exhibitions and Art Matters". The Decorator and Furnisher. 27 (6): 188–188. 1896. ISSN   2150-6256.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Rosenthal, Naomi; Fingrutd, Meryl; Ethier, Michele; Karant, Roberta; McDonald, David (1985). "Social Movements and Network Analysis: A Case Study of Nineteenth-Century Women's Reform in New York State". American Journal of Sociology. 90 (5): 1022–1054. ISSN   0002-9602.
  10. 1 2 Stevenson, Alice (2019), "Collecting in America's Progressive and Gilded Eras (1880–1919)", Scattered Finds, Archaeology, Egyptology and Museums, UCL Press, pp. 69–104, doi:10.2307/j.ctv550cxt.6, ISBN   978-1-78735-141-7 , retrieved 2024-04-12
  11. Riegel, Robert E. (1963). "Women's Clothes and Women's Rights". American Quarterly. 15 (3): 390–401. doi:10.2307/2711370. ISSN   0003-0678.
  12. 1 2 3 4 Jeffrey, Kirk (1981). "Review of The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–1914". New York History. 62 (2): 230–232. ISSN   0146-437X.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). A woman of the century; fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Buffalo, N.Y., Moulton.
  14. 1 2 3 4 Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). A woman of the century; fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Buffalo, N.Y., Moulton.
  15. 1 2 3 Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). A woman of the century; fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Buffalo, N.Y., Moulton.
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). A woman of the century; fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Buffalo, N.Y., Moulton.
  17. 1 2 3 4 Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). A woman of the century; fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Buffalo, N.Y., Moulton.
  18. 1 2 3 4 Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). A woman of the century; fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Buffalo, N.Y., Moulton.
  19. 1 2 3 4 Willard, Frances Elizabeth, 1839-1898; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice, 1820-1905 (1893). A woman of the century; fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life. Buffalo, N.Y., Moulton. Retrieved 8 August 2017.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)PD-icon.svg This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain .
  20. 1 2 3 The Encyclopedia Americana: A Library of Universal Knowledge, vol. 2, 1920, p. 466.
  21. 1 2 3 4 Binheim, Max; Elvin, Charles A. (1928). Women of the West: A Series of Biographical Sketches of Living Eminent Women in the Eleven Western States of the United States of America. Los Angeles: Publishers Press. Retrieved August 6, 2017.
  22. "Souvenir Fifteenth Annual Congress of the Association for the Advancement of Women Invited and Entertained by Sorosis" (PDF). New York: Drew University. October 1887. p. 29. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
  23. "Dr. Phoebe Jane Babcock Wait - 31 Jan 1904, Sun • Page 7". The New York Times: 7. 1904. Retrieved 4 October 2017.

Further reading