Articles about Womens History
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Courts offered women few protections in cases of rape
By Bill Kemp. Published on June 19, 2016.
Rape was the “least-reported, least-prosecuted, and least-punished” of crimes in the 19th century. On Feb. 18, 1874, Lyma...
WW I home front featured French-Belgian relief
By Bill Kemp. Published on July 24, 2016.
The War to End All Wars, as the First World War was once called, brought out the best and the worst in Americans. On the ...
Bloomington’s Fifer Bohrer first state Senator
By Bill Kemp. Published on January 8, 2017.
As thoughts this month turn to newly elected leaders assuming office, it’s a fitting time to look back at the groundbreaking legacy for...
Clara Brian champion of farm families
By Bill Kemp. Published on March 26, 2017.
Clara Brian spent 25 years traveling to every corner of the McLean County countryside with the goal of improving the lives of rural hom...
Julia Vrooman brought jazz to WW I doughboys
By Bill Kemp. Published on September 24, 2017.
“Julia Scott Vrooman has always been in the news,” noted The Pantagraph in early October 1976. The occasion was her 100th...
Ellen Ferguson, 19th century suffragist, polygamist
By Bill Kemp. Published on November 25, 2018.
Ellen B. Ferguson, who made Bloomington-Normal her home in the 1870s, was a remarkable but ultimately inscrutable champion of women’s s...
‘Dr. Mrs. Keck’ battled male-dominated medical establishment
By Bill Kemp. Published on January 27, 2019.
Back in the 19th century when miracle pills, plasters, creams, powders and tonics promised to cure all—from mild indigestion to pancrea...
Cousin Emmy had deep ties to Bloomington
By Bill Kemp. Published on March 10, 2019.
Cousin Emmy, a pioneering female country music artist affectionately known as “the first hillbilly to own a Cadillac,” spent a decade o...
Women’s Improvement League kept Normal clean and healthy
By Bill Kemp. Published on April 21, 2019.
Editor's note: This is Bill Kemp's 650th original "Page from Our Past" column. Bill began writ...
May Christian, forever her own woman
By Bill Kemp. Published on October 6, 2019.
“I was always too independent,” Bloomington resident Annie May Christian confided in a remarkable scrapbook she compiled around 1903....
Donation illuminates Earhart’s 1936 visit to Twin Cities
By Bill Kemp. Published on July 19, 2020.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the McLean County Museum of History to temporarily close its doors to the public, the Library...
Virtual cemetery walk showcases amazing Florence Funk
By Bill Kemp. Published on September 20, 2020.
The not-for-profit McLean County Museum of History celebrates local history in all its complexities and in all sorts of ways. There are...