No description available.

"The organized woman's club movement spread into the State of Texas. Beginning as associations for self-culture and intellectual development, the clubs were soon laying the foundation for better conditions of living in their communities. Since Texas was largely in the pioneer stage of development with widely separated communities, the women's clubs in small centers became the nucleii for civic improvements. One of these small centers was the town of Gainesville, Texas, with a population of about 6,000 in the year 1893. That year the first women's club in the town was organized and named the Gainesville XLI Club. This club helped form the State Council of Women of Texas, formerly called the Women's Congress, in 1894, which was three years before the formation of the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs."-- pg. 9-10 "It will, perhaps, be seen from the above survey that no transformation in modern society has been more striking or more fraught with significance than the change in the political, legal, economic, moral, and social status of women. Women's clubs were organized for discussion and study, with interests that varied according to location, surroundings, opportunities, and aspirations. The history of a pioneer club portrays the stages of development of clubs in general from institutions for self-improvement to institutions interested in national and international problems." -- pg. 11-12

This study investigates the first Woman's Department at a World's Fair in the Deep South. It documents conflicts and reconciliations and the reassessments that post-bellum women made during the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans, the region's foremost but atypical city. It traces local women's resistance to the appointment of northern abolitionist and suffragist, Julia Ward Howe, for this “New South” event of 1884-1885. It also notes their increasing receptivity to national causes that Susan B. Anthony, Frances E. Willard, and others brought to the South, sometimes for the first time. This dissertation assesses the historical forces that goaded New Orleans women, from the comfort of their familiar city, to consider radical notions that would later strengthen them in civic roles. It asserts that, although these women were skilled and capable, they had previously lacked cohesive force and public strategies. It concludes that as local women competed and interacted with women from across the country, including those from pioneering western territories, they began to embrace progressive ideas and actions that, without the Woman's Department at the Exposition, might have taken years to drift southward. This is a chronological tale of the journey late-nineteenth-century women made together in New Orleans. It attempts to capture their look, sound, and language from their own writings and from journalists' interpretations of their ideals, values, and emotions. In the potent forum for exchange that the Woman's Department provided, participants and visitors questioned and revised false notions and stereotypes. They influenced each other and formed alliances. Although individuals spoke mainly for themselves, common themes emerged regarding education, jobs, benevolence, and even suffrage. Most women were aware that they were in a defining moment, and this study chronicles how New Orleans women seized the opportunity and created a legacy for themselves and their city. As the Exposition sought to (re)assert agrarian and industrial prowess after turbulent times, a shift occurred in the trajectory of women's public and political lives in New Orleans and, perhaps, the South more broadly. By 1885, southerners were ready to insinuate their voices into the national debate on women's issues.

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2008. / Title from screen (viewed on July 8, 2008). Department of History, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Robert G. Barrows, Nancy Marie Robertson, Marianne S. Wokeck. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-172).

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Springing up in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Indiana women's study clubs provided generations of women with the opportunity to improve their educations in a friendly environment. They also brought culture to their communities by hosting art exhibits, musical entertainments, and lectures, building libraries and museums, and participating in community improvement endeavors. The activities of urban clubs in big cities have been documented in histories of the women's club movement, but small towns have recieved little attention even through they were vital parts of their communities. This study considers the characteristics, organization, study practices, and civic improvement work of three small-town Indiana women's clubs in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The Zerelda Reading Club (Warsaw) studied a wide variety of subjects, while the Ladies' Piano Club (Salem) and Florentine Club (Lebanon) limited their studies to art and music, respectively. All three clubs participated in community improvement efforts that helped their towns achieve urban amenities. The Zerelda Reading Club helped to establish a ladies' rest room, the Ladies' Piano Club worked with other community organizations to build a Carnegie public library, and the Florentine Club raised money to beautify Oak Hill Cemetery. Forming in decades of tremendous growth in popularity of club activity, the organization of all three clubs shows influences of those associations already in existence. This study argues that the individual circumstances of members and their communities resulted in the organization of three women's clubs that prospered under the guidance of extant clubs, but served their members and their communities by adapting activities to suit local needs.