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Nov 20 2013

Iowa’s Mesquakie tribe

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“Soon, moreover, I was told, ‘This is your little ax,’ when a little ax was brought. I was glad. ‘This is your wood-strap,’ I was told. My mother and I would go out to cut wood; and I carried the little wood that I had cut on my back. She would strap them for me. She instructed me how to tie them up. Soon I began to go a little ways off by myself to cut wood.

“And when I was eleven years old I likewise continually watched her as she would make bags. ‘Well you try to make one,’ she said to me. She braided up one little bag for me. She instructed me how to make it. Sure enough, I nearly learned how to make it, but I made it very badly. I was again told ‘You make another.’ It was somewhat larger. And soon I knew how to make it very well… She would be very proud after I had learned to make anything. ‘There, you will make things for yourself after you care for yourself. That is why I constrain you to make anything, not to treat you meanly. I let you do things so that you may make something. If you happen to know how to make everything when you no longer see me, you will not have a hard time in any way.’”

—Autobiography of a Fox Woman (1925)

Today we’re combining Women’s History Wednesday with Native American Heritage Month to feature these images of Iowa’s Mesquakie tribe, from the Iowa Women’s Archives Noble Collection, along with a published autobiography excerpt held by the State Historical Society of Iowa.

From their home in the Great Lakes region, the Mesquakie (formerly known as the Fox tribe) relocated to Iowa during the 18th and early 19th century following warfare against French fur traders and other Native American tribes. In 1845, the U.S. Government forced them out of Iowa to a reservation in Kansas, but many tribe members remained in secret, and others returned after a few years. The Iowa legislature enacted a law in 1856 allowing them to stay, and sold them back some of their land. Today the Mesquakie own 3,000 acres. [source]

Iowa Digital Library: Mesquakie photographic postcards

Iowa Digital Library: Excerpts from Autobiography of a Fox Woman

*This post is duplicated from the Iowa Women’s Archives Tumblr.

Nov 13 2013

Iowa women’s suffrage

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Women’s History Wednesday!

Around this date in 1910, Iowa women were tying on their driving scarves, preparing to motor off to the women’s suffrage state convention in Corydon. While their efforts to pass statewide legislation ultimately failed, Iowa women kept rallying, and eventually received the right to vote in 1920 through the passage of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Iowa Digital Library: Suffrage documents, 1910s

IWA online exhibit: Iowa Suffrage Scrapbook

*This post is duplicated from the Iowa Women’s Archives Tumblr.

Nov 11 2013

Myrtle Aydelotte in the Army Nurse Corps

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Myrtle Kitchell Aydelotte entered the Army Nurse Corps as an assistant chief nurse at the 26th General Hospital in North Africa in 1942, and in 1945 became chief nurse at the 52nd Station Hospital in Italy. At the University of Iowa, she held many positions from 1949 through 1976, including professor of nursing, Director and Dean of the College of Nursing, and director of nursing for the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

In 2008, Kathleen Krebs interviewed Aydelotte about her WWII experiences. Here are some excerpts from her summary of the interview:

“North Africa was a completely different and tremendous learning experience for Kitch and all of her unit. They landed to warmth, sunny skies, exotic aromas, ragged beggars, chaos, and the welcome availability of fresh fruit that, while it was most welcome, also made many nurses sick because it was so long since they had had any. Their bodies had become overly sensitive to citrus.”

“At Bizot, they were forced to set up their hospital in tents, some 400 of them, first housing 1000, then later 2000 beds.”

“Keeping things sterile was the number one priority and amid blowing dirt and sand, operating almost continuously with insufficient supplies, and with many infected wounds, this was a major priority and vigilance was at a maximum to prevent cross-contamination of patients. Flies were the bane of their existence and they discovered that their helmets were all-purpose vessels: they could bathe, shampoo, and launder in them.”

Myrtle K. Aydelotte donated her papers, including her memoirs, to the Iowa Women’s Archives in 1996.

Guide to the Myrtle Kitchell Aydelotte Papers

Iowa Digital Library

*This post is duplicated from the Iowa Women’s Archives Tumblr.

Nov 9 2013

Code for Coeds

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The “Code for Coeds” is a guide to campus life that was given to incoming women students at the University of Iowa from 1937 to 1968. This 1944-45 edition is included in the Louise Goldman Papers, and Goldman edited the handbook for the University Women’s Association.

Sounds like parties at the Union were very classy, with an orchestra, program, and soft lighting. Indeed, “There’s nothing like Iowa on a Saturday night!”

Guide to the Louise Goldman Papers

[From: Louise Goldman Papers. Series 2: State University of Iowa (University of Iowa). “Code for Coeds” – 1944-1945.]

*This post is duplicated from the Iowa Women’s Archives Tumblr.

Nov 8 2013

Living Learning Community in IWA

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On Tuesday of this week, the Iowa Women’s Archives held an event for the “New in Town” Living Learning Community. We asked the question, “What was it like to be a student at Iowa 100 years ago?” Each table represented a decade from the 1910’s all the way to the 2000’s, so the group of first year students got the chance to explore the history of student life at the University of Iowa. Scrapbooks and yearbooks were a big hit!

*This post is duplicated from the Iowa Women’s Archives Tumblr.

Nov 6 2013

“The Newhall Girls of 1927”

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Welcome to Women’s History Wednesday!

In 1924, the Iowa High School Athletic Association decided that organized basketball was “unhealthy” for girls and announced their decision to eliminate the girls’ state championship tournament. In response, female athletes statewide took action; that included members of the Newhall team, pictured here, who rode on horseback from farm to farm to win their neighbors’ support.

Those efforts paid off big for Newhall’s players, who in 1927 won the first-ever girls state championship under the newly-founded Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union. After a breathless night following the game remotely — it wasn’t broadcast on the radio, so fans gathered at a Newhall restaurant where the tournament plays were called out via a long-distance phone call — the whole town turned out the next morning to welcome their champions back home.

As one newspaper report described it, “The Newhall Girls of 1927 have given the town a place in the sun.”

Newhall items from the Rural Women Digital Collection

*This post is duplicated from the Iowa Women’s Archives Tumblr.

Nov 1 2013

Gladys Conn’s five-year diary

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A five-year diary belonging to Gladys Conn, social worker and graduate of the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa). The first entry in the diary is dated January 1, 1932, at which time she would have been in school. It’s hard to tell what year this entry is from, but here is what Gladys wrote on November 1:

The Tragedy of Niginsky by ___

Enjoyed very much

It turns out that “The Tragedy of Nijinsky” is by Anatole Bourman and Dorothy Lyman and was first published in 1936. So it appears that Gladys did continue to use this diary, at least occasionally, over the span of a few years. And isn’t that usually the way it is with these five-year diaries?

Guide to the Gladys Conn Papers

[From: Gladys Conn Papers. Series 3: Diaries. Chronological (2 volumes). 1929-1932.]

*This post is duplicated from the Iowa Women’s Archives Tumblr.

Oct 30 2013

Mildred Wirt Benson, Iowa’s most successful “ghost”

"Ghost Gables"

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Welcome to Women’s History Wednesday, now in our fancy new home at the Iowa Women’s Archives tumblr!

Despite our recent Mildred Wirt Benson gif-a-thon, we couldn’t resist one more post on Iowa’s most successful “ghost” for Halloween.

In a 1973 essay for our Books at Iowa journal, Benson described getting her start as a ghost writer. Soon after graduating from the University of Iowa in 1925, she was hired by Stratemeyer Syndicate as one of “a few ‘ghosts’ who accepted a brief plot outline, vanished, and returned to the office weeks later with a finished manuscript.” She eventually took on an assignment to launch the Nancy Drew series, and created a strong, independent heroine — one who “might rate as a pioneer of Women’s Lib,” according to Benson. The Syndicate was initially less than pleased:

“Mr. Stratemeyer expressed bitter disappointment when he received the first manuscript, The Secret of the Old Clock, saying the heroine was much too flip and would never be well received. On the contrary, when the first three volumes hit the market they were an immediate cash-register success for the syndicate. Over a thirty-eight-year period, the series was printed in seventeen languages and, according to a published report [from 1969], achieved sales of more than 30,000,000 copies.”

Benson then states the most blood-chilling part of her tale: “As ‘ghost’ I received $125 to $250 a story, all rights released.”

Read Benson’s “The Ghost of Ladora” essay

Browse the Mildred Wirt Benson digital collection

*This post is duplicated from the Iowa Women’s Archives Tumblr.