The Criteria for a Strong Woman

by Linda Harris Sittig

April is the yearly anniversary of this blog. So, I am now embarking on year #14!

 When I started the blog, I did so because I had discovered an ancestor, Ellen Canavan Nolan. In 1862, she, along with my great-grandfather, developed a new type of cloth that they sold to the Federal government for use in manufacturing soldiers’ uniforms. No one in our family had ever heard of Ellen. She had been an Irish immigrant with a dream. Not rich, not highly educated, Irish Catholic—numerous strikes against succeeding. But she persevered.

She helped my great-grandfather become quite prosperous, but she died young. And my great-grandfather buried her with only his name for identification in the graveyard: Mrs. James Nolan.

Here was a woman who helped to change how soldiers’ uniforms would be made from then on. Yet, once she died, she disappeared from history.

I began to wonder how many other women had done something extraordinary with their lives, only to pass into oblivion.

To pay tribute to her as a strong woman, I wrote my first historical fiction novel, Cut from Strong Cloth, and then started this blog, Strong Women in History. I had hoped to find enough Strong Women who were relatively unknown by today’s standards to write for at least one year.

Here I am now, 14 years later.

I have profiled women who were medical pioneers in various fields, such as Elizabeth Kenny and her treatment for polio. I wrote about Cicely Saunders, the British woman who founded the hospice movement, and Gladys Aylward, a missionary who helped break the tradition of foot binding in China. I wrote about women who were incredibly talented artists, like Karin Bergöö, but were overshadowed by their famous artist husbands.

The stories of strong women started falling in my lap as blog followers would write and ask, “Hey, have you heard of this woman?”

Only two of the 150+ women I have profiled were famous: Cleopatra and Eleanor
Roosevelt. There were others who might have been known in their native countries but not appreciated in the larger world. I am thinking of Sigríður Tómasdóttir, the young woman who initiated eco-preservation in Iceland, or Anna Coleman Ladd, the woman in France who developed a technique for making facial masks to conceal the deformities of men subjected to mustard gas in WWI.

Twice, I wrote about Strong Women in my own life. One was my third-grade teacher, Marjorie Doremus, a victim of polio who taught from a wheelchair and changed all of our lives when she managed to arrange a class trip to the town library and signed each of us up for our first library card. The other woman, Edythe Fox, was struck down with debilitating multiple sclerosis but became a can-do symbol for our high school when she chaired soliciting gift items to be raffled off for the senior class graduation. Each of us, all 189, received one of those gifts.

What have I learned from all the Strong Women?

Every single one, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or age, pursued a dream. They each were faced with overwhelming obstacles and failures, but they persevered. They persevered to make this world a better place, and as such, they deserve our recognition.

So, on this day in April, I salute all the Strong Women I have written about and look forward to the stories yet to be penned. And most of all, I thank Ellen Canavan Nolan for starting me on this journey.

If you are not yet a follower of this blog, join the other 1,340 followers from 64 different countries and sign up on the righthand sidebar. Once a month, you’ll be alerted to a new Strong Woman.

You can catch me on my website, www.lindasittig.com, or find my five published books in bookstores and online.

            Cut From Strong Cloth

            Last Curtain Call

            Counting Crows

B-52 DOWN

Opening Closed Doors: The Story of Josie Murray

And hopefully soon….. Chasing The Tides.

Linda😊