Reading through the digitized version of Mary Kenney O’Sullivan’s unpublished autobiography provides more than a glimpse of her personality. Her sense of humor, her passion for justice, and her fearlessness are apparent. Several times while reading her anecdotes, I thought, “this woman was afraid of NOBODY.” While she admitted to feeling intimidated by upper classContinue reading “Mary at the 1893 Columbian Exposition (the Chicago World’s Fair)”
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Learning at the Schlesinger Library
My first foray into non-electronic research about Mary Kenney O’Sullivan brought me to the Schlesinger Library, a unique resource for the history of women in the United States. It is at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s a fairly young institute, born in 1999 but rooted in its own women’s history going backContinue reading “Learning at the Schlesinger Library”
Learning about Mary
I first learned about Mary Kenney O’Sullivan as part of a walking tour being developed in 2016. Now called Working Women: Boston Women Find Their Voice, the tour aims to tell the story of cross-class collaboration as women in Boston struggled to secure the vote for women. In 2016, I knew little about the suffrageContinue reading “Learning about Mary”
Discovering the other side of the story
I became a walking tour guide in my early 40s. In the midst of a fulfilling and busy career in fire safety education and outreach, I was looking for something that would get me outside and challenge other parts of my brain. I found it when I stumbled across Boston By Foot, a nonprofit walkingContinue reading “Discovering the other side of the story”
My heroines - amazing women in history 