The Queen Isabella Association was formed to raise funds to provide a statue of Queen Isabella of Spain on the site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. The group's additional purpose was to advance the cause of women's suffrage and equal rights.
Beginning at the end of the 1880s, plans were being prepared to create an exposition celebrating the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America by Europeans (the quadro-centential). Women were organizing to become part of this exposition. Several cities were competing to host the exposition. The front-runners were Chicago, New York, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. By 1890 Chicago was selected as the site of the Exposition. At the same time, Congress decreed that there would be a Board of Lady Managers to address and organize the inclusion of women in the World's Columbian Exposition. [1] Drs. Frances Dickinson and Lucy Waite were the originators of the Queen Isabella Association. [2]
As part of the run-up to the Exposition a group of professional women organized to bring their views of woman's place in society to the Exposition. The group believed that women were equal to men and were capable of pursuing professional careers outside the home. The group took as their inspiration Queen Isabella of Spain, who had made Columbus' voyage to the New World possible. [3] Illinois Woman Suffrage Association founder Catharine Van Valkenburg Waite first suggested the idea of erecting a statue of Isabella. [1]
The Queen Isabella Association originally incorporated in Chicago in 1889. It soon expanded to chapters in New York, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. This expansion into a national organization was an attempt to have a voice outside Chicago advocating for the Exposition's site selection in Chicago. [1]
Women could enroll in the Association for one dollar and could also buy shares for five dollars, to raise money for the statue. [4]
Members of the Queen Isabella Association were mostly professional women, part of the New Woman movement, who believed that women should take an equal part in society, working in professions alongside men. [6] [1]
Members of the Association were referred to as "Isabellas". Their suffragist ideology was different from many other women's groups in Chicago, including the Chicago Women's Auxiliary. The Chicago Women's Auxiliary focus was on philanthropic work, making life better for poor women and children by improving education and sanitary conditions. They believed that women could serve society, but should deport themselves as ladies. This difference would carry over into how women wanted women represented at the Exposition. Specifically there were strong desires on each side to gain a position on the Board of Lady Managers. Phoebe Couzins, an Isabella, was elected as the Board Secretary. Her position was soon undermined by the Board's president Bertha Palmer, a well connected Chicago socialite. Palmer rewrote the minutes of the first meeting, including altering the bylaws to give the board president more decision-making power. When Couzins complained she was removed from office. [1] [7]
As the planning of the Exposition continued the Isabellas were marginalized, finally reduced to having the Isabella Club House outside the fairgrounds [6] It was located at 61st and Oglesby Avenue. The Isabellas also ran the Isabella Hotel in the property next door. [1] They held the "Meeting of Women Lawyers" at the Club House on August 3–5, 1983. [5]
The group commissioned the statue from sculptor Harriet Hosmer, herself a member of the Queen Isabella Society. [8] Hosmer completed the statue, but the Isabellas did not have the funds to purchase it. She rejected an offer from Bertha Palmer to purchase the statue for the Woman's Building and instead sold it to Harriet Williams Russell Strong who had it placed outside the Pampas Place of the California Building at the World's Columbian Exposition. [9] [1]
The World's Columbian Exposition was a world's fair held in Chicago from 5 May to 31 October in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, held in Jackson Park, was a large water pool representing the voyage Columbus took to the New World. Chicago had won the right to host the fair over several other cities, including New York City, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis. The exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on American architecture, the arts, American industrial optimism, and Chicago's image.
Bertha Matilde Palmer was an American businesswoman, socialite, and philanthropist.
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Phoebe Wilson Couzins was one of the first female lawyers in the United States. She was the second woman to serve as a licensed attorney in Missouri and the third or fourth to be a licensed attorney in the United States. She was the first woman admitted to the Missouri and Utah bars, and was also admitted to the Kansas and Dakota Territory bars. She was the first female appointed to the U.S. Marshal service. After her career in law, she played an active part in the Suffrage movement.
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Sarah Tyson Hallowell or Sara Tyson Hallowell was an American art curator in the years between the Civil War and World War I. She curated a number of major exhibitions in Chicago, arranged the loan exhibition of French Art at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and worked with Bertha Palmer (1849–1918) to organize the murals for the women's pavilion for the fair. She then moved to Paris, where she served as agent for the Art Institute of Chicago. During World War I she and her niece Harriet Hallowell (1873–1943) volunteered at a small hospital. She lived in France until her death in 1924.
Catharine Van Valkenburg Waite was a United States author, lawyer, businesswoman, and women's suffrage activist.
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Frances M. Goodwin (1855–1929) was an American sculptor born in Newcastle, Indiana. Goodwin began her studies in Indianapolis, briefly studying at the Indiana Art Association, and then at the Chicago Art Institute where she studied with Lorado Taft and then at the Art Students League under Daniel Chester French.
Mary Blatchley Briggs was an American writer and women's organizer of the long nineteenth century. She served for eleven years as assistant secretary, superintendent, and reporter for the press, and manager of county, state and inter-state fairs. In addition to publishing a volume of poems, she served as secretary of the Western Art Association of Omaha, Nebraska, retiring on January 1, 1891. Briggs was active in organizing woman's work, and also a writer of descriptive matter of the expositions and like areas in which she was interested. Her best known exposition work was for the world's fair at Chicago, where she was one of the two Nebraskans on the Board of Lady Managers of the World's Columbian Exposition and did much toward organizing the Nebraska women for their work for the state and children's building. She managed getting up the representation for her state at New Orleans.
Frances Dickinson was an American physician and clubwoman who specialized in ophthalmology. Dickinson was the first woman received into the International Medical Congress (1887). In addition to being an active member of several medical societies, she was also a prominent woman's club participant, philanthropist, writer, and speaker.
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This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain :Sperry, F. M. (1904). "Frances Dickinson, M.D.". A Group of distinguished physicians and surgeons of Chicago (Public domain ed.). J.H. Beers.