By Jennifer Uhlarik
Hello, Readers! Happy April. Wait, what? How are we nearly through FOUR months of this year already? Can you believe it?
I’m back again with Part 3 of my series on the ladies who have been featured on American postage stamps. So far, we’ve seen many interesting figures, from former First Ladies to foreign monarchs, social reformers, and more. So let’s dig in and see who else we might meet from past postage stamps.
This month, we’ll start with Mary Cassatt, who was featured on US postage three separate times—in 1966, 1988, and 2003. Born in 1844, Cassatt was one of seven children born to her stockbroker father and a well-educated mother. As part of her early education, she traveled abroad, learned several foreign languages, and was exposed to drawing and music. By age fifteen, she’d made the decision that art would become her career, and she began studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts against her parents’ wishes. During the years of the Civil War, she went to Europe and studied there. After years of struggle, she did finally find success with her paintings, in part due to a platonic friendship with renowned impressionist painter Edgar Degas.
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| This Mary Cassatt Postage Stamp debuted in 1966 |
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| The 1988 Mary Cassatt stamp |
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| Here is the 2003 Mary Cassatt stamp, featuring some of her artwork. |
Our next lady is Lucy Stone. Born in Massachusetts in 1818, she went on to become the first woman in the state to earn a college degree, which she attained in 1847. After seeing how she and other female teachers were paid a much lower rate than male teachers, she began fighting for equal pay for herself and other women. She both spoke publicly and published her thoughts on matters of slavery, women’s suffrage, and more, and ultimately influenced the likes of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton—two other well-known abolitionists and suffragists. The three together were known as the “Triumvirate” of Women’s Rights Reformers in the late 1800s. Lucy’s stamp debuted in 1968.
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| Lucy Stone's stamp, circa 1968 |
Next on our list of famous ladies from the postage stamps is Anna Mary Robertson Moses. In 1860, Anna was born, the third of ten children of her farming parents. She attended school only briefly, where she was exposed to art. She’d fallen in love with painting, and her father would sometimes purchase her paper by the sheet so that she could create, using grape or orange juice, grass, and other natural substances as her paints. But by age twelve, Anna went to work for a neighboring farm family and continued to do so until she met and married her husband when she was twenty-seven. The pair had ten children together, five of whom survived past infancy. As a wife and mother, she decorated her home with embroidered or quilted items, as well as made such items as gifts for family and friends. After her husband’s death and her own retirement from farming, she continued with such folk-art activities until arthritis made quilting and embroidery too painful. Upon her sister’s suggestion, seventy-six-year-old Anna took up painting again. For nearly three full decades, she painted and sold her art, creating more than 1500 pieces in that time. When her art debuted to the public, the media dubbed Anna “Grandma Moses” despite the fact she wished to be known as Mrs. Moses. The name stuck. Her inspiring life should show everyone that it’s never too late to reinvent yourself. Her name and artwork was featured on a 6-cent postage stamp in 1969.
Grandma Moses's stamp
debuted in 1969
The next two ladies are both writers. The first is Emily Dickinson, the prolific poet who wrote nearly 1800 poems in her brief fifty-five years. Dickinson never married and lived a large portion of her later life as a recluse. It was only after her death that her remaining siblings discovered her extensive writings. During her life, ten of her poems were published, but posthumously, her poetry has grown to be world-renowned and greatly respected. Dickinson was featured on her postage stamp in 1971. The second writer in this pair of wordsmiths is Willa Cather, who spent some of her early childhood in Nebraska, where she was exposed to the westward migration of many immigrant families. This inspired her many novels of the American west and the lives of immigrants in the American frontier. Her stamp debuted in 1973.
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| Poet Emily Dickinson's stamp |
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| Novelist Willa Cather's stamp |
The same year, the next lady graced a postage stamp. I have already written a blog post about Elizabeth Blackwell—also known as America’s first female doctor. Check her out here.
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| First female doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell's stamp. |
Now let’s drop back in history to the American Revolution, as that’s where the next lady of the postage stamp is from. Sybil Ludington was born in 1761, the daughter of Colonel Henry Ludington. Sybil was honored on a stamp because of a Paul Revere-type ride she supposedly made on April 26, 1777. (I say supposedly, because there are questions whether the ride actually happened, and according to my resources, her descendants have been unable to provide documentation proof of her ride). But as the story goes, sixteen-year-old Sybil rode on horseback some forty miles from her hometown of Fredricksburg, New York (close to Danbury, CT), to alert her father and his 400 militia men that the British had attacked Danbury’s supply depot. Whether the ride actually happened, the United States Postal Service honored Sybil with her own stamp in 1975.
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| Sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington rode 40 miles at night to warn her father and the militia of a British attack. |
The story behind our next woman is probably the saddest of the list thus far. Clara Maass was born in 1876 to a poor family and eventually went to nursing school to support herself and her family. After graduating school, she worked in her field, getting promoted to head nurse at Newark German Hospital in 1898. When the Spanish-American War broke out, she volunteered her services but was sent home after contracting dengue fever. She returned later and helped to nurse many soldiers—but not because of injury as much as the many illnesses they contracted, among them Yellow Fever. In 1900, the U.S. Army developed a Yellow Fever Commission to study how the illness was transmitted—whether through mosquito bites or through human contact. The Army asked humans to volunteer for the study, in which they would allow themselves to be bitten by infected mosquitoes in exchange for $100/bite (with inflation, this amount would be in the thousands today). While we don’t know her reasoning for this, Maass agreed and purposely allowed herself to be bitten by infected mosquitoes multiple times in the early part of 1901. The first time, she became mildly ill and recovered. Other times, she didn’t fall sick, leading those conducting the study to hope her first experience had immunized her. However, in mid-August of 1901, she endured her next infected bite and grew extremely ill quickly. She never recovered. Ten days after the fateful bug bite, she died at age 25. After this, human experimentation was discontinued, and on what would’ve been her 100th birthday, Clara was featured on her own postage stamp.
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| This stamp was issued on what would have been Clara Maass's 100th birthday |
The last lady of the postage stamp that we’ll look at for today is none other than Harriet Tubman, who was featured twice—once in 1978 and again in 1995. Born into slavery, she was originally named Araminta Ross in 1822. In 1849, she escaped her slave owner via the Underground Railroad and made it safely from Maryland to Philadelphia. However, she was not content, knowing that her family and friends were still enslaved. She quickly returned to Maryland and spirited family members safely away to the North. All told, she returned thirteen times and saved seventy people from enslavement, as well as served the Union Army as a scout and spy during the Civil War and later fought for women’s suffrage. Quite an inspiring woman!
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| The 1978 stamp commemorates Harriet Tubman's work to free slaves via the Underground Railroad. |
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| This 1995 stamp honors Tubman's Civil War service. |
That’s it for now, but we’ll continue our look at these honorees next month. Until then…
It’s Your Turn: Which of the women who were honored with their own stamp do you find the most memorable, and why?
Jennifer Uhlarik discovered western novels at twelve when she swiped the only “horse” book from her brother’s bookshelf. Across the next decade, she devoured westerns and fell in love with the genre. While attaining a B.A. in writing from the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. She has finaled in and won numerous writing competitions and appeared on various best-seller lists. Besides writing, she’s been a business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, a historical researcher, a publisher, and a full-time homemaker. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband and fur children.
Available Now:
Love and Order: A Three-Part Old West
Wanted:
Family, Love, and Justice
One Old West Mystery Solved Throughout Three Short Romantic Stories
Separated as children when they were adopted out to different families from an orphan train, the Braddock siblings have each grown up and taken on various jobs within law enforcement and criminal justice.
Youngest child, Callie, has pushed past her insecurities to pursue a career as a Pinkerton agent. Middle child, Andi, has spent years studying law under her adoptive father’s tutelage. And the eldest and only son, Rion, is a rough-and-tumble bounty hunter.
When the hunt for a serial killer with a long history of murders reunites the brother and sisters in Cambria Springs, Colorado, they find themselves not only in a fight for justice, but also a fight to keep their newly reunited family intact. How will they navigate these challenges when further complicated by unexpected romances?
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