Ernestine Rose (1810–1892)

Ernestine Louise Susmond Potowsky (or Potowski) was the only child of an Orthodox Jewish family in Central Poland. Her rather was a strictly observant rabbi. She later said she was a rebel at the age of five. She rejected the traditional subordination of women to men and at age 14 refused to marry the man chosen by her father. She sued to dissolve the marriage contract and recover her share of the dowry in the civil court, a highly unusual action for a Jewish woman of that era, and won her case. Her mother died when she was 16, and Ernestine rebelled by leaving home the following year when her father remarried. She traveled through Europe and England, where she met the utopian social reformer Robert Owen, and became one of his followers. She became a supporter of women's rights and discovered a talent for public speaking. In 1832, she married William Rose, a jeweler and silversmith who was also an Owen supporter, and a non-Jew. The couple lived in England until 1836, when they moved to the USA and settled in New York City. Ernestine Rose traveled throughout the eastem USA, speaking out against slavery and in favor of reforming of the laws that discriminated against women. For 30 years, she was active in the National Woman Suffrage Association. If Susan B. Anthony was considered the "soul" of the women's suffrage movement, then Ernestine Rose was the "intellect." She was hailed as "The Queen of the Lecture Platform," for being the best female orator of the mid-19th century USA. She petitioned the New York State Legislature to give married women equal rights with their husbands in property ownership and in the guardianship of children. Although her initial efforts failed, she kept up the struggle until 1848, when these reforms were finally enacted. In 1850, Ernestine Rose helped organize the first National Woman's Rights Convention, held in Massachusetts. She worked with other influential feminists and abolitionists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony. Later in life, when her health began to fail, she returned with her husband to England, where she died in 1892. Some of her speeches, such as "Petitions Were Circulated" (1860) were included in the History of Woman Suffrage published by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joscelyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper and have since been reprinted.