Betsey Mix Cowles 1810 - 1876

Betsey Mix Cowles 1810 - 1876. Educator and Activist. , A Passionate Educator: 1820s - 1860s , From a young age, Cowles had a passion for teaching and pursued an education in infant schooling in New York. Upon returning to Ohio in the late 1820s, she opened an infant school in Kinsman with her sister, Cornelia. She enrolled in the Ladies Course at Oberlin College in 1838, the first of its kind in the country, and graduated in 1840., She had a decorated career as an educator throughout her life, attaining high administrative positions not often held by women at the time. She served as a principal in Portsmouth, Massillon, and at the Grand River Institute, Superintendent of Canton city schools, and was the first female superintendent of the Painesville school district. In her late career, she shifted to promoting higher education for women, becoming supervisor of practice teachers at the McNeely Normal School in Hopedale, Ohio and assisted with the organization of normal schools in Bloomington, Illinois., A staunch opponent of slavery and racial discrimination, Cowles spoke out against the "Black Laws" in Ohio that enabled racial discrimination in school districts and voting eligibility., An Anti-Slavery Activist: 1830s - 1840s , Unsatisfied with her inability to join the all-male Ashtabula County Anti-Slavery Society (1832), Cowles became a founding organizer of the Ashtabula County Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1835. She served as founding Secretary for the organization, and held the position again in 1847. The organization quickly became one of the largest of its kind across the state, accruing over 400 members. She began writing for the Anti-Slavery Bugle, a publication of the Ohio American Anti-Slavery Society of New Lisbon, and became an editor of the Plea for the Oppressed and Enslaved, an abolitionist paper published through the funds of the Ashtabula County Female Anti-Slavery Society., In an 1846 letter to her sister, Cornelia, Cowles discusses the abolition activity in Ashtabula County, stating, "Abolitionism runs higher than ever." She discusses the quarterly meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society and the presence of one of her confidants, abolitionist and women's rights activist Abby Kelly Foster., Cowles organized speaking engagements at anti-slavery fairs across Northeast Ohio as early as 1846, at a time when society looked down upon women who spoke publicly. She attended meetings in New York and Boston, where she was appointed to the Business Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society and New England Anti-Slavery Society. It is speculated that Cowles opened her home in Ashtabula County not only to anti-slavery meetings, but also to freedom seekers on the final stretch of their journey northward on the Underground Railroad., A Women's Rights Advocate: 1850s , Ohio's first women's rights convention, arguably the second known convention of its kind in the nation (two years after the Women's Rights Convention of Seneca Falls) was held in Salem on April 19-20, 1850 at the Hicksite Quaker Friends Meeting House., Through her extensive connections in both the abolitionist and women's rights circles, Cowles was elected to preside over the convention, which was called for as the state of Ohio was planning to convene a new constitutional convention that May., The women's convention produced a memorandum to be presented to the state legislature calling for women's suffrage. Organizers and attendees of the 1850 convention resolved to hold annual meetings to promote the cause, creating the Statewide Standing Committee. As a member of the committee, Cowles helped organize the 1851 Women's Rights Convention in Akron, where she presented on "Labor and Wages." This was the site where Sojourner Truth delivered her world-renowned "Ain't I A Woman?" speech, recalling the hardships she endured as a formerly enslaved woman., At the third annual women's rights convention in Massillon in 1852, participants voted to establish the Ohio Women's Rights Association, for which Cowles held a position on the first Executive Committee. The Association held its first statewide meeting in Ravenna on May 25, 1853, and was open to anyone who was "interested in equal rights for all human beings in all endeavors.", Though Cowles was not extensively involved in public women's rights events until 1850, she was extensively interested in the betterment of women in society. In an 1839 letter to her sister Cornelia, Cowles states "I do hope the time is not far distant when females will feel [and] act that they are made for something more than to flutter or to serve." She dedicated her life to being an educator, not only to school students, but to society on the importance of human rights, universal equality, and the worth of women.