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1844 |
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Men from Burlington County petitioned the New Jersey Constitutional
Convention to enfranchise women. Their petition went unheeded and the
Constitutional Convention validated the Act of 1807 and wrote white male
suffrage into the new Constitution. |
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1845 |
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Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887) sent her "memorial" to the New Jersey
senate regarding the inhumane care of the state's mentally ill. |
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Susan Waters, of Bordentown, was well known for her primitive style
paintings. |
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1846 |
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The New Jersey legislature revised its abolition law: enslaved blacks
became apprentices for life; their children were free. |
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Women in Salem, New Jersey organized the Martha Washington Salem Union,
No. 4, a chapter of the Daughters of Temperance, pledging not to "make,
sell, or use" alcoholic beverages. |
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1848 |
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New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum opened in Ewing Township, near Trenton,
resulting from reform efforts of Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887). |
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1849 |
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The New Jersey Legislature passed the state's first law criminalizing
the practice of abortion. Causing and procuring "the miscarriage
of a woman then pregnant with child" was deemed a misdemeanor, or high
misdemeanor if the pregnant woman died. |
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1850 |
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The population of New Jersey was 490,000 people, 49.8% of whom were
female, 4.9% of whom were black, and 17.6% lived in urban areas. |
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1852 |
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New Jersey’s first "Married Women's Property Act" was passed by the New
Jersey legislature. This Act, granted married women the right to hold
and control property they brought into marriage. It was the first
of many laws that subsequently, over time, dismantled the Common
Law principle of coverture, under which married women were subsumed into
the civil identity of their husbands. |
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Clara Barton
(1821-1912) an advocate of publicly funded schools opened Bordentown's
first public school. |
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1853 |
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A Utopian community, the Raritan Bay Union, near Perth Amboy,
established a coeducational and racially integrated school called
Eagleswood Academy (1854-1861). Abolitionists Sarah Grimke (1792-1873)
and Angelina Grimke Weld (1805-1879) taught at the Academy. |
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1854 |
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The Commuter railroad from Jersey City to New Brunswick advertised a
"Ladies Car" on all through lines for the use of women. The growing New
Jersey railroad network made travel safer and more accessible for women.
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1855 |
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A normal school for teacher training was begun in Trenton (which later
became Trenton State College, now The College of New Jersey), thus
giving women opportunities for further education and encouraging the
teaching profession for women. |
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1857 |
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In February, Harriet Lafetra, a Hicksite Quaker from Shrewsbury, led
Monmouth county residents in petitioning the state legislature on behalf
of women’s rights and woman suffrage.
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1858 |
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Lucy Stone (1818-1893), abolitionist
and women’s rights advocate, refused to pay the real estate taxes
on her home in East Orange to protest New Jersey women' s
disenfranchisement and charged taxation without representation. |
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1860 |
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The population of New Jersey was 672,000 people, 50.1% of whom were
female, 3.7% of whom were black, and 32.7.6% lived in urban areas. This
was the first census in which more than 50% of the population was
female. |
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Plainfield Opheleton Seminary was one of several private secondary
schools around the state that catered to the daughters of well-to-do
families. |
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Through the work of Mother Mary Xavier Mehagen, the Sisters of Charity
of New Jersey opened their motherhouse, named for Saint Elizabeth, in
Madison at Convent Station. |
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1861 |
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In April, shortly after the firing on Fort Sumter, women of Newark
founded a soldiers' relief society, and Camden women began the Ladies'
Aid Society and Ladies' Relief Association to aid the Union Army in the
Civil War. |
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| 1863 |
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Graves of Civil War Nurses, Annie L. Reeder and Arabella W.
Barlow burried in Bordentown and Sommerville. |
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| 1864 |
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Women of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware held the Central Fair of
the U.S. Sanitary Commission on June 7 to raise money for Civil War
relief efforts. |
| |
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Ellen Clementine Howarth (1827-1899), Trenton
poet, published The Wind Harp, and Other Poems, her first volume
of poetry. |
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| 1865 |
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Mary Mapes Dodge (1830-1905) published her classic children's story,
Hans Brinker: or the Silver Skates. |
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| 1866 |
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Lily Martin Spencer (1822-1902) was one of the
most prominent artists of the mid-to-late 19th century and supported her
family through her career. |
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| 1867 |
|
The New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association held its first convention in
Vineland. Lucy Stone (1818-1893) was elected its first president. |
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Lucy Stone addressed the New Jersey
legislature on the need for woman suffrage. |
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| 1868 |
|
Women of Vineland were reportedly the first to protest vote in municipal
and Presidential elections.
(List of
Women Who Voted) |
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|
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Antoinette Brown Blackwell and Lucy Stone,
together with citizens from Newark, petitioned the state legislature for
the right to vote and married women’s property rights. The legislature
denied the petition. |
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) and her
family settled in Tenafly, where she spent several months a year until
1886 and worked on strategy for the national suffrage campaign. It
was here that she and her close friend, Susan B. Anthony, with Matilda
Joslyn Gage, wrote the first three volumes of the monumental History of
Women's Suffrage.
|
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Lucy Stone
(1818-1893), living in the Roseville section of Newark, published her
pamphlet, Reasons Why the Women of New Jersey Should Vote, drawn
from her 1867 speech to the New Jersey legislature.
|
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Increased emphasis on efficiency in housework
and new ways to manufacture household implements encouraged
entrepreneurial women and men, to devise innovative goods.
|
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| 1869 |
 |
Antoinette Brown Blackwell
(1825-1921) of Somerville, the first ordained woman minister in the
United States, helped to found the American Women's Suffrage Association
and also served as vice-president of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage
Association. |
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The newly organized New Jersey Woman Suffrage
Association petitioned the New Jersey legislature for woman suffrage.
The Senate Judiciary Committee publicly ridiculed the petition. |
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| 1870 |
|
The population of New Jersey was 906,000 people, 50.3% of whom were
female, 3.4% of whom were black, and 43.7% lived in urban areas. |
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| 1871 |
|
The New Jersey legislature belatedly
ratified the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which guaranteed
the vote to black and white men, but not to black and white women.
|
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| 1872 |
|
Woman's Club of Orange, the first woman's club in New Jersey, was
founded. Suffragist Henrietta W. Johnson was elected president. |
| |
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The New Jersey legislature passed a law
giving women and men equal custody of children in a divorce. Ann Hora
Connelly (1824-1880) initiated the reform. In other legislation, married
women were given the right to their personal property and inheritance.
|
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Mary Virginia Hawes Terhune (1830-1922) of Pompton Lakes, known as
Marion Harland, published Common Sense in the Household, the
first of her housekeeping advice books. |
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| 1873 |
|
The New Jersey legislature passed
legislation that made women eligible to serve as school trustees.
|
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| 1874 |
|
Phoebe Coffin Hanaford (1829-1921), one of the first female ordained
ministers in the U.S., began a pastorate at the Universalist Church of
the Good Shepherd in Jersey City. |
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Women in Newark joined in the woman’s crusade for temperance. Shortly
thereafter the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of New Jersey was
founded in Newark with two member unions, one from Newark and one from
Rahway. |
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| 1875 |
|
The New Jersey Legislature passed an act requiring that every girl and
boy between 8 and 14 should go to school at least 12 weeks a year, 6
weeks of which should be consecutive. |
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|
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Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825-1921) of Somerville, published The
Sexes throughout Nature in which she argued that the sexes of every
species were equal and contributed equally to evolution. |
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| 1878 |
 |
The newly formed Bureau of Statistics of Labor and Industries of New
Jersey stated in its first annual report that the vast majority of women
and girls in factories and industries worked a 60 hour week. It found
women working in tobacco manufacture, in clothing, underwear, knitwear
and hosiery manufacture, in boot and shoe making, in silk, cotton and
wool manufacture, in the making of bricks, candles, soap, trunks and
bags, rubber shoes, and in flour milling. Many women worked as
agriculture laborers and domestic servants. |
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| 1879 |
 |
Carrie Cook Sanborn, nineteenth-century Quaker artist, was head of the
Cedar Arts Colony, Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, c.1879. |
Joan N. Burstyn, ed., Past and Promise:
Lives of New Jersey Women (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press,
1997).
Delight W. Dodyk, "Education and Agitation:
the Woman Suffrage Movement in New Jersey," (Unpublished Ph.D.
Dissertation, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, 1997)
Howard L. Green, ed., Words that Make
New Jersey History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995).
Carmela A. Karnoutsos, New Jersey Women
(Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1997).
Maxine N. Lurie, ed., A New Jersey
Anthology (Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1994).
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