Heroic Women of New Orleans

by Karen B. Gibbs

After Charlene Mary Sinclair received her New Orleans tour guide license, she knew, as sure as powdered sugar rains from beignets, that she’d be opening her own business. There was no way she could parrot someone else’s take on the city’s history. So, the petite, high-energy entrepreneur, along with two like-minded partners, opened Hidden Treasures of New Orleans tour company, which she operated until Katrina. Her tours featured not only the founding fathers, entrepreneurs and war heroes, but also the women who made their mark on the Crescent City. She extolled women like Margaret Gaffney Haughery, who was a personal favorite. “What this woman did was inspirational,” says Charlene. “I knew the city was blessed with many such remarkable women and wanted to tell my customers (90 percent of whom were women) about these New Orleans heroines.” Here, Inside Publications joins Charlene in celebrating the strong, gutsy and resilient women of New Orleans-past who made a difference in The Big Easy when making a difference wasn’t so easy at all.

Sophie B. Wright.

photo courtesy: The Historic New Orleans Collection, Gift of Major General and Mrs. George W. Trousdale, 1978.73.2

Sophie Bell Wright (1866 - 1912)

Sophie Bell Wright was born in 1866 in post-Civil War New Orleans. Her parents, once prosperous, had been left impoverished by the war. At age three, Sophie injured her back and hips in an accident and spent the next seven years in a wheelchair. This kept her from attending school until she was ten. Wise beyond her years and appreciating the value of education, she opened the Day School for Girls in her family home on Coliseum Square when she was only fourteen. She charged fifty cents a month for the classes, which covered academic material through eighth grade. In time, she expanded the school to include boarders. Sophie herself continued studying and eventually became a teacher in the public school while maintaining her own day school. In the 1880s, when child labor was commonplace, Sophie opened the first free night school to afford working children an opportunity to get an education. She knew that education was the antidote to poverty. When the school outgrew its original space in her home, Sophie relocated to 1400 Camp Street, which was closer to the factories, mills and shops where the children worked. During the 1897 yellow fever epidemic, she converted the Camp Street schoolhouse into a distribution center for food, clothes and medicine. This act of charity left her without sufficient money to pay the mortgage on the school. However, thanks to a benevolent banker and two wealthy supporters, she was able to keep the school. After the epidemic, attendance at the free night school soared from 300 to 1,200 in one year. Sophie’s school did not offer a token education but instead taught subjects like calculus, algebra, mechanical drawing, shorthand and bookkeeping. In the early 1900s, Sophie turned her attention to crippled children and opened the first public home for disabled orphans. She also advocated for two disparate but important causes: more public playgrounds and prison reform. Deservedly, in 1904, Sophie became the first woman to receive the Daily Picayune Loving Cup for philanthropic work. In addition to the award, Sophie received a gift from grateful New Orleanians: a check for $10,000, enough to pay off the mortgage on her school. In 1912, the city of New Orleans made history by naming a public building after a woman, Sophie B. Wright. The building, a modern public high school for girls, is still in operation today. Remarkably, Sophie accomplished all these feats before the age of 46 when she passed away.

Margaret Haughery.

photo courtesy: HE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, GIFT OF MRS. WILLIAM FRANCIS SCHEYD, ACC. NO. 1989.14 A,B

Margaret Gaffney Haughery (1813-1882)

Margaret was a young Irish orphan who married Charles Haughery in her homeland in 1835. The couple immigrated to the United States and lived in Baltimore, where their first child was born. Unfortunately, Charles was a frail man and the cold weather proved too much for him. Consequently, they relocated to New Orleans, but Charles became ill. Leaving Mary and their infant daughter, Frances, in New Orleans, he returned to Ireland to regain his strength but died shortly after. Months later, baby Frances died, too. Despite the anti-Irish sentiment that prevailed in New Orleans during this time, Margaret held her head high. Through the kindness of a priest, Fr. Mullen, she found work as a laundress and chambermaid at the St. Charles Hotel, now known as Place St. Charles. During that time, she met Sr. Regis of the Sisters of Charity and volunteered to help her with the orphans. Indeed, Margaret Haughery did more than simply help; she contributed most of her earnings to care for these children. When they needed more space, Margaret convinced the owner of a dilapidated house in the Lower Garden District to donate it as an orphanage, promising that she’d fix it up. Incredibly, the house still stands on Margaret Place, across from the monument that was erected to Margaret in 1884—the oldest monument in the South honoring a woman. After securing a home for the orphans, Margaret set about to nourish them. First, she begged for three-day-old produce so the children could have fruits and vegetables. Then, she bought two dairy cows to supply the orphans with milk. Over time, the herd grew to forty, and Margaret opened a dairy. Because of tuberculosis and yellow fever, the number of orphans increased. This prompted Margaret to use proceeds from the dairy to help build St. Vincent de Paul Orphanage for Infants on Race and Magazine Streets. She then built Margaret’s Steam and Mechanical Bakery—one of the first in the South—where she baked bread for the children and the poor. It’s reputed that, during her lifetime, this industrious, hard-working woman earned over $609,000, almost all of which she gave to help orphans and the needy. Generous to others but frugal with herself, Margaret owned only one shawl and two dresses. When she died in 1882, she left $30,000 to charity in a will that she signed with a simple “X.” Unbelievably, Margaret accomplished all of this without being able to read or write. She was so beloved by the people of New Orleans that the city closed down for her funeral and the governor and the mayor served as pall bearers.

Baroness Micaela Almonaster Pontalba.

photo courtesy: The Historic New Orleans Collection, 1974.25.27.358

Baroness Micaela Almonaster Pontalba (1795-1874)

Micaela was the daughter of Andres Almonaster y Rojas, a wealthy man whose land holdings flanked the town square, now Jackson Square. He must have been an influential man because he’s one of the few lay people buried in St. Louis Cathedral. As was the custom in those days, Almonaster arranged the marriage of Micaela to her wealthy cousin, Joseph Celestine Pontalba. Considering Almonaster’s wealth, the small dowry he gave was a disappointment to the Pontalbas. Like other well-to-do New Orleanians, the young couple spent summers in Europe to escape yellow fever. During these visits, they lived in the Pontalba family château. Despite having five children together, theirs was not the happiest of unions. It is rumored that Joseph was a bit on the wimpy side, while Micaela, on the other hand, was strong-willed and businesslike. Joseph’s father so disliked Micaela that one day he entered her chamber and shot her. Micaela must have raised her hand in defense because the bullets severed four fingers on her left hand. When she fell to the floor, the elder Pontalba presumed she was dead. Despondent, he killed himself. Micaela, however, survived. After being nursed back to health by her husband, she returned to New Orleans. There, she set about beautifying the town square and constructing the Pontalba Buildings, the first apartment buildings in the United States. These two-story edifices followed a style popular in France, with shops on the first floor and apartments above. The cast iron railings, with their distinctive “AP” embellishments, are as lovely today as they were back then. A tough boss, Micaela hired architects James Gallier and Henry Howard, but she then fired them over a mere $200 and assumed the job of overseeing construction herself. Though scandalous, she climbed the scaffolding to supervise workers, not caring that she was exposing her pantaloons to all below. Micaela invited Jenny Lind, aka the Swedish Nightingale, to stay at the apartments while Lind performed at the city’s French Opera House. On one particular evening, over 10,000 people waited below the balcony, hoping to see the world-famous singer. Capitalizing on her guest’s visit, Micaela later sold items that Jenny Lind was supposed to have touched in the apartment, tripling her original investment. When Micaela died in 1874, she was the wealthiest woman in New Orleans. Note: When she was sixteen, Micaela spurned one suitor—none other than the wealthy John McDonogh—telling him that Americans were not worthy of marrying into her family. This grieved McDonogh, who was determined to produce a legacy that outshone hers. And he did. He left the city of New Orleans enough money to build thirty public schools for the education of poor white and freed black children.

Myra Clark Gaines.

photo courtesy: The Historic New Orleans Collection, 1989.91.67

Myra Clark Gaines (1806-1885)

Myra is famous for being the center of the longest court case ever fought in the United States, a fifty-plus-year battle for her inheritance. Myra’s father, Daniel Clark, was a businessman and the first congressman from the Territory of Orleans. He fell in love with and secretly married Zulime Carriere, a “woman of color.” When Zulime gave birth to Myra, Clark asked his friends, Col. and Mrs. Samuel Davis, to rear her as their own child. He allegedly did this to preserve his political career. At the time of Clark’s death in August 1813, he’d left two wills. The first, dated 1810, gave everything to his mother; the second, a handwritten will dated July 1813, left everything to Myra. After his death, the second will mysteriously disappeared, and the first will was probated. It wasn’t until she was planning her marriage to attorney William Whitney that Myra discovered Clark was her real father. With Whitney’s help, she then filed suit to collect her rightful inheritance. Unfortunately, Whitney died before the case was settled. Myra then married another attorney, who further financed her quest to prove her legitimacy. Because Louisiana law did not allow illegitimate children to inherit from their father, Myra could only lay claim to her rightful inheritance by proving her parents were legally married. In 1885, Myra died without gaining what was rightfully hers. Four years later, the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the legitimacy of Daniel Clark’s written will and awarded Myra’s heirs over $500,000. Unfortunately, after paying legal fees, the family was left with just a pittance.

Eliza Poitevent Nicholson.

photo courtesy: The Historic New Orleans Collection, Gift of Mrs. Ashton Fischer and Mrs. Carl Corbin, 1981.369.42

Eliza Poitevent Nicholson (1843-1896)

In 1870, at the age of twenty-seven, Eliza Jane Poitevent left her affluent family’s home in the piney woods of Pearlington, Mississippi, to work as a writer in New Orleans. At first, her literary career consisted of submitting poems to the Picayune, but, before long, she was hired as the paper’s literary editor. As the first professional woman journalist in the South, she shocked her family, who thought women should be in the home and not in the workplace. Perhaps another shocker came when Eliza fell in love with the owner of the Picayune, Colonel Alva Holbrook, a divorced man who was thirty-five years her senior. Unfortunately for Eliza, the marriage angered Holbrook’s ex-wife, who, in a jealous rage, tried to kill Eliza. After two errant gunshots and a head-beating, Eliza was saved by a neighbor. While the former Mrs. Holbrook didn’t end Eliza’s life, the national coverage of the event so upset Eliza that she quit working at the Picayune. Later, Colonel Holbrook sold the newspaper but bought it back at an inflated cost after the new owners ran it into the ground. Unfortunately, the Colonel died in 1896 before he could pay off the debt, leaving Eliza with a dying newspaper and lots of IOUs. Determined to resurrect the flailing publication, Eliza took over as publisher and transformed the Picayune from a gentleman’s paper into a family-friendly publication that included a society column, a literary section (where Eliza wrote poetry under the pen name Pearl Rivers), weather, a Children’s Corner, a special Carnival edition, cartoons and regular news. Readers loved the new format and circulation tripled. This delighted business manager George Nicholson, who took a shine to the new publisher and married her in 1878, eighteen months after Holbrook died. As the first woman in the United States to own a major newspaper, Eliza open the doors of opportunity to other women (including noted advice columnist Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, aka Dorothy Dix) and astounded co-workers by paying men and women employees the same wages. An excellent manager, she upgraded presses and joined the Associated Press. She also wrote editorials advocating for women’s rights to equal pay, better public schools, animal rights and honesty in government. She founded the first SPCA in Louisiana, and in 1884, she became the first president of the National Woman’s Press Association. In 1896, Eliza died of influenza. Her husband, George, preceded her in death by a mere eleven days. Impressively, the Nicholson family ran the Picayune until 1962, when they sold it to a national syndicate.

Elizabeth Magnus Cohen (1820 - 1921)

Born on February 22, 1820, in New York City, Elizabeth Cohen was reared and educated in New York. She married Aaron Cohen, a doctor, and, although this union produced five children, only one lived to adulthood. The untimely death of their youngest from measles inspired Elizabeth to become a doctor, too, so that she could “help mothers keep their little ones well.” When her husband decided to move to New Orleans to study surgery in 1853, Elizabeth wanted to join him, but Louisiana did not have a medical school for women. Instead, she enrolled in Penn Medical University, one of the first medical schools to accept women. After graduating fifth in her class of thirty-six women, she joined her husband in New Orleans in 1857, the first woman and the fourteenth doctor to practice medicine in Louisiana. Undaunted by the typhoid, small pox and yellow fever epidemics that besieged the city, Elizabeth set up practice on Lee Circle. Although her calling card read “Doctor for Ladies Only,” Elizabeth cared for children, too. At the time, it was thought improper for a woman doctor to treat a man. This prejudice against women in medicine manifested itself in the city’s directory, too, where Elizabeth was listed as “midwife” for the first ten years of her practice. For a couple of years, she was elevated to “doctress,” regarded as less than a doctor. It wasn’t until she’d been in practice for twenty years that Elizabeth Cohen was finally referred to as “doctor” in the directory. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was considered an expert in treating typhoid and other fevers. A leading surgeon, she boasted that she never lost a patient. In addition to medical accomplishments, she also supported movements for women to get an education and to be given the right to vote. In 1887, after the death of her husband and her remaining child, Elizabeth retired from practice. She moved into the Touro Home for the Aged and Infirm, where she ran the sewing and linen room until her death in 1921 at the age of 101. She is buried in the Gates of Prayer Cemetery on Canal Street.

Grateful acknowledgement to Women and New Orleans: A History by Mary Gehman and the Historic New Orleans Collection.