Birth Locations – Page 85 – The Exasperated Historian

446) Minnie Vautrin

446: Minnie Vautrin

Missionary and Humanitarian

Born: 27 September 1886, Secor, Illinois, United States of America

Died: 14 May 1941, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States of America

Original Name: Wilhelmina Vautrin

Minnie helped build and found the Ginling Girls College in Nanking (Today Nanjing, People’s Republic of China) later becoming acting president.

She strove to increase the numbers of women and girls who received educations in China.

Today she is remembered for the numerous lives of women and girls she helped save during the Rape of Nanking. Ginling College became a refugee camp during the massacre with around 10,000 people hiding there at its zenith (the entire college was only meant to hold 200 to 300 people). Minnie used her connections to the college and as a member of the International Community for the Red Cross to do her work. Minnie was one of only two foreign women who ignored their country’s embassy’s warnings to leave the city, making her work even more brave and heartfelt.

The Rape of Nanking is known to many historians as the second genocide that occurred during World War II; often overlooked by the horrific acts Nazi Germany committed against Eastern Europeans, Jews, and so many other groups, the Rape of Nanking took place over six weeks and left between 200,000 and 300,000 dead--between 20,000 and 80,000 women were sexually assaulted by the Japanese soldiers.

The atrocities Minnie witnessed were so great that she suffered a nervous breakdown in 1940 and had to return to the United States. A year later she ended her own life leaving a note saying she was a failure—when in fact the opposite is true, and the people of China remember her as the Goddess of Mercy. The Chinese government even awarded her the Emblem of the Blue Jade.

In 2007, a documentary-type film entitled Nanking was released; the trailer for which I have linked in this article.

Badges Earned:

Find a Grave Marked

Located In My Personal Library:

The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang

American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin by Hua-ling Hu

Sources:

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/minnie-vautrin

https://www.facinghistory.org/nanjing-atrocities/atrocities/conviction-and-courage-minnie-vautrin

https://www.discipleshistory.org/history/people/minnie-vautrin

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/93627931/wilhelmina-vautrin

445) Dr. Helen V Graham Gill, PhD

This photo depicts my grandmother when she was a young girl.

"As you pass through life, be a positive influence on the people you meet."

This photo depicts my paternal grandparents at their wedding reception in 1958.

This photo of my grandmother was taken later in life.

445: Helen Graham Gill

Born: 13 April 1937, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Died: 4 February 2000, Plano, Texas, United States of America

Dr. Gill was born in Rural Pennsylvania to farm folk, plain and simple. She was the first in her family to graduate high school, a fact that made her father very proud.

Helen went on to teach nearly every grade from kindergarten through high school, and once she received her doctorate from Arizona State University in 1989, she became a college professor at Central Michigan University and an editor at the Michigan Reading Association.

Helen was a great cook, instilled a sense of strength in her family, and taught her children to be strong and fight for what they want in life. She was a mother of four, and has four grandchildren as well, three grandsons and one granddaughter—me. Helen was a wonderful woman, proud of her Scottish heritage and grateful for the opportunities she was given in life.

Helen died suddenly in her daughter Lynne’s home after suffering from a sudden pulmonary embolism. She was returned to the family farm and buried in the church cemetery just yards from where she grew up and her siblings still live. I was originally supposed to be born on February 15^th, but because of my grandmother’s death, my parents made the decision to induce labor and bring me into the world early so that my dad and brother could attend Grandma’s funeral. I was born less than a day after my grandmother passed away.

Six months before she died, Helen and her daughter Lynne were able to visit Scotland for two weeks, traveling the country and learning more about their heritage. Twenty years to the week after they took that trip, most of my dad’s family gathered at my uncle’s house to have a Gill Family Reunion. While there, I was able to dig through the past and found the scrapbooks my grandmother had created of the trip. Among the items found there was a scrap of the Graham Tartan, which I now proudly display over my bed.

Ne Oublie Grandma; I won't forget you.

Badges Earned:

Find a Grave Marked

Sources:

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Graham-5831&public=1

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/108696407/helen-virginia-gill

444) Josephine S Lowell

“Common charity, that is, feeding and clothing people, I am beginning to look upon as wicked! Not in its intention, of course, but in its carelessness and its results, which certainly are to destroy people’s character and make them poorer and poorer. If it could only be drummed into the rich that what the poor want is fair wages and not little doles of food, we should not have all this suffering and misery and vice.”

444: Josephine S Lowell

Philanthropist and Charitable Advocate

Born: 16 December 1843, West Roxbury, Massachusetts, United States of America

Died: 12 October 1905, New York City, New York, United States of America

Her brother, brother-in-law, and husband all died during the War Between the States (her brother was the commander of the first African American regiment mustered into Union service during the war).

Josephine was one of the founding members of the New York Charity Organization Society and worked tirelessly to see a separation of men and women in prison instead of both sexes being housed together. She also oversaw the introduction of matrons in police stations.

Josephine became the first woman appointed a commissioner of the New York Charities Commission. She remained in that position from 1876 to 1889 after being placed there by the governor of New York State.

Josephine was a member of the women’s suffrage movement and many other social organizations. Considered liberal in her time, Josephine’s beliefs today align more closely with libertarian views, as the quote to the left shows.

Her other works, while they might seem harmful today, were groundbreaking for their time. Josephine oversaw the creation of asylums for feeble-minded women and girls. While her work was admirable, Josephine did not make the asylums completely out of the goodness of her heart. In actuality, she was a major proponent of the eugenics movement, and knew the homes she created would help forward that movement.

Badges Earned:

Find a Grave Marked

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Josephine-Shaw-Lowell

https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/organizations/state-institutions/lowell-josephine-shaw-3/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/42434342/josephine-lowell

443) Doris Buck Figgins

443: Doris Buck Figgins

Victim of the Eugenics Movement in the United States

Born: 17 August 1911, Virginia, United States of America

Died: 13 June 1982, Berryville, Virginia, United States of America

Like her more famous sister Carrie, Doris was forcibly sterilized under Virginia law because she was an “Imbecile”; and neither she nor Carrie were aware of that fact until decades later. Doris had spent years struggling to conceive and have children with her husband, completely unaware of the truth. In fact, Doris had been told she had her appendix removed; in actuality the scar she carried on her abdomen was actually from her sterilization.

Her early life was also similar to her sister Carrie’s, growing up in various foster homes or Virginia state hospitals for those deemed “feeble minded”. Medical records indicate Doris was sterilized aged seventeen, around the year 1928, but would not be told the truth of her operation until the 1970’s.

Badges Earned:

Find a Grave Marked

Located In My Personal Library:

Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck by Adam Cohen

Sources:

The Imbeciles book listed above

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Buck-5471

http://buckvbell.com/gallery.html

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/195048136/doris-virginia-figgins

442- Joanne Hayes-White

442: Joanne Hayes-White

San Francisco’s Former Fire Chief

Born: 1964, San Francisco, California, United States of America

Joanne is the first woman to ever serve as Chief of the department in San Francisco and the longest serving woman of any fire chief in the United States. She is also the first openly gay fire chief in the United States.

She retired in May of 2019; having served as chief for 15 years and 4 months. Her last night on the job, over seven hundred people came out to support her and her family at the Irish Cultural Center.

Joanne joined the department in 1990 as one of the first female fire fighters in San Francisco. When she retired, another woman took over the job.

Most big city fire chiefs stay on for three or four years in comparison.

Joanne has three sons.

Sources:

https://abc7news.com/community-events/longtime-san-francisco-fire-chief-retires/5286776/

https://www.guardiansofthecity.org/sffd/chiefs/hayes-white.html

441) Willie Mallory

441: Willie Mallory

Protective Mother and Victim of American Eugenics

Birth and Death Dates Unknown, As Are Locations

You can still read copies of the “Willie Mallory Complaint” in a PDF format online in the category of Buck V Bell Documents under Reading Room on the Georgia State University Law School Archive. I listed the complaint below under sources.

Willie was another victim of forced sterilization without her consent, one of thousands across the United States from the early 1900’s to as late as the 1980’s.

Willie had eight children at the time and was arrested on the charge of running a brothel out of her house (which was never proven). Her husband sued the doctors for $5,000 and likened them being arrested and detained as slavery. The doctor responded with a threat of his own—sterilizing more members of the Mallory family. Luckily however, their daughter Nannie was released without being sterilized and Virginia halted their illegal sterilizations until they would become legal after the Supreme Court ruling under Buck V Bell. You can read more about the case and fallout from it by reading about Carrie Buck.

Badges Earned:

Located In My Personal Library:

Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck by Adam Cohen

Sources:

The Imbeciles book listed above

https://readingroom.law.gsu.edu/buckvbell/

https://readingroom.law.gsu.edu/buckvbell/80/

440) Constance Markievicz

Constance's advice to women interesting in joining the revolution?

"Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank, and buy a revolver.”

440: Constance Markievicz

The First Woman Elected to Britain’s Parliament But She Refused to Take Her Seat

Born: 4 February 1868, Westminster, London, United Kingdom (Though she was raised in County Sligo, Ireland)

Died: 15 July 1927, Dublin, Ireland (Present-day Dublin, Republic of Ireland)

She was the first Irish female elected politician. Constance was also the only woman to ever serve in the First Irish Assembly (Dáil Éireann); where she would serve as Minister of Labor for three years.

She was from the Irish Nobility and was presented at Queen Victoria’s Court in 1887. Constance would later marry a Polish Count but wasn’t the typical doting housewife and mother. Her daughter Maeve and she wouldn’t even recognize each other as adults when meeting in public.

As a younger woman, Constance’s social aspirations were entrenched in Women’s Suffrage. Then, when she was forty, she joined the Daughters of Ireland political party which believed in Irish Nationalism. She then created the Soldiers of Ireland which was basically the boy scouts if they were Irish Nationalist Soldiers, trained to shoot the British.

From 1911 on she would be in and out of jail for her political activism. After the Easter Rising (an Irish insurrection against the English crown where Constance fought as a sniper) she was arrested alongside other rebels but was the only woman to be court-martialed. After having her death sentence reduced to servitude for life, she got lucky and was released from imprisonment a year later—and then promptly went back to jail for starting her process all over again.

She was elected to the British parliament in the general election in 1918, while still in prison, but refused to take her seat because she would not swear an oath of allegiance to the English king. Constance was one of the many members of the Sinn Fein Party who were elected that year, all of whom agreed to not sit in parliament.

In later years, she became an accomplished car mechanic, often fixing her own when it would break down on the sides of the roads. She did what she could to care for older citizens around her and reconnected with her family. Constance passed away from complications stemming from appendicitis and years of neglect and abuse her body had survived.

Constance would not live to see a free Ireland established. Despite the December 1921 treaty signed between the Irish Nationals and the British, the free state of Ireland, today recognized as the Republic of Ireland, would not be proclaimed until Easter Monday in 1949. Today, The Republic of Ireland represents the twenty-six southern and western counties on the island of Ireland. Six northern counties remained a part of the United Kingdom and are today known as Northern Ireland.

Badges Earned:

Find a Grave Marked

Rejected Princess

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Constance-Markievicz

https://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/constance-markievicz

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/constance-markievicz-the-divisive-revolutionary-heroine-1.3710763

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/5746940/constance-georgine-markievicz

439) Doris Bohrer

439: Doris Bohrer

Allied Spy during World War II

Born: 5 February 1923, Basin, Wyoming, United States of America

Died: 9 August 2016, Greensboro, North Carolina, United States of America

Doris worked in helping plan the invasion of Sicily and also tracking movements of concentration camp victims.

Doris reportedly asked for a hand grenade and was denied one during the war, despite another woman (from Yugoslavia) being given one to carry. So, Doris had a fake fashioned instead, which she pulled out during lunch one day. One of the guys said he would take it from her before she could hurt herself, so Doris slammed it against the table and watched as the men all fled out the windows; then she finished her salad and that was that.

She would go on to become Deputy Head of Counterintelligence of the CIA. Doris’s husband worked as the director of the CIA’s office of Medical Services. They had one son together. In all, Doris spent twenty-seven years working in the intelligence field. After retiring from the CIA, she worked in real estate.

Doris spent her twilight years in the same retirement home as another female OSS agent during the war, Elizabeth McIntosh, and they became friends despite not knowing one another during the war. Elizabeth worked in China as a propaganda campaign creator while Doris focused on the European theatre.

Badges Earned:

Find a Grave Marked

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/us/doris-bohrer-world-war-ii-spy-for-allies-dies-at-93.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/doris-bohrer-an-american-spy-in-world-war-ii-and-the-cold-war-dies-at-93/2016/08/18/000d43d0-63de-11e6-96c0-37533479f3f5_story.html

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/171893020/doris-arlene-bohrer

438) Rachel Wall

Courtesy of the New England Historical Society

438: Rachel Wall

American Pirate

Born: c.1760, The Colony of Pennsylvania (Present-day Carlisle, Pennsylvania, United States of America)

Died: 8 October 1789, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Rachel left home at the age of sixteen and worked for a time as a domestic servant before her on-again-off-again boyfriend convinced her to become a pirate (possibly the first female pirate born in North America).

They robbed at least twelve ships and killed at least twenty-four sailors (supposedly, the majority of the facts of her life are disputed for multiple reasons. This account is the best summation of the surviving records).

Her now-husband possibly died when their ship was wrecked (in her later confession she stated she didn’t know where he was but evidence suggests he and his crew were lost at sea), and Rachel began stealing from ships docked in the harbor instead.

Rachel was charged with petty theft several times; however, she was finally convicted of a charge she claimed to be innocent of—highway robbery—stealing a bonnet and shoes from a seventeen-year-old girl she found along the road. She admitted guilt on several counts of piracy but not of stealing from the girl.

Rachel was hanged in front of a crowd of thousands, the last woman to be publicly executed by hanging in the state of Massachusetts and among the last people in the state to be executed for robbery. Her death warrant was signed by the governor of Massachusetts at the time, John Hancock.

Badges Earned:

Find a Grave Marked

Sources:

http://www.annebonnypirate.com/famous-female-pirates/rachel-wall/

http://www.masshist.org/beehiveblog/2018/09/rachel-walls-confession-the-words-of-a-pirate/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/74764082/rachel-schmidt-wall

437) Tsai Ing-wen

437: Tsai Ing-Wen

Former President of the Republic of China (also known as Taiwan)

Born: 31 August 1956, Taipei, Taiwan

Tsai is a lawyer and legal scholar. In 1984, she earned her PhD in Law from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences.

Tsai was re-elected president to a second term in 2020, and left office in January 2024. Her vice president won the election for president, marking the first time in Taiwanese history that a political party won the presidency for three terms in a row.

She is the first female leader and first unmarried president of Taiwan. Before becoming president, Tsai also held the distinction of being the first female chair of a major Taiwanese political party. She is also the first female head of state in Asian history to not be born into a political family (her parents ran an automotive repair shop).

Tsai has promised to make Taiwan’s economy stronger by enhancing their expertise in biotech, defense, and green energy.

Tsai has come under fire from mainland China for her continued good-will relations with the United States. In October of 2019, Tsai re-emphasized her role in breaking away from Beijing and supporting the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. In her speech on National Day, she stated, “Hong Kong is on the verge of chaos due to the failure of ‘One Country Two Systems’. And still, China is threatening to impose its ‘One Country Two Systems Taiwan model’ on us… When freedom and democracy are challenged and the Republic of China’s existence is under threat, we must stand up and defend ourselves.”

Sources:

https://english.president.gov.tw/Page/40

https://www.ft.com/content/e69e642a-eb15-11e9-85f4-d00e5018f061

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2024/1/13/24037173/taiwan-china-lai-ching-te-democracy-taipei-united-states-vote-elections