Category: Featured
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Minnie Schneider Karr
1855-1938 Her obituary states she was “a veteran feminist…a pioneer suffrage worker and led suffrage picket lines. She was a founder of the National Women’s Party which had as its object the abolishment of all discrimination in the law against women and was active in the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom and the…
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Margaret Brydon Laird
1871-1968 Margaret Laird was a leader in the women’s suffrage movement and NJ’s first Assemblywoman, elected with Jennie C. Van Ness. She was born in Newark and lived there most of her life. She attended Newark schools and graduated the Newark City Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1895 and lived in Newark until the…
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Aileen Fong Shane
1926-2017 Born and raised in Newark’s Chinatown Aileen Fong Shane was an early woman engineer, graduating from Newark College of Engineering in 1946, at just age 19. In a 1947 article in the Star Ledger she was called an “outstanding female student” who graduated “near top of her class.. one of few woman mechanical engineers…
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Ellen C. King
c. 1839-1936 Ellen C. King was the daughter of Mary Thompson King and sister of Harriet King Brown and Marcia King Stillwell. She was born at 70 Warren Street and lived there most of her life. She lived to age 97. Ellen went to North Carolina after the Civil War to help establish a school…
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Esther R Newman
c. 1883 – 1901 Esther Newman was the first woman graduate of the NJ College of Pharmacy along with Emma Egge. She graduated in April and died in August due to appendicitis after an operation. She was listed as a prize winner at the graduation, graduating with high honors and had been appointed Chief Pharmacist…
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Margaret Douglas Haines
1884-1966 Margaret Haines was a lifelong resident of Newark. She was a member of the General Assembly from 1949-1953, taught at Garfield and Avon Ave Schools, was a canteen worker and ambulance driver in WWI and a Signal corps driver and USO Organizer in Newark in WWII. The Newark News called her “the antithesis of…
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Theresa Knight Moore
*See below note on surnames 15 Mar 1907 – Feb 16, 1983 Theresa Knight Moore was the first African American employed at Newark Public Library in a professional position. Theresa became a “library assistant” at Springfield Branch in 1937, which was likely a librarian position. The appointment was made with the help of the Urban…
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Griselda Ellis
1870- Sept 8, 1949 Griselda Ellis considered herself “Newark born and bred”. She was appointed Principal of the Girls Vocational School in 1914 and remained so until her retirement in 1927. She said, “If I had my life to live over again I would certainly go into teaching.” Griselda helped grow the school from 40…