Sorosis

Sorosis Club rules in 1869

Sorosis (est. March 1868) of New York City was the first professional women's club in the United States.

History

The club was organized in New York City with 12 members in March 1868, by Jane Cunningham Croly.[1] Among its founding members[2] were Josephine Pollard, a children's author, and Fanny Fern, a popular columnist who had been angered at newspaper women being excluded from the all-male New York Press Club when it had an honorary dinner for the author Charles Dickens the month before.[1][3] Sorosis was incorporated in January 1869. Alice Cary was the first president. Within one year, Sorosis had 83 members.

Sorosis is a latinate word meaning 'aggregation' (from the Greek sōros, meaning ‘heap’). Its object was to further the educational and social activities of women by bringing representative women of accomplishment in art, literature, science, and kindred pursuits.

The University of Texas at San Antonio houses a collection of records for the San Antonio chapter of Sorosis. The collection spans the years 1923 through 1991 and provides information about the club's members and activities primarily through minutes, photographs, scrapbooks and yearbooks.[4]

Notable members

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 The Encyclopedia Americana: A Library of Universal Knowledge, vol. 2, 1920, p. 466.
  2. Croly, Jane Cunningham (1898). The History of the Woman's Club Movement in America, Volume 1. New York: General Federation of Women's Clubs by H. G. Allen & Co. p. 18. OCLC 7178478.
  3. Warren, Fanny Fern: An Independent Woman, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1994, p. 270, accessed 19 January 2011
  4. "Sorosis Records, 1856-1972". Five Colleges Archives. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Willard, Frances Elizabeth, 1839-1898; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice, 1820-1905 (1893). A woman of the century; fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life. Buffalo, N.Y., Moulton. Retrieved 8 August 2017. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Binheim, Max; Elvin, Charles A. (1928). Women of the West: A Series of Biographical Sketches of Living Eminent Women in the Eleven Western States of the United States of America. Los Angeles: Publishers Press. Retrieved August 6, 2017. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  7. "Dr. Phoebe Jane Babcock Wait - 31 Jan 1904, Sun • Page 7". The New York Times: 7. 1904. Retrieved 4 October 2017.

Further reading

  • Rakow, Lana F. and Kramarae, Cheris, Women's Source Library, Vol. IV: The Revolution in Words, pp. 243–245
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