Spotlight on Famous Female Ohioans
By Damaine Vonada
Posted On: Feb 23, 2023
Learn all about extraordinary Ohio women whose wide-ranging achievements not only made history, but also made them famous. From an actor to an astronaut, and an author to an aviation pioneer, discover the stories of incredible women who call Ohio home.
Image courtesy of Visit Cincy
Harriet Beecher Stowe
When President Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862, he reportedly remarked, “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” That book, of course, was Uncle Tom’s Cabin – the anti-slavery novel that crystallized the Civil War’s underlying issue and made Stowe a best-selling author.
Many of the landmark book’s most compelling episodes came from Underground Railroad stories she heard during the 1830s while living in Cincinnati at what is now known as the Harriet Beecher Stowe House.
Image courtesy of Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums
Lucy Webb Hayes
In addition to being the state that claims that most U.S. Presidents (eight in total) Ohio also has bragging rights to the nation’s first “First Lady.” After Chillicothe native Lucy Webb Hayes was called “the first lady of the land” in a newspaper article about Rutherford Hayes’s 1877 inauguration, the “First Lady” title was attached to her and subsequent presidents’ wives.
Mrs. Hayes was also the first First Lady with a college degree, and post-White House, she and her husband lived in a Victorian mansion in Fremont, now a part of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums.
You can also visit her birthplace, a timber frame house in Chillicothe that’s now home to the Lucy Webb Hayes Heritage Center.
Annie Oakley
Born and raised near Greenville, Annie Oakley shot game during her childhood to help feed her family – but by the late 1800s, Oakley’s sharpshooting skills made her both a featured performer in Buffalo Bill’s world-renowned Wild West show and the nation’s first female star. Although Queen Victoria pronounced Annie a “very clever little girl,” it was Sitting Bull who gave her the lasting nickname, “Little Miss Sure Shot.”
Today, Greenville’s Garst Museum is home to The Annie Oakley Center Foundation and an incomparable collection of memorabilia.
Image courtesy of Ohio History Connection, Facebook
Katharine Wright Haskell
On Aug. 19, 1874, Katharine Wright was born in Dayton. The youngest of the Wright siblings, she had a strong bond with her two famous older brothers: Orville and Wilbur.
Wright is also known for assisting in her brothers’ careers. She even run the Wright Cycle Company Shop in Dayton for awhile while Orville and Wilbur tested the Wright Flyer in Kitty Hawk. She also spent a majority of time acting as manager for the The Wright Company.
She also supported several social causes and organizations throughout her life, like the Young Woman’s League of Dayton and efforts for women to get the right to vote. You can learn more about Katharine Wright by visiting the International Women’s Air & Space Museum in Cleveland.
And if you’re visiting her alma mater of Oberlin College, you can see the bronze statue her husband Henry J. Haskell dedicated to her outside the Allen Memorial Art Museum.
Image courtesy of Ohio History Connection
Florence Ellinwood Allen
Seated at a grand desk in black judicial robes, Cleveland’s Florence Ellinwood Allen looks every inch the eminent jurist – and she most certainly should. When voters chose her for the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in 1920, Allen became the first woman in U.S. history elected to a judicial office.
Two years later, Allen made history again, winning a seat on the Supreme Court of Ohio – the first woman elected to any state’s highest court. And thanks to President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1934 nomination, Allen also attained the distinction of being the first female judge appointed to a U.S. Court of Appeals (the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati).
Go on a public tour at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus and stop by the National Roll of Honor. On the ground floor in the South Light Court, this plaque was installed The League of Woman Voters in 1933 and honors Ohio women leaders from the early-20th century. Florence E. Allen’s name is the first displayed.
Image courtesy of Ohio History Connection, Facebook
Dorothy Dandridge
Cleveland native Dorothy Dandridge dazzled the world with her skills in film, singing, and dancing. As a darling of the Hollywood industry, she was one of the most famous African-American actresses of her time and the first to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. After starting her career alongside her sisters as The Wonder Children, she went on to perform with stars like Louis Armstrong and Count Basie.
Most notably perhaps was Dandridge’s defiance of type-casting, as she refused stereotypical roles based on her race. Her revolutionary starring roles earned her the first black woman feature on the cover of Life Magazine and several other accolades.
Another Cleveland actress, Halle Berry won several awards for her portrayal of Dandridge in the 1999 TV movie, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. The movie is currently streaming online at Max.
Image courtesy of the International Women’s Air & Space Museum
Jerrie Mock
Internationally famous was Newark native Jerrie Mock, the first woman to fly solo around the world. Beginning and ending her ground-breaking 1964 flight in Columbus, Mock piloted a single-engine Cessna 180 named the “Spirit of Columbus” and logged 22,860 miles in 29 days. A replica of the plane is at The Works in Newark.
During that global journey, she became the first woman pilot to solo over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and when Mock winged her way from Honolulu to Columbus in 1966, she set the record for the longest nonstop flight by a woman.
If you’re flying into or out of John Glenn Columbus International Airport, look for the life-sized bronze statue of Mock. Dedicated on April 17, 2014 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of her flight, the statue was created by local artist Renate Burgyan Fackler.
Image courtesy of the University of Dayton
Erma Bombeck
Erma Bombeck began writing humor as a schoolgirl in her hometown of Dayton, and by the 1980s, she was America’s favorite funny lady, poking fun at marriage and motherhood with witty one-liners – “Never have more children than you have car windows” – in her syndicated newspaper column and best-selling books.
The University of Dayton, her alma mater, now hosts the biannual Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop. And you can order her books, like At Wit’s End (1968), from your local bookstore.
Image courtesy of Ohio History Connection
Judith Resnik
Before NASA picked her for its first group of female astronauts in 1978, Akron’s Judith Resnik had earned a doctorate in electrical engineering and worked as a biomedical engineer. As a mission specialist on Space Shuttle Discovery‘s 1984 maiden voyage, Resnik was the first American Jewish woman to make a space flight. On January 28, 1986, she and all other crew members aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger perished when it broke apart after liftoff at the Kennedy Space Center.
Resnik was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, and a lunar crater is named for her. She is also part of “Women in NASA” exhibit at the International Women’s Air & Space Museum in Cleveland.
Yvette McGee Brown
In 2011, Columbus-native, Yvette McGee Brown, became the first African-American woman to be a Justice to the Ohio Supreme Court. Her career led her to hands-on community involvement, where she was the founding president of the Center for Child and Family Advocacy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. This organization is dedicated to the treatment and prevention of child abuse and domestic violence.
Brown has been inducted into the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame and the Ohio Business Hall of Fame, along with many other public-service awards.
If you’re feeling inspired and judicious, check out the world’s largest gavel in Columbus, down the street from the Ohio Supreme Court building. “Gavel,” 31 foot steel outdoor sculpture was made by artist Andrew F. Scott.
For more Ohio history, check out #OhioTheHeartofitAll at Ohio.org.
*Hero photo credit: Ohio History Connection, Facebook
