Cast Iron Women

10/01/2022

Leonie von Meusebach–Zesch became a dentist at nineteen in 1902, starting her career in San Francisco. Over the years, she worked in Arizona, where Leonie drove around in her Model T car, holding mobile clinics all over the state. Then, for fifteen years she worked in Alaska, where she at times commuted by airplane, once surviving a plane crash. And often to get around the state's interior to serve the local Inuit population and others, she traveled by dog sled in a custom sixteen-foot sled.

—
Sources: Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame / Wikimedia Commons

To join our mailing list: https://historicalsnapshots.substack.com

03/09/2022

Mary Elizabeth Lease.

03/08/2022

Make sure to check out Cari's new business venture at Moon Mountain Provisions! Congratulations, Cari, on your wonderful products! Shop here:

Made with Magic on Mount Hood Shop Now  Botanically inspired products. Locally grown, ethically wild harvested and responsibly sourced ingredients. Small batch made.Woman owned and operated.   Bath and Body Seasonal and Limited Availability From the Farm   Shop Now Our Partners Family owned farm...

01/24/2022

01/18/2022

By the time Helen Dortch married Gen. James Longstreet in September 1897, she was already quite accomplished. A newspaper account described her as “one of the most conspicuous among the progressive women of the new south.” She began working as a newspaper reporter and editor at fifteen. In 1894 she became the first woman to hold office in Georgia when she was appointed assistant state librarian. The state legislature had to change the law before she could assume office.

The papers made much of the difference in their ages – Longstreet was 76 and she was 34 – but theirs was by all accounts a happy marriage for the seven years they shared together. She was his constant companion until the moment of his death, and she fiercely defended his legacy until her own death in 1962. She labored to achieve equal rights for women and for African Americans, even mounting a write in campaign for Governor of Georgia where she promised to “unhood the ruffians” of the Ku Klux Klan. “I’ll make this state a place where even the humblest Negro can go to sleep at night and be assured of waking up in the morning, unless the Almighty calls.”

The “frail but vivacious” widow Longstreet was 80 years old when she went to work as a riveter building B-29s at the Bell Aircraft plant in Atlanta. The year was 1943, and she was determined to do her part to bring World War II to an end. “This is the most horrible war of them all. It makes Gen. Sherman look like a piker. I want to get it over with. I want to build bombers to bomb Hitler.” In 1947, Helen Dortch Longstreet became the first woman to have her portrait placed in the Georgia State Capitol. She died in 1962 at the age of 99.

01/07/2021

Recall the words of Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address at the conclusion of the Civil War: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

03/11/2019

Absolutely stunning. What skill! It’s a shame she was never acknowledged

Ann Cole Lowe was first thrust into the world of fashion design after the death of her mother. Lowe moved to New York to study fashion design. After graduation she moved to Florida, but soon returned to New York to work as a designer for elites like the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts. In 1946, under the pseudonym, Sonia Rosenburg, she designed the dress Olivia de Havilland wore as she accepted the Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

In 1953, Lowe designed Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' wedding dress to John F. Kennedy. About 10 days before the wedding ceremony a water line broke in Lowe's New York City studio - ruining the wedding dress and bridesmaids dresses. Lowe worked with her team to recreate the designs in just 8 days to make the wedding date. However, she was never publicly acknowledged by the future First Lady, who only referred to her dressmaker as a “colored woman.”

Pictured: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' wedding dress designed by Ann Cole Lowe.

03/10/2019

03/09/2017

On International Women's Day, we'd like to remind all our lady friends that you are Cast Iron Women, and you are never in this alone!

02/21/2017

Tonight, Bee is making this amazing and beautiful meal for her hubby's birthday. And of course, it's made with Lodge Cast Iron!