July 20, 2011 • 16 mins
Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to own a Wall Street firm, speak before Congress and run for president. However, her press wasn't always positive and suffragists of the time distanced themselves from her. Tune in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From house Stop Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to podcast.
This is Molly and and I'm Kristen. For today, we
(00:21):
are taking on a little known but very fascinating woman
from our history, Victoria Woodhole wood Hole. Yes, and seldom
have we only spotlighted a single woman in our podcast
A lot of time, well time, so we'll talk about
many women under one topic, but we're just going to
focus on Victoria Woodhall because she's a pretty long life.
(00:42):
She was quite a fascinating dame. Definitely warrants her own
podcast because she uh, she got around uh in so
many ways because she's alleged to be a prostitute. Um.
But she Let's start out at the very beginning Homer, Ohio.
That is when Victoria Clayfland was born to what Richard
(01:04):
Brookhiser calls a large and feral family. Uh, and she
did have some pretty pretty sad um situations to overcome.
Her mother um heard herds voices and saw visions, which
is something she passes on to her daughter. UM. And
the dad is a scoundrel and um a petty thief.
(01:24):
He goes around trying to sell people cures to their
cancer that I really don't cure things. And he makes
his daughters go around with part of this traveling show, um,
so that they can demonstrate their gifts for voices and
visions and heal all these people they go to see
in the small towns. Um. They were so poor that
often the Clayfland girls would prostitute themselves, um, just to
(01:47):
get out of the situation. Victoria marries when she's very
young to um Canning wood Hall and alcoholic doctor, and
they have two kids, and the doctor gets drunk MEAs
delivering one of the kids, so the kid almost dies. Uh.
You know. She she has very a very sad childhood.
But in hearing all these voices, she hears one that
tells her you were going to rise above all of
(02:08):
this and you were going to rule the country. Pretty
pretty revolutionary thought for the eighteen thirties. Yeah, she took
it pretty seriously. And um she escapes her marriage start
when she was fifteen years old, and she and her
sister named Tennessee Clayland end up being taken under by
(02:33):
commodore Vanderbilt. He's a shipping and railroad magnate and he
just loves Victorian Tennessee. Tennessee starts an affair with Commodore,
and Commodore Vanderbilt is like these girls, which is so
great need, I'm gonna give them a lot of money.
And with that money they started up the first female
run brokerage on Wall Street, which was Woodhole, Cleyveland and Company. Yeah,
(02:54):
and this is um this all starts in eighteen sixty
I think what's remarkable about this story is most of
these um really groundbreaking events take place in about four
years time. So, yeah, eighteen sixty eight, she's up there
with the Vanderbilt. They're they're getting a lot of attention
because you know, no woman has worked on Wall Street before,
but sometimes not always the best attention, because even though
(03:16):
there might have been some early suffragists and feminists who
are like, yeah, women can have jobs, they certainly didn't
think that women would start out right there on Wall Street.
That was still kind of a plot of his a
man's world and also not necessarily the nicest man's world.
So they got a lot of attention for being these
women on Wall Street, which only magnified when they started
(03:36):
their own magazine, would all in Clayland's Weekly, which was
devoted to spiritualism and radical ideas. And we should know
that during this time there brokerage company earned seven thousand dollars,
which would have been a pretty penny back in the day,
and that money got the in their in their fame
(03:57):
got the attention of the New York suffrage Wing, which
was led by Elizabeth Katie Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
And it was kind of because of all of this
that Victoria Woodhall sort of aligned herself with a suffrage
movement of the time, but very quickly their relations chilled. Basically,
(04:18):
I think Victoria Woodhall just wanted more than these suffragists
were We're going to give her. There was one interview
she gave when she was working on Wall Street that said, no,
I don't like the women's right movement of the time
because I don't think it goes far enough. I think
we need to do more to emancipate women um and
not just give them the right to vote. That's what
these organizations want, is they wanted to push suffrage. And
the question you kind of have to ask yourself is
(04:40):
did wood Hall ask for too much at a time
when just trying to get the vote was going to
be a pretty big demand. So as we go on
through these next sort of five crazy years of her life,
you'll see how um By by wanting more than just
the right to vote, she really alienated herself from these
suffragists and uh and you know, maybe ruined her own life.
(05:03):
So we should talk. Let's let's just give a quick
character sketch though of of Victoria, just see if people
an idea of what a spitfire interesting woman she was.
Um She advocated vigorous exercise and rode horseback and walked
at least three miles a day, and she also said
that drinking at least two pints of water and eating
fresh fruit were accountable for her good health and vigor Now,
(05:26):
in addition to being healthy and vigorous, she also advocated
or something very radical of the day, free love. Right
after she kicked that old alcoholic husband to the curb,
she married again to um a man named Colonel Blood.
But they the alcoholic doctor didn't really have much to
(05:48):
much to do, so he ended up living with them also.
So she's in New York. She's got the husband, the
first husband, and the second husband, and you know, perhaps
a a grouping of five in boyfriends visiting her. And
the thing is she felt that marriage was this really
unfair institution to women. You know, she would advocate against that.
And so one time she's giving this speech, so this
(06:10):
was in seventy one. She's giving the speech and she says, uh,
you know, marriage, marriage is bad for women. If you
are just a woman who gets married so that you
have enough money to live, you're no better than a prosert.
And in the middle of this, her sister of all people,
yells out, do you believe in free love? Just totally?
And Victoria goes off topic throws a speech away. Firstecon says, yeah,
(06:33):
I do. I think we should all love whoever we want,
and if they're not good to us, I think we
should switch them out. To paraphrase, should I and I will.
I'll offer the direct quote just because it comes up
in almost anything you read about Victoria Woodhall, you will
get this quote in which she says, I'm a free lover.
I have an inalienable, constitutional, and natural right to love
(06:53):
whom I may to love as long or short period
as I can to change that love every day if
I please. And with that right, neither you nor any
law you can frame have any right to interfere. I mean,
imagine in ee, now imagine now. Yeah, women don't even
have the vote at this point, and this woman is
just saying for all the world to hear, sure, I
(07:16):
believe in free love. Let's do it. Try just try
to hold me back. So obviously the press that she gets,
you know, when she gets pressed, it mentions that she
has been associated with these suffrage movements, and it perhaps
dandwiches the cause, which is I think is why she
gets written out of a lot of women's history textbooks,
because the early feminists were so uncomfortable with her. Um
(07:37):
so let's review. She's got the Wall Street firms to
making a ton of money. She founded her own paper,
which was pretty Rackles, the first American newspaper to print
the Communist Manifesto. She was the first woman to address Congress. Basically,
she went in front of them and said, according to
these amendments which I've studied, women already have the right
to vote. And I think she would go ahead and
honor that. And by the way, even though women don't
(07:59):
officially have the right to vote. I'm going to run
for president. Yes. In eighteen seventy two, she announced her
plans to run for president with the Equal Rights Party,
even though women could not vote yet, and she started
signing autographs as and I love this the future presidentists,
so now we know what we'd ever call our first
(08:19):
woman president president presidents. And she chose Frederick Douglas as
her running mate, and Douglas was like, no, thanks, but
I don't think she'd even ever met Douglas. And they
talked about how at the convention when the Equal Rights
Party nominated her, there was some discussion of like, well,
do you think we should send him a telegraph and
make sure this is okay? And he was like, no,
(08:40):
it'll be fun but um, but obviously Douglas didn't want
to have that much to do with this crazy free
love um wall Street alleged prostitute woman. Um. And you know,
around the time she declares her presidency is when that
whole big free love speech comes out. So imagine, just
imagine into day cycle what it would happen if a
(09:00):
presidential Canadate gave that speech. It would go we would
go bonkers, and people of that day Dick go bonkers.
And one person who got a little nervous about his
association with Victoria Woodhall was Henry Ward Beecher, the famed
Protestant minister. Famed Protestant minister and also brother of Harriet Beachrouceteau,
who was one of the leaders of the New England
(09:23):
Suffrage lying Suffrage Wing alongside Lucy Stone. And they were
much more conservative than the New York ones. They you know,
the New York feminists, the New York Suffragists, where um,
we're focused on the vote and other issues, and the
other women were just like, well, let's take this slow.
But the Beecher says, I was gonna introduce you, but
I'm not gonna introduce anymore. You're bad for my brand.
(09:45):
I'm a good Protestant minister. I'm not going to introduce
someone who advocates free love. And what Hall says, Oh, really,
you won't advocate free love when I know for a
fact that you are having affairs with many women in
your sure urch. So on October eighteen two, would Hold
(10:06):
publishes details of Henry Ward Beecher's affairs in her magazine,
wood Hold in Clayland's Weekly, and oh my does quite
a media frenzy ensue. Yes, not only is the media
going crazy about this story about this you know, famed
good Man Um, but also Anthony Comstock, who you might
(10:29):
remember from Comstock Laws. He uh, he doesn't pretty nicky.
He says, can you please mail me a copy of
this magazine? So she sticks in the mail and the
second arrives at Comstock's home, he has Victoria Woodhall arrested
for sending pornographic materials through the mail. Um. And this
would be sort of a key um thing about the
Comstock laws. And later it would prohibit women from mailing
(10:52):
just information about birth control to each other. So this
is his sort of first big cases. He charges her
with obscenity and and uh she spends election day in
jail because of calm stocks intervention. We don't know how
many people voted for her, if any. Ulysses s Grant
took the election handily, but it's just amazing to think
(11:13):
that within four years this woman went from um, you know,
being a traveling psychic with her dad and married to
an alcoholic husband to trying to run for president at
a time when women to even have a vote, And
because of all of this negative pres and spending time
in jail, and her reputation soured. She goes bankrupt, her
house is taken away, I think, not once, but twice.
(11:35):
She's homeless for a little. Yeah, she's briefly homeless, and
then I believe Commodore Vanderbilt comes back to the financial
rescue and funds her escape to England. Yeah, she goes
to England and becomes sort of well known for a
philanthropy using the Vanderbilt's money to uh donate to all
sorts of causes. And she dies there. But she dies
(11:57):
she finally did see women getting the vote. Um, but
I think the really and I mean it's you know,
we've sort of gone over her her high points, her
crazy life. But I think the question to kind of
ask yourself is what would we do if if someone
like Victoria Woodhall emerged today, Like, how would we react
to that? Because in hindsight, it's pretty easy to see
how Victoria Woodhall was, you know, for better, for worse.
(12:20):
Whatever way she went about it was trying to advance
the cause of women. But um, you know, the people
who really kind of led to her downfall were other
women who were unhappy with the way she went about that,
you know, the feminists and the suffragist kind of erased
her from the history. Harriet Beecher so was a big
part of her downfall. And I was reading this and
(12:40):
pr interview with Um one of Victoria Woodhall's descendants, and
with Amanda Friskin, who wrote a book about Victoria Woodhall,
and she writes, Um, she was a woman who was
kind of a huckster, has a terrible reputation, who may
have at least temporarily done the cause more harm than good.
But she was the first woman to put her name
out there and say I want run for president. It
(13:01):
makes for a very complicated bounding narrative for women. You
want someone really beyond reproach. You want the George Washington
for women, and you don't get that with Woodhall. She
was a flawed first, but she is still the first.
I mean, she is the one we have to live with.
And I think that's a really interesting quote about this
woman's placed within women's history. And I didn't know Victoria
Woodhall until about a year and a half ago. So, um,
(13:24):
how we've almost kind of buried our first because we
don't find her as perfect to say at George Washington.
Uh So, if you have any thoughts to share on
Victoria Woodhall or other forgotten figures in women's history, send
us a note Mom Stuff and all stuffworks dot com.
And we're not going to read any listener email today
(13:45):
because I do have an announcement. This was my last
show on Stuff Mom never told you. It's a sad announcement.
Sad announcement. I wanted to be president when I was
a little girl, which is perhaps why this was my
last episode. But I'm starting your campaign now, moa that
you're saying that's true. You do have to get rid
of your media media ties when you start running for president.
(14:06):
But no, I'm still gonna be at house to works.
But I have a lot of other duties that I
need to be focusing on, and I don't want the
show to suffer, So I'm going to step away from
the show. Just still gonna go on with Kristen Um.
But I did want to take a quick minute and
just thank so many people that have made this experience
such an honor and a privilege. Um. I want to
thank Jerry, our producer. J She was the one who
(14:29):
guided us as we tried to turn our crazy little
idea into a show and supported us in so many
ways that we probably don't even know about. UM. I
want to thank the listeners out there who have, um
just been amazing. They constantly surprised I think both of us,
I can think and for both of us here Kristen
with their generosity and sharing their stories and their ideas,
(14:51):
and they have rescued so many bad days where we're
just so frustrated. To them get a nice email, it
turns everything around. And of course, Cristin, I have to
thank you. UM. It's been so much fun to do
the show with you, and UM, you know, it didn't
feel like work because it felt like I was just
going to come talk to my friend for an hour.
And it's not just talking to any friend, but talking
to you, your smartest, funniest, coolest friend. And it was,
(15:15):
UM a lot of fun. I've learned so much over
the time of doing this, and I'll still be around,
perhaps write the articles that you'll be podcasting about, so
I won't be far. But UM, this is a good
move for me, and I wanted to thank everyone out there,
both in the studio with me right now and out
there listening for making this such a great job. So well, Molly,
(15:36):
you will be truly missed, and I also am. Now
I'll blame you for the deluge of angry emails, so
we will now be getting a mom stuff at how
stuff works dot com. Don't make them angry. Look forward
to a chapter, a fun new chapter of Sminty with
Kristen at its home. Be The podcast is not going away,
but sadly Molly is. But you'll be able to keep
(15:56):
in touch one way or another. Head over to uh
to face book and send Molly a farewell, and in
the meantime go visit UH you know what you can do. Actually,
as a tribute to Molly, go onto how stuff works
dot com and read all the wonderful articles written by her.
In a final goodbye Molly, just so long and of
(16:18):
course thank you again to everyone out there and in here.
And like I said, you can still come visit me
over at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
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(16:40):
iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From house Stop Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to podcast.
This is Molly and and I'm Kristen. For today, we
(00:21):
are taking on a little known but very fascinating woman
from our history, Victoria Woodhole wood Hole. Yes, and seldom
have we only spotlighted a single woman in our podcast
A lot of time, well time, so we'll talk about
many women under one topic, but we're just going to
focus on Victoria Woodhall because she's a pretty long life.
(00:42):
She was quite a fascinating dame. Definitely warrants her own
podcast because she uh, she got around uh in so
many ways because she's alleged to be a prostitute. Um.
But she Let's start out at the very beginning Homer, Ohio.
That is when Victoria Clayfland was born to what Richard
(01:04):
Brookhiser calls a large and feral family. Uh, and she
did have some pretty pretty sad um situations to overcome.
Her mother um heard herds voices and saw visions, which
is something she passes on to her daughter. UM. And
the dad is a scoundrel and um a petty thief.
(01:24):
He goes around trying to sell people cures to their
cancer that I really don't cure things. And he makes
his daughters go around with part of this traveling show, um,
so that they can demonstrate their gifts for voices and
visions and heal all these people they go to see
in the small towns. Um. They were so poor that
often the Clayfland girls would prostitute themselves, um, just to
(01:47):
get out of the situation. Victoria marries when she's very
young to um Canning wood Hall and alcoholic doctor, and
they have two kids, and the doctor gets drunk MEAs
delivering one of the kids, so the kid almost dies. Uh.
You know. She she has very a very sad childhood.
But in hearing all these voices, she hears one that
tells her you were going to rise above all of
(02:08):
this and you were going to rule the country. Pretty
pretty revolutionary thought for the eighteen thirties. Yeah, she took
it pretty seriously. And um she escapes her marriage start
when she was fifteen years old, and she and her
sister named Tennessee Clayland end up being taken under by
(02:33):
commodore Vanderbilt. He's a shipping and railroad magnate and he
just loves Victorian Tennessee. Tennessee starts an affair with Commodore,
and Commodore Vanderbilt is like these girls, which is so
great need, I'm gonna give them a lot of money.
And with that money they started up the first female
run brokerage on Wall Street, which was Woodhole, Cleyveland and Company. Yeah,
(02:54):
and this is um this all starts in eighteen sixty
I think what's remarkable about this story is most of
these um really groundbreaking events take place in about four
years time. So, yeah, eighteen sixty eight, she's up there
with the Vanderbilt. They're they're getting a lot of attention
because you know, no woman has worked on Wall Street before,
but sometimes not always the best attention, because even though
(03:16):
there might have been some early suffragists and feminists who
are like, yeah, women can have jobs, they certainly didn't
think that women would start out right there on Wall Street.
That was still kind of a plot of his a
man's world and also not necessarily the nicest man's world.
So they got a lot of attention for being these
women on Wall Street, which only magnified when they started
(03:36):
their own magazine, would all in Clayland's Weekly, which was
devoted to spiritualism and radical ideas. And we should know
that during this time there brokerage company earned seven thousand dollars,
which would have been a pretty penny back in the day,
and that money got the in their in their fame
(03:57):
got the attention of the New York suffrage Wing, which
was led by Elizabeth Katie Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
And it was kind of because of all of this
that Victoria Woodhall sort of aligned herself with a suffrage
movement of the time, but very quickly their relations chilled. Basically,
(04:18):
I think Victoria Woodhall just wanted more than these suffragists
were We're going to give her. There was one interview
she gave when she was working on Wall Street that said, no,
I don't like the women's right movement of the time
because I don't think it goes far enough. I think
we need to do more to emancipate women um and
not just give them the right to vote. That's what
these organizations want, is they wanted to push suffrage. And
the question you kind of have to ask yourself is
(04:40):
did wood Hall ask for too much at a time
when just trying to get the vote was going to
be a pretty big demand. So as we go on
through these next sort of five crazy years of her life,
you'll see how um By by wanting more than just
the right to vote, she really alienated herself from these
suffragists and uh and you know, maybe ruined her own life.
(05:03):
So we should talk. Let's let's just give a quick
character sketch though of of Victoria, just see if people
an idea of what a spitfire interesting woman she was.
Um She advocated vigorous exercise and rode horseback and walked
at least three miles a day, and she also said
that drinking at least two pints of water and eating
fresh fruit were accountable for her good health and vigor Now,
(05:26):
in addition to being healthy and vigorous, she also advocated
or something very radical of the day, free love. Right
after she kicked that old alcoholic husband to the curb,
she married again to um a man named Colonel Blood.
But they the alcoholic doctor didn't really have much to
(05:48):
much to do, so he ended up living with them also.
So she's in New York. She's got the husband, the
first husband, and the second husband, and you know, perhaps
a a grouping of five in boyfriends visiting her. And
the thing is she felt that marriage was this really
unfair institution to women. You know, she would advocate against that.
And so one time she's giving this speech, so this
(06:10):
was in seventy one. She's giving the speech and she says, uh,
you know, marriage, marriage is bad for women. If you
are just a woman who gets married so that you
have enough money to live, you're no better than a prosert.
And in the middle of this, her sister of all people,
yells out, do you believe in free love? Just totally?
And Victoria goes off topic throws a speech away. Firstecon says, yeah,
(06:33):
I do. I think we should all love whoever we want,
and if they're not good to us, I think we
should switch them out. To paraphrase, should I and I will.
I'll offer the direct quote just because it comes up
in almost anything you read about Victoria Woodhall, you will
get this quote in which she says, I'm a free lover.
I have an inalienable, constitutional, and natural right to love
(06:53):
whom I may to love as long or short period
as I can to change that love every day if
I please. And with that right, neither you nor any
law you can frame have any right to interfere. I mean,
imagine in ee, now imagine now. Yeah, women don't even
have the vote at this point, and this woman is
just saying for all the world to hear, sure, I
(07:16):
believe in free love. Let's do it. Try just try
to hold me back. So obviously the press that she gets,
you know, when she gets pressed, it mentions that she
has been associated with these suffrage movements, and it perhaps
dandwiches the cause, which is I think is why she
gets written out of a lot of women's history textbooks,
because the early feminists were so uncomfortable with her. Um
(07:37):
so let's review. She's got the Wall Street firms to
making a ton of money. She founded her own paper,
which was pretty Rackles, the first American newspaper to print
the Communist Manifesto. She was the first woman to address Congress. Basically,
she went in front of them and said, according to
these amendments which I've studied, women already have the right
to vote. And I think she would go ahead and
honor that. And by the way, even though women don't
(07:59):
officially have the right to vote. I'm going to run
for president. Yes. In eighteen seventy two, she announced her
plans to run for president with the Equal Rights Party,
even though women could not vote yet, and she started
signing autographs as and I love this the future presidentists,
so now we know what we'd ever call our first
(08:19):
woman president president presidents. And she chose Frederick Douglas as
her running mate, and Douglas was like, no, thanks, but
I don't think she'd even ever met Douglas. And they
talked about how at the convention when the Equal Rights
Party nominated her, there was some discussion of like, well,
do you think we should send him a telegraph and
make sure this is okay? And he was like, no,
(08:40):
it'll be fun but um, but obviously Douglas didn't want
to have that much to do with this crazy free
love um wall Street alleged prostitute woman. Um. And you know,
around the time she declares her presidency is when that
whole big free love speech comes out. So imagine, just
imagine into day cycle what it would happen if a
(09:00):
presidential Canadate gave that speech. It would go we would
go bonkers, and people of that day Dick go bonkers.
And one person who got a little nervous about his
association with Victoria Woodhall was Henry Ward Beecher, the famed
Protestant minister. Famed Protestant minister and also brother of Harriet Beachrouceteau,
who was one of the leaders of the New England
(09:23):
Suffrage lying Suffrage Wing alongside Lucy Stone. And they were
much more conservative than the New York ones. They you know,
the New York feminists, the New York Suffragists, where um,
we're focused on the vote and other issues, and the
other women were just like, well, let's take this slow.
But the Beecher says, I was gonna introduce you, but
I'm not gonna introduce anymore. You're bad for my brand.
(09:45):
I'm a good Protestant minister. I'm not going to introduce
someone who advocates free love. And what Hall says, Oh, really,
you won't advocate free love when I know for a
fact that you are having affairs with many women in
your sure urch. So on October eighteen two, would Hold
(10:06):
publishes details of Henry Ward Beecher's affairs in her magazine,
wood Hold in Clayland's Weekly, and oh my does quite
a media frenzy ensue. Yes, not only is the media
going crazy about this story about this you know, famed
good Man Um, but also Anthony Comstock, who you might
(10:29):
remember from Comstock Laws. He uh, he doesn't pretty nicky.
He says, can you please mail me a copy of
this magazine? So she sticks in the mail and the
second arrives at Comstock's home, he has Victoria Woodhall arrested
for sending pornographic materials through the mail. Um. And this
would be sort of a key um thing about the
Comstock laws. And later it would prohibit women from mailing
(10:52):
just information about birth control to each other. So this
is his sort of first big cases. He charges her
with obscenity and and uh she spends election day in
jail because of calm stocks intervention. We don't know how
many people voted for her, if any. Ulysses s Grant
took the election handily, but it's just amazing to think
(11:13):
that within four years this woman went from um, you know,
being a traveling psychic with her dad and married to
an alcoholic husband to trying to run for president at
a time when women to even have a vote, And
because of all of this negative pres and spending time
in jail, and her reputation soured. She goes bankrupt, her
house is taken away, I think, not once, but twice.
(11:35):
She's homeless for a little. Yeah, she's briefly homeless, and
then I believe Commodore Vanderbilt comes back to the financial
rescue and funds her escape to England. Yeah, she goes
to England and becomes sort of well known for a
philanthropy using the Vanderbilt's money to uh donate to all
sorts of causes. And she dies there. But she dies
(11:57):
she finally did see women getting the vote. Um, but
I think the really and I mean it's you know,
we've sort of gone over her her high points, her
crazy life. But I think the question to kind of
ask yourself is what would we do if if someone
like Victoria Woodhall emerged today, Like, how would we react
to that? Because in hindsight, it's pretty easy to see
how Victoria Woodhall was, you know, for better, for worse.
(12:20):
Whatever way she went about it was trying to advance
the cause of women. But um, you know, the people
who really kind of led to her downfall were other
women who were unhappy with the way she went about that,
you know, the feminists and the suffragist kind of erased
her from the history. Harriet Beecher so was a big
part of her downfall. And I was reading this and
(12:40):
pr interview with Um one of Victoria Woodhall's descendants, and
with Amanda Friskin, who wrote a book about Victoria Woodhall,
and she writes, Um, she was a woman who was
kind of a huckster, has a terrible reputation, who may
have at least temporarily done the cause more harm than good.
But she was the first woman to put her name
out there and say I want run for president. It
(13:01):
makes for a very complicated bounding narrative for women. You
want someone really beyond reproach. You want the George Washington
for women, and you don't get that with Woodhall. She
was a flawed first, but she is still the first.
I mean, she is the one we have to live with.
And I think that's a really interesting quote about this
woman's placed within women's history. And I didn't know Victoria
Woodhall until about a year and a half ago. So, um,
(13:24):
how we've almost kind of buried our first because we
don't find her as perfect to say at George Washington.
Uh So, if you have any thoughts to share on
Victoria Woodhall or other forgotten figures in women's history, send
us a note Mom Stuff and all stuffworks dot com.
And we're not going to read any listener email today
(13:45):
because I do have an announcement. This was my last
show on Stuff Mom never told you. It's a sad announcement.
Sad announcement. I wanted to be president when I was
a little girl, which is perhaps why this was my
last episode. But I'm starting your campaign now, moa that
you're saying that's true. You do have to get rid
of your media media ties when you start running for president.
(14:06):
But no, I'm still gonna be at house to works.
But I have a lot of other duties that I
need to be focusing on, and I don't want the
show to suffer, So I'm going to step away from
the show. Just still gonna go on with Kristen Um.
But I did want to take a quick minute and
just thank so many people that have made this experience
such an honor and a privilege. Um. I want to
thank Jerry, our producer. J She was the one who
(14:29):
guided us as we tried to turn our crazy little
idea into a show and supported us in so many
ways that we probably don't even know about. UM. I
want to thank the listeners out there who have, um
just been amazing. They constantly surprised I think both of us,
I can think and for both of us here Kristen
with their generosity and sharing their stories and their ideas,
(14:51):
and they have rescued so many bad days where we're
just so frustrated. To them get a nice email, it
turns everything around. And of course, Cristin, I have to
thank you. UM. It's been so much fun to do
the show with you, and UM, you know, it didn't
feel like work because it felt like I was just
going to come talk to my friend for an hour.
And it's not just talking to any friend, but talking
to you, your smartest, funniest, coolest friend. And it was,
(15:15):
UM a lot of fun. I've learned so much over
the time of doing this, and I'll still be around,
perhaps write the articles that you'll be podcasting about, so
I won't be far. But UM, this is a good
move for me, and I wanted to thank everyone out there,
both in the studio with me right now and out
there listening for making this such a great job. So well, Molly,
(15:36):
you will be truly missed, and I also am. Now
I'll blame you for the deluge of angry emails, so
we will now be getting a mom stuff at how
stuff works dot com. Don't make them angry. Look forward
to a chapter, a fun new chapter of Sminty with
Kristen at its home. Be The podcast is not going away,
but sadly Molly is. But you'll be able to keep
(15:56):
in touch one way or another. Head over to uh
to face book and send Molly a farewell, and in
the meantime go visit UH you know what you can do. Actually,
as a tribute to Molly, go onto how stuff works
dot com and read all the wonderful articles written by her.
In a final goodbye Molly, just so long and of
(16:18):
course thank you again to everyone out there and in here.
And like I said, you can still come visit me
over at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The house stuff Works
(16:40):
iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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