Swisshelm, Jane Grey Cannon (1815-1884)
Autograph Letter Signed, Zozonia, [Indiana County, Pennsylvania], 17 August 1869.

Single leaf of wove unlined writing paper, inscribed over two pages to a Mr. Findlay, setting up a series of lectures in Pittsburgh in the fall, sending regards to his wife, noting her own daughter's state of health [Swisshelm refers to her daughter by the nickname Zo in the letter, her formal name was Mary Henrietta Swisshelm Allen (1851-1891)], and describing church services she provides on the sabbath, as seldom is a Methodist minister available, 8 x 5 in.

Pittsburgh native, feminist, abolitionist and journalist, Swisshelm published her own newspapers beginning with the Saturday Visiter in 1847. That paper's tenure ended in bankruptcy in 1854. Undeterred, Swisshelm left her husband, moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota, and started publishing another newspaper. There she engaged in a spirited argument with Democratic political boss and newspaper publisher Sylvanus Lowry (1824-1865), a slave-owner who moved to the territory from Kentucky. A profiteer in slavery related activities, he infuriated Swisshelm. The two got into a serious battle of words published in their rival papers which climaxed when an angry mob stormed Swisshelm's print shop and attacked her press, destroying it and throwing its battered remains into the closest river.

Swisshelm used the legal system to dispute laws barring women from owning property. She loudly and publicly disputed her estranged husband's legal claims on her own mother's farm and family home, and eventually the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law granting women the right to own property, perhaps her most important contribution to our society.

Swisshelm also met Abraham Lincoln and wrote about her encounter eloquently for the newspapers. She was the first female Washington correspondent for a major newspaper and served as a nurse during the Civil War. For more see Sylvia D. Hoffert's excellent biography, Jane Grey Swisshelm: An Unconventional Life, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

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