Z•E•S•T

FOR LIVING
A woman’s place is in the history books
‘More Than Petticoats’
explores varied roles
of state’s exceptional women
By gloria stravelli
Staff Writer

LISA MUTTER Lynn Wenzel (l-r) and Carol Binkowski are co-authors of a book about the lives of a dozen trailblazing New Jersey women.

They were warriors, slaves, suffragettes, nurses, ministers and daredevils who helped chart the course of New Jersey history by challenging social, gender, racial and economic barriers.

The 12 exceptional women whose lives are celebrated in More Than Petticoats: Remarkable New Jersey Women were catalysts in sweeping cultural movements like abolition, suffrage, temperance, religious reformation and civil rights, and all were born before the turn of the 20th century.

"From a local angle, it really hits home. These women were right here in New Jersey. Certainly to see what these women did in history and what they overcame is so inspirational," said Carol Binkowski, co-author with Lynn Wenzel, of More Than Petticoats, recently published by Globe Pequot Press/TwoDot Books.

Binkowski, of Bloomfield, and Wenzel, a former New Jerseyean who now lives in Nevada City, Calif., recently attended a reading and book signing at the Red Bank Library.

Above, Sylvia Dubois with her daughter, Elizabeth Alexander, circa 1882. At left, Antoinette Brown Blackwell.

The most local of the women profiled in More Than Petticoats is Monmouth County’s Revolutionary "warrior," Mary Ludwig Hays Macauley, better known as "Molly Pitcher," whose legendary valor on the battlefield the authors believe they have substantiated through their research.

"We wanted to prove she did exist," Wenzel said.

According to the authors of the 187-page book, Macauley’s role in joining her husband, an infantryman and gunner, on the battlefield serves to illuminate the fact that wives often marched along with their soldier-husbands and contributed importantly to the welfare of the troops.

"Although women’s roles ... have been rendered almost invisible by historians, they actually played an integral and essential part in the day-to-day function of army life as nurses, suppliers and fighters," they wrote.

Other trailblazing New Jersey women profiled include Sylvia Dubois, a slave determined to live free; abolitionist Abigail Goodwin; Antoinette Brown Blackwell, America’s first ordained woman minister; Clara Maas, a nurse who sacrificed her life to help find a cure for yellow fever; Jessie Redmon Fauset, whose writings nurtured the Harlem Renaissance; Alice Stokes Paul, author of the Equal Rights Amendment; Alice Huyler Ramsey, pioneer automobile endurance driver; and Hannah Silverman, a labor activist who organized a strike that changed labor laws.

"These women and countless others as yet undiscovered gave New Jersey a richness and character it would otherwise not have had," the authors wrote in the introduction to More Than Petticoats.

Binkowski and Wenzel met through a writers’ group for women when both lived in North Jersey. A common interest in collecting sheet music led to their collaboration on I Hear America Singing: A Nostalgic Tour of Popular Sheet Music, a social history of American sheet music published in 1989.

Binkowski, a freelance writer and musician, wrote Musical New York: An Informal Guide to Its History and Legends and a Walking Tour of Its Sites and Landmarks, published in 1999. She is organist at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York.

Wenzel, who moved to the West Coast in 1995, is a nationally syndicated feature writer on antiques and collectibles and was managing editor of New Directions for Women, an international feminist news magazine. In addition, her essays and articles on women’s history have appeared in publications including Newsweek and Ms.

When Wenzel suggested a New Jersey version of the More Than Petticoats series and got the go-ahead from editors, she asked Binkowski to co-author the book.

The two began by making lists of women they thought should be included in the book, drawing on resources such as libraries, archives and historical societies.

"We each came up with a list of 20-25 women," Binkowski said. "Whittling the list was hard. There were some difficult tradeoffs because we also wanted people whose lives made interesting reading." 

"We were trying to get a broad overview," added Wenzel. "We wanted to touch on as many areas as possible, science, the arts, religion. We also wanted to be sure to have women of color, women of different ethnic backgrounds. All those things informed our choices."

Working 3,000 miles apart, both authors researched and wrote a chapter on each of the women. They exchanged each chapter, edited each other’s work and merged their writing into a single chapter on each of the 12 women.

Each brought a somewhat different perspective to the task.

Binkowski tended to focus on the motivational and inspirational aspect of the women’s stories, she said. For instance, the life of Alice Huyler Ramsey, the first woman to drive an automobile cross country, had particular appeal to her.

"I just love to drive and had recently taken a 2,000-mile round-trip automobile trek," she said. "I related to her because I know that took guts. She didn’t have a service station every few miles or a cell phone. Each woman had something very special and very inspirational.

"We found women who were not only well-known, but there were a lot of women I didn’t know about, and it was so much fun to learn about them and their contributions," she added.

For Wenzel, who cites extensive involvement in the women’s movement, the research was a journey of discovery about the lives of women who, for the most part, she was meeting for the first time.

"The only one I knew about was Alice Stokes Paul because of my work in the women’s movement. The rest of them were wonderfully new to me," she explained.

A favorite find was Antoinette Brown Blackwell, she noted.

"She was vociferous in working for women’s rights and at the same time a great scholar, a warm and loving person able to balance marriage, family responsibilities, her work in the women’s movement, scientific research and her spirituality," Wenzel said. "I wish she were living today. I would love to be her friend."

Among the obscure lives illuminated by the book are those of Dubois, a slave who ultimately secured her freedom; Goodwin, a stationmaster on the Underground Railroad; and, perhaps the least known, Hannah Silverman, a labor activist who was the catalyst for a workers’ strike that led to labor law reform.

"It was very difficult to find original information on Silverman," Wenzel explained, "but we found enough information about the labor movement in Paterson to be able to flesh her life out. We had to go to original labor union material, and there was one newspaper article about a march she led. Mostly, other than a few obscure mentions, we had to re-create her life by extrapolating what we knew about the Paterson silk strike of 1913 and conditions in the prisons. But it is historically accurate.

"It was important to do this book," Wenzel noted, "because any time I can shed light on the lives of women who made a difference, I want to do it."

"It really represents a true picture of the women," added Binkowski, "and how one person’s contribution can really make such a great difference."