Introduction

Many area women have contributed to the rich heritage of the county, the state and the nation since Morris County's earliest beginnings.

The women featured here have persevered in the face of tragedy; provided higher education opportunities for women; shaped politics; forged careers in the health care and medical fields; and served in the military during a time when these job arenas were male dominions. Their efforts are woven into the fabric that is Morris County's history.

Revolution/Early Republic

Margaret Kemble Gage (1734-1824)

• In December 1758, Margaret Kemble married British General Thomas Gage, a loyalist, who later commanded the troops sent to intercede with the rebellion in Boston.
• While being painted for this portrait by John Singleton Copley in 1771, her dress and pose was construed as a depiction of symbolic allegiance to the Tories.
• Several historians believe it was Margaret Kemble Gage who supplied General Warren with British troop movement intelligence which led to the historic rides of William Dawes and Paul Revere on April 18, 1775. Gage suspected Margaret, a native colonist, may have had sympathies with the rebels. Believing she had betrayed his trust to Major General Joseph Warren of the revolutionaries, Gage ordered Margaret shipped back to Britain.

Louisa Sanderson Macculloch (1785-1863)

• Though her origin remains obscure, Louisa Martha Edwina Sanderson Macculloch was said to have been an actress before meeting her husband George Perrott Macculloch, "Father of the Morris Canal." In addition to running a household and raising her children and grandchildren, she helped her husband run the Macculloch Hall Academy for Boys from 1815 to 1830.
• A religious woman, Louisa helped found St. Peter’s church and hosted services at Macculloch hall until a church was built. Active with charitable works for the community, she is credited with helping to establish the Female Charitable Society in 1813. A member for 33 years, she served as the organizations first vice president and later as president. The organization is still in operation today as Family Services of Morris County. Louisa also assisted in the founding of the Female Fragment Society, a sewing circle and fundraising charitable organization that provided quilts and other textile necessities to those in need.

Antebellum

Bridget Smith (1835-1907)

• Irish immigrants John and Bridget Smith came to Mine Hill and settled in a mining neighborhood known as Irish Town. After her husband’s death in a mining accident, Bridget purchased a small, two family house that was built by her second cousin, James Maloney.
• Pregnant at the time of her husband’s death, she lived in half the house with her two children and rented the other half to Margaret Lowe, another Irish mining widow who had six children.
• The Bridget Smith house stands as a tribute to local immigrant working class women and is now a museum dedicated to local mining labor history. The site is listed on both the State and National Registers of Historic Places.

Mother Mary Xavier Mehegan (1825-1915)

• Mother Mary Xavier Mehegan immigrated from Ireland to New York in 1842. She made her vows as a Sister of Charity of New York in 1847, and in 1857 began her work in New Jersey.
• The Sisters of Charity of New Jersey opened their mother house in Madison in 1860 at Convent Station. After 1863, Mother Xavier was officially recognized as the Mother Superior of the order.
• In 1899, under her leadership, the order founded the College of Saint Elizabeth, the first four-year women's college in the state.

Victorian

Caroline Foster (1877-1979)

• Caroline Foster, groomed in all the social graces of her era, was one of Morris County’s Victorian era debutantes. An avid hunter and fisherman who favored sports and outdoor activities over traditional "women's roles," Miss Foster also enjoyed carpentry and constructed her own cottage, the "Temple of Abiding Peace," on the grounds of Fosterfields as a temporary respite from life in the main house.
• She is best remembered as a farm manager and business woman, she was also an expert horsewoman and enjoyed the outdoors. She was an expert on raising and breeding Jersey cows and once sailed to the Isle of Jersey to purchase stock for the farm.
• With an interest in local history, she served as a member on the first Board of Trustees to save Historic Speedwell in the mid-1970s.
• Her larger contribution to local history however was gifting Fosterfields to the Morris County Park Commission, to be preserved as the first "living historical farm," in New Jersey. Today, Fosterfields lives on as a working farm, using the tools, techniques and materials of a late nineteenth century farm.

Suffragists

Alison Low Turnbull Hopkins (1880-1951)

• Alison Low (Turnbull) Hopkins grew up in a socially prominent family at "Feather Leigh Farms" in Morristown. During her early years of marriage to insurance executive John A. H. Hopkins, she became active in many local charities.
• She later dedicated herself to the woman's suffrage movement and served on the executive boards of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and the National Woman's Party.
• On July 14, 1917, Hopkins and others were arrested for demonstrating at the White House. Hopkins was sentenced to 60 days in jail. She received a pardon from President Wilson at the request of her husband.
• Following her release from jail, she returned to the White House alone with a sign reading, "We ask not pardon for ourselves but justice for all American women."
• Due to the efforts of the suffrage movement, the 19th amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1919 granting women the right to vote.
  The Occoquan Workhouse
  • Several Morris County suffragists were among the inmates held at the Occoquan workhouse. They were incarcerated for demonstrating for women's right to vote.
  • The warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket the White House for the right to vote.
  • For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

Julia Hurlbut (1882 – 1962)

• Julia Hurlbut of Morristown became involved in the suffrage movement around 1915. Identifying with the radical wing of the movement, she served as vicepresident of the New Jersey branch of the Congressional Union for Woman's Suffrage and as a delegate to the National Congressional Union Conference.
• She was also active in the National Women's Party when it picketed the White House in 1917.
• Arrested and jailed during the protests while picketing the White House with members of the National Woman's Party, she and others were arrested and jailed, then released following a presidential pardon three days later. Afterward, she spent several months speaking around New Jersey on behalf of woman suffrage.

Medicine

Hildegard E. Peplau RN, PhD (1909-1999)

• Hildegard E. Peplau, PhD, RN, FAAN, World War II veteran, and long time resident of Madison, was known as the ‘psychiatric nurse of the century’ and was inducted into the nursing hall of fame in 1998. In addition to serving as the executive director and later as president of the American Nursing Association, she also served two terms on the Board of the International Council of Nurses.
• She served in the Army Nurse Corps from 1943 in England at the American School of Military Psychiatry.
• Her nursing theories have been integrated into nursing education and practices worldwide. Peplau was a faculty member of the College of Nursing at Rutgers University from 1954 to 1974 where she developed the first graduate level program for the preparation of clinical specialists in psychiatric nursing. Her students did part of their training at Greystone Park.
• During the 1950s and 1960s, she was an adviser to the World Health Organization, and was a visiting professor at universities in Africa, Latin America, Belgium and the United States. She also served as a consultant to the U.S. Surgeon General, the U.S. Air Force and the National Institute of Mental Health. After her retirement from Rutgers, she served as a visiting professor at the University of Leuven in Belgium where she helped establish the first graduate nursing program in Europe.

Lena Frances Edwards, MD (1900-1986)

• Dr. Edwards, a 1924 graduate of Howard University Medical School, established her medical practice in Jersey City in 1925. She lived in Long Hill Township for a short time. Her practice was largely within the European immigrant community.
• During her long career in service to others, she taught obstetrics at Howard University Medical School, was medical advisor to the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, and volunteered at a mission for Mexican migrant workers in Texas.
• Her service to society was recognized by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 when he awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Julia Cotton Mutchler, MD. (1885-1943)

• After graduating with highest honors from the New Jersey State Hospital Nurse Training School at Greystone Park in 1904, she continued her education and earned her M.D. from the Women's Medical College in Baltimore in 1908.
• During 1914-1916 she served on the Greystone surgical staff and where she met her second husband, Dr. Raymond Mutchler.
• Her medical training and interest in civic affairs translated into advocacy for public health and welfare legislation.
• In 1923 she won her first campaign for public office, serving as an Alderman. In 1930, she sought and won the Republican nomination for a seat in the New Jersey Assembly and served for two terms. While in the Assembly, Dr. Mutchler took an active interest in bills relating to health issues, child labor, night work for women, workman's compensation and opposition to a reservoir in Long Valley.
• She was the first woman elected to a countywide office in Morris County and the first woman elected to the State Assembly from Morris County. She lived in Dover with her husband, Dr. H. Raymond Mutchler from the time they were married in 1916 until her death in 1943 at the age of 58.

Other

Colonel Ruth Cheney Streeter (1895-1990)

• Colonel Streeter was the first Director of the United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve, earned the Legion of Merit for "outstanding services" during World War II. In addition to the Legion of Merit, Colonel Streeter's medals include the American Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal. She served from February 1943 until December 1945 when she resigned her commission. In January 1943, Colonel Streeter became the first woman to hold the rank of major in the Marine Corps. She was promoted to lieutenant colonel in November 1943 and to colonel in February 1944.
• During the depression years following 1930, Streeter worked in public health and welfare, unemployment relief and old-age assistance in New Jersey. She was President of the Welfare Board in Morris County and served as a member of the New Jersey State Relief Council, New Jersey Commission of Inter-State Cooperation, and the New Jersey Board of Children's Guardians.
• A member of the Civil Air Patrol, she learned to fly in 1940 and in 1941 she became the only woman member of the Committee on Aviation of the New Jersey Defense Council. She served as chairman of the Citizen's Committee for Army and Navy, Inc., for Fort Dix in 1941. She received her commercial pilot's license in April 1942.
• Colonel Streeter and her mother were joint donors of the Cheney Award, given annually to a member of the United States Air Force for "acts of valor or extreme fortitude or self-sacrifice." The award commemorates the memory of Lieutenant William H. Cheney, the colonel's brother, who was killed in an aviation accident in World War II and continues to be presented.

Martha Brookes Hutcheson (1871-1959)

• Martha Brookes Hutcheson was one of the first women to receive a formal education in landscape architecture. Educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology she was one of the first women landscape architects to practice professionally in America.
• After purchasing a working farm in Chester Township with her husband, she transformed it into an outstanding example of natural and classic landscape design.
• Her work, for the most part, consisted of private domestic gardens for wealthy northeasterners. Determined to educate Americans on the importance of both garden design and landscape preservation, she continued to write and lecture extensively.
• Her life at Merchiston Farm inspired her book, The Spirit of the Garden. Her home is now Bamboo Brook Outdoor Education Center and is managed by the Morris County Park Commission.