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COLLECTION Identifier: A-68, Series II: M-133, reel E11-12

Papers of Elizabeth Boynton Harbert in the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection, 1870-1939

Overview

Series II of the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection.

Dates

  • Creation: 1870-1939

Creator

Language of Materials

Materials in English.

Access Restrictions:

Access. ORIGINALS CLOSED. USE MICROFILM. REQUEST AS: M-133, REEL E11-12.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright. Copyright in the papers created by Elizabeth Boynton Harbert as well as copyright in other papers in the collection may be held by their authors, or the authors' heirs or assigns.

Copying. Papers may be copied in accordance with the library's usual procedures.

Extent

11 folders
6 Volumes

This series includes clippings, programs, flyers, brochures, reports, correspondence, photographs, minutes, and speeches documenting the suffrage movement, particularly in Illinois. Correspondents include many well-known women involved in the suffrage and temperance movements. Clippings from the "Woman's Kingdom" were pasted into scrapbooks (#22v-27v) in approximate chronological order and provide information about a variety of women's activities, particularly in the Midwest. Loose material in the scrapbooks was filmed at the end of each volume.

BIOGRAPHY

Elizabeth Morrison (Boynton) Harbert, suffragist, lecturer, author, and editor, was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana on April 15, 1845 (one source gives 1843), the daughter of William and Abigail Upton (Sweetser) Boynton. She graduated from Terre Haute Female College in 1862 and earned a Ph.D. from Ohio Wesleyan University. She married William S. Harbert on October 18, 1870; they had three children, and lived in Chicago, Iowa, and later California.

Harbert served as president of the Illinois Woman Suffrage Association (1876-1984), and, after the IWSA became the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association in 1885, served four more one-year terms. She was also president of the Cook County (Illinois) Woman Suffrage Society. In 1877 Harbert became the first editor of "Woman's Kingdom," a section in the Chicago Inter Ocean that covered women's activities. A member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, she resigned as editor of "Woman's Kingdom" in 1884 because of the journal's anti-prohibition, anti-suffrage editorial board. Harbert was proprietor and editor of The New Era of Chicago for one year, probably 1885.

Harbert organized the Evanston Woman's Club in 1889 and was its president for seven years. An active social reformer, she was associate president of the World's Unity League, vice-president of the Woman`s Civic League of Pasadena, vice-president of the Southern California Woman's Press Association, and president of the National Household Economic Association. In addition to her editorial and service work, Harbert lectured for suffrage. She died in Pasadena, California on January 19, 1925. Further biographical information may be found in Woman's Who's Who of America, 1914-1915 (New York, 1914), and A Woman of the Century (Buffalo, 1893).

Physical Location

Collection stored off site: researchers must request access 36 hours before use.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Accession number: 56-121

Processing Information

Reprocessed: June 1990

By: Kim Brookes,Bert Hartry,Katherine Kraft,Jane Ward

Title
Harbert, Elizabeth Boynton, 1845-1925. Papers of Elizabeth Boynton Harbert in the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection, 1870-1939: A Finding Aid
Author
Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America
Language of description
eng
EAD ID
sch00405

Repository Details

Part of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute Repository

The preeminent research library on the history of women in the United States, the Schlesinger Library documents women's lives from the past and present for the future. In addition to its traditional strengths in the history of feminisms, women’s health, and women’s activism, the Schlesinger collections document the intersectional workings of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class in American history.

Contact:
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