Lucinda Hinsdale Stone:
Educator, women's club pioneer
The words "early feminist" describe the whole of Lucinda Hinsdale Stone's long and accomplished life, as well as her place in history.
Ms. Stone began working toward equality from the day she entered the Hinesburg Academy, a boys‚ high school. Though she out-performed the boys in virtually every field of study, college was simply not an option. Instead, the 15-year-old became a school teacher, educating students for 11 years.
She married the Harvard educated Dr. James A.B. Stone, who had tutored her, and the couple moved first to Massachusetts and then to Kalamazoo, where Dr. Stone was named principal of a University of Michigan branch that would eventually become Kalamazoo College. There, Ms. Stone became a pioneering women's studies professor, teaching women students until a scandal over materials considered inappropriate for young women forced her and her husband to leave the school.
Undaunted, Ms. Stone opened a private school in her home and led tours of Europe for groups of women. Later, she became active in her community, organizing and then elevating the Ladies Library Association. She is credited with launching the Women's Club movement in Michigan, helping women organize in cities as diverse in size as Detroit and Leslie. She brought attention to the groups through a weekly column that was published in papers around the state.
A noted abolitionist, suffragist, lecturer and journalist, Mrs. Stone was a founding member of the Michigan Women‚s Press Association, and served as Michigan correspondent for the national General Federation of Women‚s Clubs. She worked with such other prominent 19th-century reformers as Susan B. Anthony. She died in 1900, at the age of 85.
Ms. Stone has been recognized posthumously with a number of unique honors, including university scholarships and awards, the naming of a Kalamazoo DAR chapter after her, and the naming of a 334 pound, treble bell that hangs in the Stetson Chapel at Kalamazoo College.
Sources: