September 1, 2025 • 35 mins
Jane Cunningham Croly, who wrote under the pen name Jennie June, was a journalist who advocated for equality for women. She is most well known for founding one of the earliest clubs for women in the U.S.
Research:
- Croly, Jennie June. “Jennie June's American Cookery Book, Containing Upwards of Twelve Hundred Choice and Carefully Tested Receipts.” Excelsior. 1878. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Jennie_June_s_American_Cookery_Book_Cont/enEEAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
- Croly, J.C. “Sorosis: Its Origin and History.” New York. J.J. Little & Co. 1886. Accessed online: https://archive.org/details/sorosisitsorigin00crol/page/n3/mode/2up
- Croly, J.C. “Thrown on her own resources, or, What girls can do.” New York. T.Y. Crowell & Co. 1891. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100170730
- Croly, J.C. “The history of the woman's club movement in America.” New York. H.G. Allen. 1898. https://archive.org/details/historywomanscl00clubgoog/page/n10/mode/2up
- “The Dickens Dinner.” Louisville Daily Courier. April 19, 1868. https://www.newspapers.com/image/119304180/?match=1&terms=%22Jennie%20June%22%20press%20club%20dickens
- https://web.archive.org/web/20120120014321/http://www.gfwc.org/gfwc/Jane_Cunningham_Croly.asp
- “Jane Cunningham Croly.” General Federation of Women’s Clubs. https://web.archive.org/web/20120120014321/http://www.gfwc.org/gfwc/Jane_Cunningham_Croly.asp
- “Jane Cunningham Croly.” National Women’s Hall of Fame. https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/jane-cunningham-croly/
- “Jane Cunningham (“Jennie June”) Croly.” Ebsco. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/womens-studies-and-feminism/jane-cunningham-jennie-june-croly
- “Our Mission.” General Federation of Women’s Clubs. https://www.gfwc.org/who-we-are/
- “Rockford Register (Rockford, Ill.) 1855-187?” Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn82014331
- Morse, Caroline M., ed, and Woman’s Press Club of New York City, “Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, ‘Jenny June,’” Produced by Ari J Joki and PG Distributed Proofreaders. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12099/pg12099-images.html
- “The New York Sorosis.” The Charleston Daily News. Nov. 5, 1868. https://www.newspapers.com/image/87596013/?match=1&terms=sorosis
- Puchko, Kristy. “Journalist Jennie June Was "Having It All" in the 19th Century.” Mental Floss. April 14, 2015. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/62964/journalist-jennie-june-was-having-it-all-19th-century
- “The Sorosis Lunch.” Chicago Evening Post. Sept. 28, 1868. https://www.newspapers.com/image/668238331/?match=1&terms=sorosis
- “Sorosis.” Leavenworth Daily Commercial. Aug. 11, 1868. https://www.newspapers.com/image/425238609/?match=1&terms=sorosis
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
And this is a topic that has been on my
list since I worked on paper patterns, because this person
is deeply connected to the Demorests, who we talked about
at length during that as kind of the a primary
forerunner of paper patterns being widely available in multiple sizes
in the US. So. Jane Cunningham Crowley, who wrote under
(00:40):
the pen name Jenny June, was a journalist who advocated
for equality for women. She wrote as We'll talk about
later for the Demorists magazine. She is most well known, though,
for founding one of the earliest clubs for women in
the US and kind of starting the women's club's movement.
Jane Cunningham was born on December ninth, teenth, eighteen twenty nine,
(01:01):
in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, England. Her parents, Joseph Howees and
Jane Scott Cunningham, had three children already before Jane was born.
She was smart, described as buoyant and magnetic. Her teachers
loved her, and she and her father were very close
from the beginning. According to an account written by her brother,
(01:22):
the two of them remained close for the rest of
their father's life. When Jane was about twelve, in eighteen
forty one, the family moved from England to the US,
eventually settling in New York State, and this move seems
to have been precipitated by religious persecution. Joseph Cunningham was
a Unitarian minister when England was not particularly friendly to
(01:45):
that denomination of Christianity. There are some accounts that say
that the family home was stoned at one point, which
led Joseph and Jane to decide to move for the
sake of the family's safety. Once they had gotten to
the US, they lived briefly in put Kipsie before making
their way to Wappinger's Falls, a little to the south
that's still about seventy five miles north of New York City,
(02:08):
and their father, Joseph, built a home and filled the
land around it with a massive and very productive garden.
He typically grew more food than the family could use,
and all of the extra went to neighbors or people
in need.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
According to some newspaper accounts, Jenny was a temperance enthusiast
and a club starter from a very young age. One account,
which was written shortly after her death and appeared in
multiple papers, mentioned that at the age of nine, she
founded a club called Band of Hope Temperance Society. Allegedly,
(02:42):
this club had a song with the lyric quote shout
Aloud the inspiring lay the Band of Hope must wind
the day. But that same account puts her at living
in Massachusetts at the age of nine, which would have
put the family in the United States earlier than her
brother's writing, and all the other accounts say that they were,
(03:03):
so this might not be the most trustworthy information.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
No, but it's cute the idea that she started a club.
I have a you know, as a big writer of
books and club starter myself as a kid have a
little kinship to that. As an adult, Jane moved in
with her brother John, who at that point was working
as a pastor in Worcestern, Massachusetts. She took care of
the house for him, she sometimes called his housekeeper. She
(03:30):
also taught school, and she still found herself with enough
spare time to start a small paper with a friend
that was distributed twice a month to her brother's congregation.
The two women wrote all of the contents of this newspaper,
and they had readings of it in the church when
it was released every two weeks, and those readings were
reportedly very well attended.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
In eighteen fifty five, after their father died, Jane moved
to New York City with the goal of pursuing a
career as a writer. Her first article was accepted by
the New York Tribune, and soon she pitched a regular
column to the New York Sunday Times and Noah's Weekly Messenger.
That started a career that would see great success. She
(04:12):
started writing under the pen name of Jenny June, and
in a lecture given to a women's society she later founded,
she gave her own account of how that name began. Quote,
I was a sunny, happy, little blue eyed girl, and
our genial Unitarian pastor was particularly fond of me. One
day he gave me a little book of poems published
(04:35):
by Benjamin F. Taylor, remarking these are for the junius
little girl that I know. One of the poems was
called January, and another Jenny June. For a long time
I was known to my intimates as Jenny June. The
name almost passed out of my mind as I grew older,
till I commenced contributing to the papers, and then I
(04:56):
bethought me of Jenny June as a nom de plume.
A note on the spelling, sometimes Jenny ends with a
Y and sometimes with an ie. There's not really a
solid indicator of which one she preferred. Her professional bylines
ended with the IE, but in her own writing and
the writing of her family it changed back and forth.
(05:18):
When it came to correspondence, she just used her initials.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah, So I don't know. I don't know if she
cared especially, but Jenny June wrote what sounded like unimportant
fodder for ladies. Her regular column for the Sunday Times
was titled Parlor and Sidewalk Gossip. But she was even
in her early career, advocating for equality for women in
some ways. We'll talk about the problems in a bit,
(05:44):
And even in her career, just making that column, she
was kind of trailblazing because she's often credited with being
the first woman to syndicate a column Parlor and Sidewalk Gossip,
which often talked about, you know, the popular clothes of
the day. Who was having a ball who attended that ball.
Et cetera ran in papers throughout the country in New York, Louisiana, Virginia, Maryland,
(06:08):
and Kentucky. In eighteen sixty four, her columns were collected
into a book titled Talks on Women's Topics. There was
also a follow up book written in eighteen sixty nine,
also collecting the columns that had happened since that first
book was published, called Jenny Juniana Talks on Women's Topics.
Through her journalism work, Jane met another journalist named David G. Crowley.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Crowley was originally from Ireland and had become a well
respected editor. They fell in love and got married on
February fourteenth, eighteen fifty six, when she was twenty six.
Crowley worked for the New York Harold as a reporter,
and Jane and David lived in Manhattan together. According to
Jane's brother, John, David quote was a conservative Democrat of
(06:56):
the strictest sort, a radical in religion, and had but
little appreciation of the deeper forces at work in society
and in national life. But he was able and honest,
and enjoyed the respect of his fellow craftsmen. Jane and
David had five children together, four of whom lived to adulthood,
then a son who died in infancy, Herbert, Vila, and Alice.
(07:21):
One thing that was unique about the Curly marriage was
that David did not expect Jane to stop working once
they got married or after they had children. At a
time when most women stopped being professionals the moment they
became wives, Jane and David modeled a much more modern
relationship in which Jane's professional work was supported and cheered
(07:43):
on by her spouse. David is often mentioned in accounts
in letters written by friends and family as frequently telling
people how amazing he thought Jane was. To be clear this,
he does not seem to have been so progressive as
to split the domestic duty with his wife. So Jane
was taking care of the entire family and her career,
(08:05):
and she often gave up sleep to make all that work.
Coming up, we're going to talk more about Jane's work
and a brief move that the couple made to Illinois,
but first we will take a sponsor break. The same
(08:27):
year that she became missus Crowley, Jane also started her
first women's club, called the Women's Parliament. This of course,
would be the first of many, but the Women's Parliament
was intended to bring women together so they could talk
about the role of women in society and how that
role could change for the better. But this effort never
really took off, so it's not often cited as an
(08:50):
early women's club. In eighteen fifty nine, the Crowleys left
New York for Rockford, Illinois. David had been chosen to
be the new editor of the rock Ford Register. This
was not just a random thing that happened. The job
came about because of family connections. The Register was financially
backed by William Gore King, who was married to Jane's
(09:13):
sister Mary. Some accounts state that this was an entirely
new newspaper that David was launching, and others say that
he was brought on to try to save it. The
Library of Congress has a record of a Rockford Register
that started in eighteen fifty five with an uncertain end date,
so it seems like the latter scenario might be the
(09:34):
accurate one. But David and Jane both really missed New
York and this paper did not succeed, so after a
year in Illinois, they moved back to Manhattan.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah. During that year was when they had their first child,
which she was born in Illinois. But then upon returning
to New York, David became the managing editor for the
New York World, and this was the first in a
string of managing editor positions in the city that he
held with a number of different papers. Jane became the
head of the women's department for the paper, and she
(10:06):
also became the primary staff writer for Madame Demorest's Mirror
of Fashions at this time, which we of course mentioned
in our recent episode on paper patterns. And Jenny June
remained a fixture in the pages of the Demorst magazine
as the periodical transitioned to become Demorist's monthly magazine with
a more frequent published cycle. Somehow, despite her busy work
(10:30):
schedule and managing an entire household with four kids, Jane
and David also had a regular social gathering at their
home every Sunday.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Jenny June wrote extensively about the injustices of society as
they related to women's causes, but not all of her
advice for women was actually great for women. For example,
in eighteen sixty six, she published a book titled Jenny
June's American Cookery Book, and in that she states, quote,
food for the well is better than physic for the sick.
(11:02):
Bad cooking is a crime. It is the cause of
dyspepsia and a host of other evils. A woman convicted
of it ought to be arraigned for manslaughter. Just I
had a little shudder after reading that.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
You and me Bo don't read this book. It would
make you irate.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Also, for all of her claims toward equality for women,
she writes some pretty old school things about women's role
in a marriage. She opens the line of thought by
saying that the first decision that a couple must make
is quote, whether they shall keep house or board. She
finds that men want to choose to keep house, but
(11:43):
young wives often want to board because they don't know
how to cook, And then she writes, quote, the final
result is that they go to board in some highly
genteel establishment where the prices are high in proportion to
the gentility and lack of real comfort, and some find
the young gentleman wakes up to the knowledge that he
(12:03):
is tied to a wife who doubles his expenses but
has added nothing to his happiness or at any rate
nothing to the real value and usefulness of his life.
This is a matrimonial swindle. Girls ought not to marry
unless they are ready and willing to accept the position
of head of a household and capable of making a
(12:24):
home what it should be to husband and children. Uh,
I don't love that.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
No, that was a big yikes for me as a girl.
We gotta have a talk, Jenny g.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Meanwhile, I'm like boarding somewhere where someone else is handling
all the cooking and cleaning.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Sounds great. Well, it's also funny because it kind of
echoes to the ongoing arguments that have been happening throughout
my entire life, where there will occasionally be news stories
about whether or not you should be eating out at
restaurants or not. Yeah, and whether or not that's waste sole.
That's kind of the modern version of this. So it
cracks me up a little. Over dramatic and wildly incorrect
(13:07):
takes aside, this book is overall pretty practical, even though
sometimes it's outdated. And I don't mean in terms of
social morase, but like ingredients and stuff are not things
we would use today. But in the introduction, one of
the notes that really struck me was that there were not,
at the time, actually many cookbooks written by women, so
there wasn't a lot of information on the practicalities of
(13:29):
planning meals while also running a household, and this seeks
to fill that gap. One of the genuinely great pieces
of advice that Jenny June offers, specifically for setting up
a kitchen, is that you should not buy a bunch
of stuff to set up your kitchen right away, because quote,
it is easy to add more when experience has discovered
to you precisely what you want. I need this lesson
(13:53):
all day, every day, because I will buy everything upfront
and then be like, I don't use that bacon press.
She also recommends buying the nicest kitchen implements that you
can afford, because they will last forever. There is also
a thing that just cracked me up and today would
not fly. There's a small section of the book titled
(14:13):
Label Children and it just reads, quote into the crowns
of the hats or bonnets of little children, so a
square of writing paper stating age and residence. This will
save them from any danger of being lost.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I was like, what if the hat gets lost?
Speaker 1 (14:30):
I know, I have so many questions about the feasibility
of this approach. Yeah, I mean, I.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
See no problem with you know, putting the label with
the child's name and maybe some contact info in there.
But I don't think it's a solution to the child
being lost, just the hat.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah. Anyway.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Jenny June notes that no book is perfect, and that
hers is no exception. Quote. It is not claimed for
the present volume by the author that it fully meets
the necessities of the case, or has satisfactorily accomplished its task,
even within the modest limits assigned to it. It is
one thing to think how something may be done, and
(15:11):
another thing to do it. But it is claimed that
the object of the work has been constantly kept in view,
that it has been executed lovingly, with a strong appreciation
of the benefit and pleasure to be derived from good cooking,
from the intermingling of the finer with the grosser elements,
with a pleasant remembrance of good time spent in the kitchen,
(15:35):
and with an earnest wish to make these duties seem
attractive to the conscientious young wives, who would willingly perform
their part if they but knew how.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
So now we come to a pivotal moment. In eighteen
sixty nine, Charles Dickens was scheduled to speak at the
Press Club of New York. This included a private dinner
at Delmonico's, and Jane, like many other people, wanted to attend,
but there was a problem. A news write up about
the event read quote, some ladies of literary proclivities asked
(16:07):
for invitations and got themselves snubbed by the journalists who
were on the committee of invitations. Apparently Horace Greeley, who
was running this event, actually wanted the women invited, but
the committee refused to admit the women. There is a
whole lot of copy in accounts and newspapers about how
(16:27):
the snub actually has to do with the men wanting
to be able to smoke cigars, which they would not
be able to do if women were present. Jenny June
wrote about the snub in her column, and then other
papers featured responses to her, many of which were largely condescending.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
When Jane wrote about this series of events in a
book almost twenty years later, she indicated that at first
she had been allowed an invitation after applying for one
through her husband, but once she had other women started doing,
I mean, the same thing, and that was when the
trouble started. She noted in that account that there was
(17:05):
a condition applied just a couple of days out from
the event that if the women could find enough other
women willing to pay the fifteen dollars fee for the event,
they could still come. But that close to the dinner,
it was going to be impossible to meet that requirement,
and everybody knew it, so the women took it as
an upfront.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yeah. The logic and I'm using air quotes behind it
was like, oh, if just a few ladies come, they'll
feel so out of place and it will be miserable.
They need a whole group of women and then they'll
be more comfortable. But fifteen dollars was an expensive dinner
at the time. That's an expensive ticket for people to
scrounge up at last minute, So everybody kind of knew
(17:47):
this was meant to be an exclusionary qualifier. Jane, who
seems to have just generally not have been comfortable being
angry about a problem without trying to solve it, decided
to create her own women's only group, and that is
how the group Sorosis was born. At a meeting with
several other women just a few days after that Dickens dinner,
(18:10):
Jane told everyone that her goal was to quote supply
the want of unity and secular organization among women. The
women that were there agreed that this was a wonderful idea,
and they all started to brainstorm what exactly this could be.
They didn't want the group to be too focused on
any single interest in ideology, so even names that borrowed
(18:32):
from literature, for example, were dismissed in an effort to
make the group, in Jane's own words, quote hospitable to
women of different minds, degrees, and habits of work and thought.
So some of the names that had been suggested included
just Women's League, Sphinx, which I sort of love, the
idea being that it was slightly mysterious Columbia, which they
(18:55):
dismissed because they said it was two pedestrian and hackneyed,
and then Blue Docking Club, which is the literary reference,
which got vetoed for that reason. Jane looked through a
lot of books and dictionaries in an effort to find
the perfect name. She later wrote that she found the
word sohrosis in a Botanical Dictionary, the word refers to
(19:15):
a fleshy fruit that requires multiple flowers to develop. This
is one of those things where when you read write
ups about the forming of this group, they're often explainers
of what the name means and how it happened that
are in no way reflective of what Jane herself wrote
about how she found it. But Jane took this to
be quote full of gracious meaning, and a day later,
(19:38):
the first iteration of the group was organized with just
twelve members. Poet Alice Carey was elected its first president,
and their first order of business was to send out
invitations to potential new members to a lunch to be
held for them at Delmonico's, and the day of the luncheon,
they went from twelve members to fifty. Before long, Crosis
(19:59):
had chapters in major cities around the country, and soon
smaller cities and towns had them as well. The goal
was always to help women professionally and socially. That was
the goal of all the chapters above all else. While
leadership was often asked what they were doing for various causes,
the response was that they helped their members individually. Occasionally,
(20:22):
though they did raise funds for charity, but they never
adopted any one cause as a special focus. We'll talk
about this on behind the scenes, but there was a
fascinating amount of news coverage of the founding of cerrosis,
and it's part of why it did spread so quickly
was that people knew a lot about it very fast.
Some of those write ups were not kind, but it
(20:43):
still got the word out that it existed. And while
many chapters of sorosis were popping up seemingly everywhere something
else happened, there were suddenly a lot of other women's
clubs forming. Many of them sought a more focused mission
or identity than the more generalized setup of soorrosis, but
so many of them were patterned on its structure and
(21:06):
the way it worked almost exactly, and almost all of
them were focused on some form of women's equality or betterment.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
After we hear from the sponsors that keep Stuffumus in
history class going, we will talk about how Jane became
the sole breadwinner for the family, and also how her
work with women's clubs continued to expand.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Though sorosis took on a life of its own and
kept Jane quite busy, she continued to work as a writer,
and she was very successful at it, which is good
because her husband left his work in eighteen seventy seven
to promote positivism and to found the New York Church
of Humanity. As you may recall early in the episode,
her brother John described David as being a radical in religion,
(22:00):
and this is part of it. However, he was not
able to actively participate in that endeavor for very long,
because he soon had a really serious downturn in his
health and was eventually bedridden. Throughout all of this, Jane
kept writing and working on activist projects. She purchased a
half interest in Gody's Lady's Book and worked at trying
(22:21):
to keep it afloat, but eventually that magazine folded. In
eighteen eighty six, she published Soorrhosis, Its Origin and History,
in which she talked about the beginnings of the club
in its first twenty years. David died in eighteen eighty nine,
and it seemed that after his passing, Jane really rededicated
herself to her women's groups, perhaps as a way to
(22:44):
just stay busy. The same year she was widowed, she
started the New York Women's Press Club. The following year,
recognizing how large the women's club movement had become. She
founded the General Federation of Women's Clubs to serve as
an umbrella organization that could assist with all sorts of
support needs and connect groups to one another. She later
(23:06):
wrote that it had grown out of a desire to
have a twenty first anniversary event for cirrhosis that would
be a convention of clubs, and she also founded a
new magazine called The Cycle or sometimes the Women's Cycle
which Tickles Me a Little, which was part of the
Federation's offerings.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
In eighteen ninety one, she wrote a book called Thrown
on her Own Resources or What Girls Can Do. This
is written as a resource for a young woman who's
newly in a position to provide for herself. Crowley writes, quote,
this may or may not be a hardship. Whether it
is or not depends wholly upon the amount and quality
(23:43):
of your practical and mental resources. Active work is a
necessity of a healthful life. Are you equipped for your
part in the battle? Have you courage and energy to
carry out a purpose? This book it's definitely filled with
ablest language, but it also breaks some myths about what
(24:05):
would be appropriate jobs for young women. One passage reads
quote teaching you do not know anything well enough to
teach it, sewing that means slow starvation, business, no capital
to begin with. The situation does look discouraging, never mind
try again. I just found it a little patronizing. She
(24:29):
also points out that a job doesn't belong to you,
that you will have to continue to work hard to
keep it once you have it, But she adds the
positive note that everyone has something they're good at and
they can start there and build on it and gain
respect Over time, she'd shifted away from preaching the importance
of being a good wife and mother to promoting the
(24:50):
idea that women could be entirely focused on their careers
and contribute to society in that way. In the late
eighteen nineties, cur started writing a more comprehensive history of
women's clubs in the US, titled The History of the
Women's Club Movement in America. The book's dedication, which was
a reproduction of the words as written in June's own
(25:13):
hand read quote, this book has been a labor of love,
and it is lovingly dedicated to the twentieth century woman
by one who has seen and shared in the struggles, hopes,
and aspirations of the woman in the nineteenth century. That
book was released in eighteen ninety eight, and in it
she gave particular focus to sorosis, of course, but also
(25:36):
New England Women's Club, which is often invoked as a
contender with Soorosis for first women's club in the US.
Friends in Council of Quincy, Illinois, the Fortnightly Club of Chicago,
the Civic Club of Philadelphia, and Working Girls Clubs. Of
the Working Girls Clubs, she wrote quote, this convention was
a revelation to a public that had only known working
(25:58):
girls through the whining and cur eyeing of sentimental sympathizers
who had nothing in common with working girls themselves. In
eighteen ninety eight, the year her History of Women's Clubs
was published, Jane, who was sixty nine, fell and broke
her hip. Recovery took a long time, and she consulted
doctors throughout the United States Northeast and in Europe to
(26:21):
try to regain some of her health like it was
from before the fall. But this did not really seem
to work, although there's not much information about the specifics.
In October of nineteen hundred, she wrote a resignation letter
to the New York Women's Press Club. It read, in
part quote, it was really a grief to me not
(26:41):
to be able to meet you individually and collectively before
leaving to be absent the entire season. The accident which
disabled me for the summer threatens to cripple me for
the winter also, And in this condition of dependence and
general disability, it seemed best to go where I could
have seclusion and the care of some member of my
own family. I resign my place among you with less reluctance,
(27:06):
because the Women's Press Club is now strong and well
able to guard its own interests and direct its own affairs.
Remember that a well rounded club is an epitome of
the world that it never can and never ought to
be perfect according to any one individual's idea of perfection,
for everyone's ideal is different. And it is the unity
(27:28):
in this diversity which constitutes the spiritual life of the club.
As the soul animates, it inspires the body, exalt the club.
Bring your best to the front, extinguished personal aims. Mind
not all the little picking and carping of human gadflies,
whose desire to extract blood is perhaps a survival of
(27:49):
their species and an evidence of their unfitness for human companionship.
Jane died on September twenty third, nineteen oh one. She
may have had a stroke just before her death. That's
a detail that appears only in a couple of accounts,
but it's not clear where they got that information, and
if one account was just parroting what another had said.
(28:10):
She was buried next to her husband David, in Lakewood,
New Jersey. Two weeks after Jane's death, the Sorosis Club
and the Woman's Press Club met at the Waldorf Astoria
to remember Jane and her contributions to the women's movement.
The meeting was also open to the public, and many
women's groups from the New York area prepared letters to
(28:32):
be read at the meeting.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
The then president of Sorosis, Dimmi's Denison, read a letter
that included the following passage about Jane quote, Missus Crowley
had that particular sense of fellowship among women most unusual.
If you will stop to think in our language, you
will find that there are no words to express that
thought except those that are masculine. Fellowship, brotherhood, fraternity. Missus Crowley,
(28:58):
perhaps more than any other woman in the world, had
the sense of what fellowship or fraternity meant in women.
And although she sometimes may have been called an idealist
or sentimentalist, it is recognized by many women that this
thought must be abiding, for in a federation, it is
the spirit that is current through it that keeps the
federation alive.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Cirrhosis printed a memorial book of her letters and writings,
which included a biography written by her brother. He wrote
this of his sister, quote, the most interesting and potent
fact within the range of human knowledge is personality, and
in the person of Jane Cunningham Crowley Jenny June, a
potency was a parent which has affected the social life
(29:40):
of more women, perhaps than any other single controlling factor
of the same period. One of the really interesting passages
from that biography kind of seeks to identify the source
of Jane's influential personality. So John wrote, quote, what was
the secret of Jenny June's charm and pass not scholarship?
(30:02):
Let this be said in all sincerity. How greatly she
appreciated the scholar's advantages was well known to her intimate friends,
but these advantages did not belong to her. He also
noted that it wasn't wealth or social rank, because though
she made a good living, she was not an aristocrat
by any means. He continued quote. Nor did Jenny June
(30:24):
pattern her work according to the advice or after the
example of any one man or woman. There was no
example by which she could be guided. Woman was a
new factor in journalism, and Jenny June was a new woman,
a new creation. I cannot too fully emphasize the fact
that she was a new and original personality in journalism.
(30:45):
She was unalterably true to her divine, womanly ideals of
woman's nature, place in society and redemptive work. I say
redemptive work, for it was one of her deepest convictions
that woman's function was to be the saving salt of
all life. Jenny June's recognition of this vital truth brought
her into sympathy with a worldwide movement the new Woman
(31:06):
is no monstrosity, no sporadic creature born of intellectual fermentation
and unrest, but the rise and development of a better,
nobler type of womanhood the world over. Jenny June's eminent
distinction was that she was a leader in this movement.
When Jane died, there were still sorosis chapters all over
(31:27):
the country. A lot of them were shuttered by the
mid nineteen fifties, but some have hung on into the
twenty first century. A lot of them were absorbed into
other groups or their members moved on to other clubs
when their Sorosis chapter closed. The General Federation of Women's Clubs, though,
is still going strong today. Its mission is stated as quote,
(31:50):
the General Federation of Women's Clubs is an international women's
organization dedicated to community improvement by enhancing the lives of
others through volunteers. And that is Jane Cunningham Crowley aka
Jenny June. Do you also have some listener mail? I do,
and this one delights me because it's one of those
(32:11):
things that I have actually meant to mention on the
show a number of times, or thought maybe I should,
and then I didn't. Uh.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
This is from our listener Chandra, who writes hi Ally
and Tracy. This is mostly for Holly. After the sewing
related episode, a friend texted me to ask if I
sew and I initially replied, no, I am not a sewer,
and then I realized that's not what I mean, because
of course it's spelled like sewer, but that got me
thinking what the current term is for a person who sews.
(32:40):
Seamstress seems outdated and too gendered. Taylor doesn't seem quite right.
My husband suggested seamstrix. A friend said stitch wizard. But
I'd really like to know, Holly, how do you refer
to yourself in terms of being a person who sews?
As pet tax I've attached a picture of our three
cats and one of our guinea pig. Well, there are
two white cats. The middle cat is unrelated and the
(33:03):
white cat close to the camera, and the torty our
brother and sister. They're in our walled in yard where
they're safe but can enjoy the outdoors and chase mice
as they are in the picture. We have a guinea
pig two despite being a middle aged couple with no kids,
because piggies are adorable and they're a much more fun
way to dispose of vegetable scraps than a boring old
compost pile. She hangs out in my office with me
(33:24):
while I work from home. Love the show and I'm
looking forward to October and the Halloween related episodes that
come up. Then. These cats are so cute and listen
guinea pigs are adorable, I believe you. As for the
sewing thing, you instantly brought me back to the second
grade without probably meaning too Chandra, because my second grade teacher,
Miss Hollis, who was a wonder of a human being
(33:47):
I loved her desperately, was the first person who really
opened my eyes to the fact that you cannot call
someone a sewer because it's spelledake sewer and nobody wants
that at the time that the seventies, seamstress was pretty
frequently used. Today, I like either sost or stitcher. Those
are the ones I tend to use. They seem the
least gendered and least loaded, and also the most accurate frankly,
(34:11):
because sometimes you know it's you're right. It's not the
same as being a tailor because they really specialize in
specific kinds of garments. Those are the ones that I like.
I also like Stitchwitch, but that's just me for fun
or I'm sure there's another one that isn't appropriate for
our show, but in rhymes with stitchwitch. You can put
(34:34):
it together from there. I love that you brought this
up because it really was such a fun memory of
being in my second grade classroom and learning that you
really shouldn't say someone is a sewer. You would like
to write to us, you could do that at History
Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to
(34:55):
the show if you have not done that already, just
about anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
And this is a topic that has been on my
list since I worked on paper patterns, because this person
is deeply connected to the Demorests, who we talked about
at length during that as kind of the a primary
forerunner of paper patterns being widely available in multiple sizes
in the US. So. Jane Cunningham Crowley, who wrote under
(00:40):
the pen name Jenny June, was a journalist who advocated
for equality for women. She wrote as We'll talk about
later for the Demorists magazine. She is most well known, though,
for founding one of the earliest clubs for women in
the US and kind of starting the women's club's movement.
Jane Cunningham was born on December ninth, teenth, eighteen twenty nine,
(01:01):
in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, England. Her parents, Joseph Howees and
Jane Scott Cunningham, had three children already before Jane was born.
She was smart, described as buoyant and magnetic. Her teachers
loved her, and she and her father were very close
from the beginning. According to an account written by her brother,
(01:22):
the two of them remained close for the rest of
their father's life. When Jane was about twelve, in eighteen
forty one, the family moved from England to the US,
eventually settling in New York State, and this move seems
to have been precipitated by religious persecution. Joseph Cunningham was
a Unitarian minister when England was not particularly friendly to
(01:45):
that denomination of Christianity. There are some accounts that say
that the family home was stoned at one point, which
led Joseph and Jane to decide to move for the
sake of the family's safety. Once they had gotten to
the US, they lived briefly in put Kipsie before making
their way to Wappinger's Falls, a little to the south
that's still about seventy five miles north of New York City,
(02:08):
and their father, Joseph, built a home and filled the
land around it with a massive and very productive garden.
He typically grew more food than the family could use,
and all of the extra went to neighbors or people
in need.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
According to some newspaper accounts, Jenny was a temperance enthusiast
and a club starter from a very young age. One account,
which was written shortly after her death and appeared in
multiple papers, mentioned that at the age of nine, she
founded a club called Band of Hope Temperance Society. Allegedly,
(02:42):
this club had a song with the lyric quote shout
Aloud the inspiring lay the Band of Hope must wind
the day. But that same account puts her at living
in Massachusetts at the age of nine, which would have
put the family in the United States earlier than her
brother's writing, and all the other accounts say that they were,
(03:03):
so this might not be the most trustworthy information.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
No, but it's cute the idea that she started a club.
I have a you know, as a big writer of
books and club starter myself as a kid have a
little kinship to that. As an adult, Jane moved in
with her brother John, who at that point was working
as a pastor in Worcestern, Massachusetts. She took care of
the house for him, she sometimes called his housekeeper. She
(03:30):
also taught school, and she still found herself with enough
spare time to start a small paper with a friend
that was distributed twice a month to her brother's congregation.
The two women wrote all of the contents of this newspaper,
and they had readings of it in the church when
it was released every two weeks, and those readings were
reportedly very well attended.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
In eighteen fifty five, after their father died, Jane moved
to New York City with the goal of pursuing a
career as a writer. Her first article was accepted by
the New York Tribune, and soon she pitched a regular
column to the New York Sunday Times and Noah's Weekly Messenger.
That started a career that would see great success. She
(04:12):
started writing under the pen name of Jenny June, and
in a lecture given to a women's society she later founded,
she gave her own account of how that name began. Quote,
I was a sunny, happy, little blue eyed girl, and
our genial Unitarian pastor was particularly fond of me. One
day he gave me a little book of poems published
(04:35):
by Benjamin F. Taylor, remarking these are for the junius
little girl that I know. One of the poems was
called January, and another Jenny June. For a long time
I was known to my intimates as Jenny June. The
name almost passed out of my mind as I grew older,
till I commenced contributing to the papers, and then I
(04:56):
bethought me of Jenny June as a nom de plume.
A note on the spelling, sometimes Jenny ends with a
Y and sometimes with an ie. There's not really a
solid indicator of which one she preferred. Her professional bylines
ended with the IE, but in her own writing and
the writing of her family it changed back and forth.
(05:18):
When it came to correspondence, she just used her initials.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah, So I don't know. I don't know if she
cared especially, but Jenny June wrote what sounded like unimportant
fodder for ladies. Her regular column for the Sunday Times
was titled Parlor and Sidewalk Gossip. But she was even
in her early career, advocating for equality for women in
some ways. We'll talk about the problems in a bit,
(05:44):
And even in her career, just making that column, she
was kind of trailblazing because she's often credited with being
the first woman to syndicate a column Parlor and Sidewalk Gossip,
which often talked about, you know, the popular clothes of
the day. Who was having a ball who attended that ball.
Et cetera ran in papers throughout the country in New York, Louisiana, Virginia, Maryland,
(06:08):
and Kentucky. In eighteen sixty four, her columns were collected
into a book titled Talks on Women's Topics. There was
also a follow up book written in eighteen sixty nine,
also collecting the columns that had happened since that first
book was published, called Jenny Juniana Talks on Women's Topics.
Through her journalism work, Jane met another journalist named David G. Crowley.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Crowley was originally from Ireland and had become a well
respected editor. They fell in love and got married on
February fourteenth, eighteen fifty six, when she was twenty six.
Crowley worked for the New York Harold as a reporter,
and Jane and David lived in Manhattan together. According to
Jane's brother, John, David quote was a conservative Democrat of
(06:56):
the strictest sort, a radical in religion, and had but
little appreciation of the deeper forces at work in society
and in national life. But he was able and honest,
and enjoyed the respect of his fellow craftsmen. Jane and
David had five children together, four of whom lived to adulthood,
then a son who died in infancy, Herbert, Vila, and Alice.
(07:21):
One thing that was unique about the Curly marriage was
that David did not expect Jane to stop working once
they got married or after they had children. At a
time when most women stopped being professionals the moment they
became wives, Jane and David modeled a much more modern
relationship in which Jane's professional work was supported and cheered
(07:43):
on by her spouse. David is often mentioned in accounts
in letters written by friends and family as frequently telling
people how amazing he thought Jane was. To be clear this,
he does not seem to have been so progressive as
to split the domestic duty with his wife. So Jane
was taking care of the entire family and her career,
(08:05):
and she often gave up sleep to make all that work.
Coming up, we're going to talk more about Jane's work
and a brief move that the couple made to Illinois,
but first we will take a sponsor break. The same
(08:27):
year that she became missus Crowley, Jane also started her
first women's club, called the Women's Parliament. This of course,
would be the first of many, but the Women's Parliament
was intended to bring women together so they could talk
about the role of women in society and how that
role could change for the better. But this effort never
really took off, so it's not often cited as an
(08:50):
early women's club. In eighteen fifty nine, the Crowleys left
New York for Rockford, Illinois. David had been chosen to
be the new editor of the rock Ford Register. This
was not just a random thing that happened. The job
came about because of family connections. The Register was financially
backed by William Gore King, who was married to Jane's
(09:13):
sister Mary. Some accounts state that this was an entirely
new newspaper that David was launching, and others say that
he was brought on to try to save it. The
Library of Congress has a record of a Rockford Register
that started in eighteen fifty five with an uncertain end date,
so it seems like the latter scenario might be the
(09:34):
accurate one. But David and Jane both really missed New
York and this paper did not succeed, so after a
year in Illinois, they moved back to Manhattan.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah. During that year was when they had their first child,
which she was born in Illinois. But then upon returning
to New York, David became the managing editor for the
New York World, and this was the first in a
string of managing editor positions in the city that he
held with a number of different papers. Jane became the
head of the women's department for the paper, and she
(10:06):
also became the primary staff writer for Madame Demorest's Mirror
of Fashions at this time, which we of course mentioned
in our recent episode on paper patterns. And Jenny June
remained a fixture in the pages of the Demorst magazine
as the periodical transitioned to become Demorist's monthly magazine with
a more frequent published cycle. Somehow, despite her busy work
(10:30):
schedule and managing an entire household with four kids, Jane
and David also had a regular social gathering at their
home every Sunday.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Jenny June wrote extensively about the injustices of society as
they related to women's causes, but not all of her
advice for women was actually great for women. For example,
in eighteen sixty six, she published a book titled Jenny
June's American Cookery Book, and in that she states, quote,
food for the well is better than physic for the sick.
(11:02):
Bad cooking is a crime. It is the cause of
dyspepsia and a host of other evils. A woman convicted
of it ought to be arraigned for manslaughter. Just I
had a little shudder after reading that.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
You and me Bo don't read this book. It would
make you irate.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Also, for all of her claims toward equality for women,
she writes some pretty old school things about women's role
in a marriage. She opens the line of thought by
saying that the first decision that a couple must make
is quote, whether they shall keep house or board. She
finds that men want to choose to keep house, but
(11:43):
young wives often want to board because they don't know
how to cook, And then she writes, quote, the final
result is that they go to board in some highly
genteel establishment where the prices are high in proportion to
the gentility and lack of real comfort, and some find
the young gentleman wakes up to the knowledge that he
(12:03):
is tied to a wife who doubles his expenses but
has added nothing to his happiness or at any rate
nothing to the real value and usefulness of his life.
This is a matrimonial swindle. Girls ought not to marry
unless they are ready and willing to accept the position
of head of a household and capable of making a
(12:24):
home what it should be to husband and children. Uh,
I don't love that.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
No, that was a big yikes for me as a girl.
We gotta have a talk, Jenny g.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Meanwhile, I'm like boarding somewhere where someone else is handling
all the cooking and cleaning.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Sounds great. Well, it's also funny because it kind of
echoes to the ongoing arguments that have been happening throughout
my entire life, where there will occasionally be news stories
about whether or not you should be eating out at
restaurants or not. Yeah, and whether or not that's waste sole.
That's kind of the modern version of this. So it
cracks me up a little. Over dramatic and wildly incorrect
(13:07):
takes aside, this book is overall pretty practical, even though
sometimes it's outdated. And I don't mean in terms of
social morase, but like ingredients and stuff are not things
we would use today. But in the introduction, one of
the notes that really struck me was that there were not,
at the time, actually many cookbooks written by women, so
there wasn't a lot of information on the practicalities of
(13:29):
planning meals while also running a household, and this seeks
to fill that gap. One of the genuinely great pieces
of advice that Jenny June offers, specifically for setting up
a kitchen, is that you should not buy a bunch
of stuff to set up your kitchen right away, because quote,
it is easy to add more when experience has discovered
to you precisely what you want. I need this lesson
(13:53):
all day, every day, because I will buy everything upfront
and then be like, I don't use that bacon press.
She also recommends buying the nicest kitchen implements that you
can afford, because they will last forever. There is also
a thing that just cracked me up and today would
not fly. There's a small section of the book titled
(14:13):
Label Children and it just reads, quote into the crowns
of the hats or bonnets of little children, so a
square of writing paper stating age and residence. This will
save them from any danger of being lost.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I was like, what if the hat gets lost?
Speaker 1 (14:30):
I know, I have so many questions about the feasibility
of this approach. Yeah, I mean, I.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
See no problem with you know, putting the label with
the child's name and maybe some contact info in there.
But I don't think it's a solution to the child
being lost, just the hat.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah. Anyway.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Jenny June notes that no book is perfect, and that
hers is no exception. Quote. It is not claimed for
the present volume by the author that it fully meets
the necessities of the case, or has satisfactorily accomplished its task,
even within the modest limits assigned to it. It is
one thing to think how something may be done, and
(15:11):
another thing to do it. But it is claimed that
the object of the work has been constantly kept in view,
that it has been executed lovingly, with a strong appreciation
of the benefit and pleasure to be derived from good cooking,
from the intermingling of the finer with the grosser elements,
with a pleasant remembrance of good time spent in the kitchen,
(15:35):
and with an earnest wish to make these duties seem
attractive to the conscientious young wives, who would willingly perform
their part if they but knew how.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
So now we come to a pivotal moment. In eighteen
sixty nine, Charles Dickens was scheduled to speak at the
Press Club of New York. This included a private dinner
at Delmonico's, and Jane, like many other people, wanted to attend,
but there was a problem. A news write up about
the event read quote, some ladies of literary proclivities asked
(16:07):
for invitations and got themselves snubbed by the journalists who
were on the committee of invitations. Apparently Horace Greeley, who
was running this event, actually wanted the women invited, but
the committee refused to admit the women. There is a
whole lot of copy in accounts and newspapers about how
(16:27):
the snub actually has to do with the men wanting
to be able to smoke cigars, which they would not
be able to do if women were present. Jenny June
wrote about the snub in her column, and then other
papers featured responses to her, many of which were largely condescending.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
When Jane wrote about this series of events in a
book almost twenty years later, she indicated that at first
she had been allowed an invitation after applying for one
through her husband, but once she had other women started doing,
I mean, the same thing, and that was when the
trouble started. She noted in that account that there was
(17:05):
a condition applied just a couple of days out from
the event that if the women could find enough other
women willing to pay the fifteen dollars fee for the event,
they could still come. But that close to the dinner,
it was going to be impossible to meet that requirement,
and everybody knew it, so the women took it as
an upfront.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yeah. The logic and I'm using air quotes behind it
was like, oh, if just a few ladies come, they'll
feel so out of place and it will be miserable.
They need a whole group of women and then they'll
be more comfortable. But fifteen dollars was an expensive dinner
at the time. That's an expensive ticket for people to
scrounge up at last minute, So everybody kind of knew
(17:47):
this was meant to be an exclusionary qualifier. Jane, who
seems to have just generally not have been comfortable being
angry about a problem without trying to solve it, decided
to create her own women's only group, and that is
how the group Sorosis was born. At a meeting with
several other women just a few days after that Dickens dinner,
(18:10):
Jane told everyone that her goal was to quote supply
the want of unity and secular organization among women. The
women that were there agreed that this was a wonderful idea,
and they all started to brainstorm what exactly this could be.
They didn't want the group to be too focused on
any single interest in ideology, so even names that borrowed
(18:32):
from literature, for example, were dismissed in an effort to
make the group, in Jane's own words, quote hospitable to
women of different minds, degrees, and habits of work and thought.
So some of the names that had been suggested included
just Women's League, Sphinx, which I sort of love, the
idea being that it was slightly mysterious Columbia, which they
(18:55):
dismissed because they said it was two pedestrian and hackneyed,
and then Blue Docking Club, which is the literary reference,
which got vetoed for that reason. Jane looked through a
lot of books and dictionaries in an effort to find
the perfect name. She later wrote that she found the
word sohrosis in a Botanical Dictionary, the word refers to
(19:15):
a fleshy fruit that requires multiple flowers to develop. This
is one of those things where when you read write
ups about the forming of this group, they're often explainers
of what the name means and how it happened that
are in no way reflective of what Jane herself wrote
about how she found it. But Jane took this to
be quote full of gracious meaning, and a day later,
(19:38):
the first iteration of the group was organized with just
twelve members. Poet Alice Carey was elected its first president,
and their first order of business was to send out
invitations to potential new members to a lunch to be
held for them at Delmonico's, and the day of the luncheon,
they went from twelve members to fifty. Before long, Crosis
(19:59):
had chapters in major cities around the country, and soon
smaller cities and towns had them as well. The goal
was always to help women professionally and socially. That was
the goal of all the chapters above all else. While
leadership was often asked what they were doing for various causes,
the response was that they helped their members individually. Occasionally,
(20:22):
though they did raise funds for charity, but they never
adopted any one cause as a special focus. We'll talk
about this on behind the scenes, but there was a
fascinating amount of news coverage of the founding of cerrosis,
and it's part of why it did spread so quickly
was that people knew a lot about it very fast.
Some of those write ups were not kind, but it
(20:43):
still got the word out that it existed. And while
many chapters of sorosis were popping up seemingly everywhere something
else happened, there were suddenly a lot of other women's
clubs forming. Many of them sought a more focused mission
or identity than the more generalized setup of soorrosis, but
so many of them were patterned on its structure and
(21:06):
the way it worked almost exactly, and almost all of
them were focused on some form of women's equality or betterment.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
After we hear from the sponsors that keep Stuffumus in
history class going, we will talk about how Jane became
the sole breadwinner for the family, and also how her
work with women's clubs continued to expand.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Though sorosis took on a life of its own and
kept Jane quite busy, she continued to work as a writer,
and she was very successful at it, which is good
because her husband left his work in eighteen seventy seven
to promote positivism and to found the New York Church
of Humanity. As you may recall early in the episode,
her brother John described David as being a radical in religion,
(22:00):
and this is part of it. However, he was not
able to actively participate in that endeavor for very long,
because he soon had a really serious downturn in his
health and was eventually bedridden. Throughout all of this, Jane
kept writing and working on activist projects. She purchased a
half interest in Gody's Lady's Book and worked at trying
(22:21):
to keep it afloat, but eventually that magazine folded. In
eighteen eighty six, she published Soorrhosis, Its Origin and History,
in which she talked about the beginnings of the club
in its first twenty years. David died in eighteen eighty nine,
and it seemed that after his passing, Jane really rededicated
herself to her women's groups, perhaps as a way to
(22:44):
just stay busy. The same year she was widowed, she
started the New York Women's Press Club. The following year,
recognizing how large the women's club movement had become. She
founded the General Federation of Women's Clubs to serve as
an umbrella organization that could assist with all sorts of
support needs and connect groups to one another. She later
(23:06):
wrote that it had grown out of a desire to
have a twenty first anniversary event for cirrhosis that would
be a convention of clubs, and she also founded a
new magazine called The Cycle or sometimes the Women's Cycle
which Tickles Me a Little, which was part of the
Federation's offerings.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
In eighteen ninety one, she wrote a book called Thrown
on her Own Resources or What Girls Can Do. This
is written as a resource for a young woman who's
newly in a position to provide for herself. Crowley writes, quote,
this may or may not be a hardship. Whether it
is or not depends wholly upon the amount and quality
(23:43):
of your practical and mental resources. Active work is a
necessity of a healthful life. Are you equipped for your
part in the battle? Have you courage and energy to
carry out a purpose? This book it's definitely filled with
ablest language, but it also breaks some myths about what
(24:05):
would be appropriate jobs for young women. One passage reads
quote teaching you do not know anything well enough to
teach it, sewing that means slow starvation, business, no capital
to begin with. The situation does look discouraging, never mind
try again. I just found it a little patronizing. She
(24:29):
also points out that a job doesn't belong to you,
that you will have to continue to work hard to
keep it once you have it, But she adds the
positive note that everyone has something they're good at and
they can start there and build on it and gain
respect Over time, she'd shifted away from preaching the importance
of being a good wife and mother to promoting the
(24:50):
idea that women could be entirely focused on their careers
and contribute to society in that way. In the late
eighteen nineties, cur started writing a more comprehensive history of
women's clubs in the US, titled The History of the
Women's Club Movement in America. The book's dedication, which was
a reproduction of the words as written in June's own
(25:13):
hand read quote, this book has been a labor of love,
and it is lovingly dedicated to the twentieth century woman
by one who has seen and shared in the struggles, hopes,
and aspirations of the woman in the nineteenth century. That
book was released in eighteen ninety eight, and in it
she gave particular focus to sorosis, of course, but also
(25:36):
New England Women's Club, which is often invoked as a
contender with Soorosis for first women's club in the US.
Friends in Council of Quincy, Illinois, the Fortnightly Club of Chicago,
the Civic Club of Philadelphia, and Working Girls Clubs. Of
the Working Girls Clubs, she wrote quote, this convention was
a revelation to a public that had only known working
(25:58):
girls through the whining and cur eyeing of sentimental sympathizers
who had nothing in common with working girls themselves. In
eighteen ninety eight, the year her History of Women's Clubs
was published, Jane, who was sixty nine, fell and broke
her hip. Recovery took a long time, and she consulted
doctors throughout the United States Northeast and in Europe to
(26:21):
try to regain some of her health like it was
from before the fall. But this did not really seem
to work, although there's not much information about the specifics.
In October of nineteen hundred, she wrote a resignation letter
to the New York Women's Press Club. It read, in
part quote, it was really a grief to me not
(26:41):
to be able to meet you individually and collectively before
leaving to be absent the entire season. The accident which
disabled me for the summer threatens to cripple me for
the winter also, And in this condition of dependence and
general disability, it seemed best to go where I could
have seclusion and the care of some member of my
own family. I resign my place among you with less reluctance,
(27:06):
because the Women's Press Club is now strong and well
able to guard its own interests and direct its own affairs.
Remember that a well rounded club is an epitome of
the world that it never can and never ought to
be perfect according to any one individual's idea of perfection,
for everyone's ideal is different. And it is the unity
(27:28):
in this diversity which constitutes the spiritual life of the club.
As the soul animates, it inspires the body, exalt the club.
Bring your best to the front, extinguished personal aims. Mind
not all the little picking and carping of human gadflies,
whose desire to extract blood is perhaps a survival of
(27:49):
their species and an evidence of their unfitness for human companionship.
Jane died on September twenty third, nineteen oh one. She
may have had a stroke just before her death. That's
a detail that appears only in a couple of accounts,
but it's not clear where they got that information, and
if one account was just parroting what another had said.
(28:10):
She was buried next to her husband David, in Lakewood,
New Jersey. Two weeks after Jane's death, the Sorosis Club
and the Woman's Press Club met at the Waldorf Astoria
to remember Jane and her contributions to the women's movement.
The meeting was also open to the public, and many
women's groups from the New York area prepared letters to
(28:32):
be read at the meeting.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
The then president of Sorosis, Dimmi's Denison, read a letter
that included the following passage about Jane quote, Missus Crowley
had that particular sense of fellowship among women most unusual.
If you will stop to think in our language, you
will find that there are no words to express that
thought except those that are masculine. Fellowship, brotherhood, fraternity. Missus Crowley,
(28:58):
perhaps more than any other woman in the world, had
the sense of what fellowship or fraternity meant in women.
And although she sometimes may have been called an idealist
or sentimentalist, it is recognized by many women that this
thought must be abiding, for in a federation, it is
the spirit that is current through it that keeps the
federation alive.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Cirrhosis printed a memorial book of her letters and writings,
which included a biography written by her brother. He wrote
this of his sister, quote, the most interesting and potent
fact within the range of human knowledge is personality, and
in the person of Jane Cunningham Crowley Jenny June, a
potency was a parent which has affected the social life
(29:40):
of more women, perhaps than any other single controlling factor
of the same period. One of the really interesting passages
from that biography kind of seeks to identify the source
of Jane's influential personality. So John wrote, quote, what was
the secret of Jenny June's charm and pass not scholarship?
(30:02):
Let this be said in all sincerity. How greatly she
appreciated the scholar's advantages was well known to her intimate friends,
but these advantages did not belong to her. He also
noted that it wasn't wealth or social rank, because though
she made a good living, she was not an aristocrat
by any means. He continued quote. Nor did Jenny June
(30:24):
pattern her work according to the advice or after the
example of any one man or woman. There was no
example by which she could be guided. Woman was a
new factor in journalism, and Jenny June was a new woman,
a new creation. I cannot too fully emphasize the fact
that she was a new and original personality in journalism.
(30:45):
She was unalterably true to her divine, womanly ideals of
woman's nature, place in society and redemptive work. I say
redemptive work, for it was one of her deepest convictions
that woman's function was to be the saving salt of
all life. Jenny June's recognition of this vital truth brought
her into sympathy with a worldwide movement the new Woman
(31:06):
is no monstrosity, no sporadic creature born of intellectual fermentation
and unrest, but the rise and development of a better,
nobler type of womanhood the world over. Jenny June's eminent
distinction was that she was a leader in this movement.
When Jane died, there were still sorosis chapters all over
(31:27):
the country. A lot of them were shuttered by the
mid nineteen fifties, but some have hung on into the
twenty first century. A lot of them were absorbed into
other groups or their members moved on to other clubs
when their Sorosis chapter closed. The General Federation of Women's Clubs, though,
is still going strong today. Its mission is stated as quote,
(31:50):
the General Federation of Women's Clubs is an international women's
organization dedicated to community improvement by enhancing the lives of
others through volunteers. And that is Jane Cunningham Crowley aka
Jenny June. Do you also have some listener mail? I do,
and this one delights me because it's one of those
(32:11):
things that I have actually meant to mention on the
show a number of times, or thought maybe I should,
and then I didn't. Uh.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
This is from our listener Chandra, who writes hi Ally
and Tracy. This is mostly for Holly. After the sewing
related episode, a friend texted me to ask if I
sew and I initially replied, no, I am not a sewer,
and then I realized that's not what I mean, because
of course it's spelled like sewer, but that got me
thinking what the current term is for a person who sews.
(32:40):
Seamstress seems outdated and too gendered. Taylor doesn't seem quite right.
My husband suggested seamstrix. A friend said stitch wizard. But
I'd really like to know, Holly, how do you refer
to yourself in terms of being a person who sews?
As pet tax I've attached a picture of our three
cats and one of our guinea pig. Well, there are
two white cats. The middle cat is unrelated and the
(33:03):
white cat close to the camera, and the torty our
brother and sister. They're in our walled in yard where
they're safe but can enjoy the outdoors and chase mice
as they are in the picture. We have a guinea
pig two despite being a middle aged couple with no kids,
because piggies are adorable and they're a much more fun
way to dispose of vegetable scraps than a boring old
compost pile. She hangs out in my office with me
(33:24):
while I work from home. Love the show and I'm
looking forward to October and the Halloween related episodes that
come up. Then. These cats are so cute and listen
guinea pigs are adorable, I believe you. As for the
sewing thing, you instantly brought me back to the second
grade without probably meaning too Chandra, because my second grade teacher,
Miss Hollis, who was a wonder of a human being
(33:47):
I loved her desperately, was the first person who really
opened my eyes to the fact that you cannot call
someone a sewer because it's spelledake sewer and nobody wants
that at the time that the seventies, seamstress was pretty
frequently used. Today, I like either sost or stitcher. Those
are the ones I tend to use. They seem the
least gendered and least loaded, and also the most accurate frankly,
(34:11):
because sometimes you know it's you're right. It's not the
same as being a tailor because they really specialize in
specific kinds of garments. Those are the ones that I like.
I also like Stitchwitch, but that's just me for fun
or I'm sure there's another one that isn't appropriate for
our show, but in rhymes with stitchwitch. You can put
(34:34):
it together from there. I love that you brought this
up because it really was such a fun memory of
being in my second grade classroom and learning that you
really shouldn't say someone is a sewer. You would like
to write to us, you could do that at History
Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to
(34:55):
the show if you have not done that already, just
about anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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