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Tuesday, March 26, 2002

Pittsburgh's strongest advocate of the feminist and abolitionist movement in the 19th century was Jane Swisshelm.

She was born in 1815. After an early career as a schoolteacher, she married James Swisshelm in 1836. He was a farmer who owned land in present day Swissvale. Her marriage was marked by disagreements with her in-laws, leading to confrontations. Scarred by the events in her personal life, she was energized to speak out about the injustices of her day.

The laws in Pennsylvania at the time prohibited women from owning property, so upon her mother's death, the estate went not to Jane, but to her husband. He used the money to improve his mother's lands and mills. Jane sued her husband. She received helpful legal advice and began to publish in the Daily Commercial Journal a series of articles on a woman's right to hold property. These articles influenced the change in the Pennsylvania property laws.

She also opposed the Mexican War, attacking it as an unjust advantage of the strong against the weak.

With the financial help of industrialist Charles Avery, Swisshelm founded and published the Pittsburgh Saturday Visitor, a four-page weekly that put forth her causes of abolitionism, equal rights for men and women, and equality in the local political structure. In 1851, she ran for mayor but received only three votes. Women could not vote at the time.

Swisshelm left her husband in 1857 and moved to Minnesota. She continued her writing in Minnesota until the Civil War, when she became one of the first Union nurses. After the war, she returned to Pittsburgh and a lived a quiet life.

Swisshelm died in Pittsburgh in 1884.

-- By Dr. E. Kenneth Vey, History Center Library and Archives volunteer