Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822–1907)

Isabella Beecher was the second child in the remarkable family of Harriet and the Reverend Lyman Beecher. She attended her sister Catharine’s Western Female Institute in Cincinnati, then returned to Connecticut at age 15 for further education. In 1841, she married John Hooker, a lawyer, and the couple had three children. Isabella Beecher Hooker was an abolitionist before the Civil War and later became a leader, activist, and national lecturer for the movement to give women the right to vote. She appeared before Congress several times, the last in 1893. Her role in the women’s movement was to help transform it from a fringe group to a respectable lobby that succeeded in 1920.