The origins of women's activism New York and Boston, 1797-1840 - Boylan, Anne M. (University of North Carolina Press, 2002)
Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-329) and index
Patterns of organization -- Domesticity and organizational work -- Portraits of women organizers -- Politics -- Economies. Appendices. Women's organizations -- Tables: Religious affiliations of officers in selected organizations -- Membership in organizational networks -- Patterns of leadership -- Occupations of household heads among leaders of selected organizations -- Percentages of married and single officers in selected organizations -- Distribution of ages at which women joined selected organizations, 1797-1840 -- Percentage of officers in selected organizations under age 40 at time of joining and median ages of officers and founders -- Number of organizational affiliations per married woman by number of children borne -- Creation of male advisory boards -- Women leaders' connections to the world of print -- Yearly budgets of selected women's organizations -- Sample annual budgets of organizations -- Number of annual subscribers and subscription income in selected organizations -- Creation of organizations' permanent funds and growth of Boston Female Asylum permanent fund
Tracing the deep roots of women's activism in America, Anne Boylan explores the flourishing of women's volunteer associations in the decades following the Revolution. She examines the entire spectrum of early nineteenth-century women's groups--Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, African American and white middle and working class--to illuminate the ways in which race, religion, and class could bring women together in pursuit of common goals or drive them apart. Boylan interweaves analyses of more than seventy organizations in New York and Boston with the stories of the women who founded and led them. In so doing, she provides a new understanding of how these groups actually worked and how women's associations, especially those with evangelical Protestant leanings, helped define the gender system of the new republic. She also demonstrates as never before how women in leadership positions combined volunteer work with their family responsibilities, how they raised and invested the money their organizations needed, and how they gained and used political influence in an era when women's citizenship rights were tightly circumscribed