[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 46 (Monday, March 13, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3065-H3066]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        NOTABLE WOMEN OF HISTORY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  [[Page H3066]] Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I just would like to add 
to the gentlewoman from Oregon's concern before I go into what I wanted 
to talk about. I think her concern is a legitimate one, that for over 
200 years of this Republic we have done without term limits, and we 
have now driven the American people to really want term limits, and yet 
we seem to be able to get everything else up on time. But we tend to 
want to play with the term limits legislation so that it won't really 
apply to us, so that everybody will get at least 20 more years in 
before they kick in. There are some games being played and I think she 
had a legitimate point.
  But, Mr. Speaker, the reason I really come to the floor is to talk 
about women's history week because--actually it is a month, we get a 
whole month this year, and it should be a month because actually this 
is a year where we are celebrating the 75th anniversary of women having 
gotten the right to vote federally, so in this diamond jubilee, I think 
it is
 only right that we look back at some of the history that so many 
Americans really don't know.

  I want to just quickly talk about three women this morning that I 
think all played very important roles that a lot of people don't know 
about.
  First is Anne Hutchinson. Ann Hutchinson was born in 1591 in England. 
She was born during the reign of Elizabeth I. Her father was an 
Episcopalian minister and she migrated with her husband to the 
Massachusetts Bay Colony. She was very steeped in theology because she 
had grown up with it, and obviously it was not long before she came to 
loggerheads with the different leaders in the Massachusetts Bay Colony 
who really were not under free speech. They were only into free speech 
for themselves.
  We as Americans talk about, first, free speech, and, second, freedom 
of religion, but let me tell you, the first guys that got off the boat 
were not for that. And it was this very courageous woman, with her 
husband standing beside her, and she had over 12 children to join her, 
that took up this cudgel, and she and their followers ended up moving 
outside of the Massachusetts Bay Colony after several very prolonged 
trials where they tried to try her for witchcraft and everything else.
  They moved and they started the first colony in America that had 
freedom of religion and freedom of speech in it. So I think as we talk 
about that, we should remember where some of those ideas came from and 
came from early on.
  Another woman that I would like to talk about that we don't mention, 
she was one of the very early women in America to become a doctor, Mary 
Edwards Walker. She was not the first, but one of the first, and she 
became a great friend of Ms. Bloomer of the Bloomer girls. People 
forget where the word ``bloomer'' came from; it came from the woman who 
came up with the idea that it was very difficult to wear hoop skirts 
all the time and came up with these billowing bloomers.
  Well, Dr. Edwards, or Dr. Walker became very, very involved in 
serving the Union Army in the fields, and when she used to come into 
Washington, DC; to get you in someplace, they would arrest her because 
she was not wearing proper attire. If you can remember the attire of 
the Civil War, you can certainly understand why if you were a woman 
doctor and you were out on the field treating patients, you were not 
running around in one of those big hoop skirts. And finally, the 
Congress gave her a special exemption so she could come into town and 
resupply and not be arrested because of the terrific, meritious job 
that she was doing for Union soldiers.
  I think that is another very interesting and heroic woman that we 
know very little about. Another woman that I think is very interesting 
is Bertha Palmer. How many people who grew up in Chicago know about 
Palmer House, and she was the spouse of the Palmer of Palmer House. She 
also, when she inherited his wealth, proceeded to double it before she 
died, which is no shabby task, but she was a very, very strong person 
for women's rights. And some of the very interesting things that she 
did was during the Columbus exhibition, when they were celebrating the 
400th anniversary of Columbus finding America, she was on the board and 
she said, ``Well, aren't we going to do anything about Queen Isabella 
who at least put up the money.''
  I mean, this woman had some respect for that and of course you could 
imagine what the old boys said. They said, ``See, that is what 
happened, put a woman on the board, the next thing you know they are 
trying to take over everything,'' so she ended up having to form a 
woman's exhibition right alongside of it. It became very successful and 
actually it ended up in the black even though the other one ended up in 
the red.
  So these are three mothers that I think we should think more about in 
this month and I hope we get to think about many more.


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