Free Thinker

Helen Hamilton Gardener secured crucial support from leading politicians in Washington, DC for the 19th Amendment’s ratification. Despite her significance, few know the story of her exciting and controversial life. Fortunately, Kimberly Hamlin tells Gardener’s dramatic story in her book Free Thinker. Born Alice Chenoweth in 1853, she had to leave her job as a teacher in Ohio after an affair with a married school commissioner in 1876. She adopted the name Helen Hamilton Gardener and a range of modern ideas: women’s rights, opposition to the sexual double standard, and freethought. Gardener eventually became the highest-ranking female official in… show more.

This biography of a woman who challenged the sexual double standard is a delightful read in its own right, but Gardener’s underappreciated role in attaining the vote for women is especially fascinating and shows the diversity of individuals, goals, and tactics within the movement. While suffrage campaigners like Alice Paul were picketing the White House and denouncing Woodrow Wilson for his inaction, Gardner had the ear of the President and many key members of Congress, reassuring them that Paul and her feminist compatriots were not representative of the majority of the loyal, patriotic women who sought the vote.  Hamlin does… show more.