Isabella Beecher Hooker: Activist and Suffragist

Wikimedia CommonsIsabella Beecher Hooker

Isabella Beecher Hooker was an American activist and leader in the suffragist movement in the United States. She was born on February 22, 1822, in Connecticut. She and her family moved to Cincinnati, and it was here that she first attended school at the age of fifteen.[1] The school she attended, the Western Female Institute, was founded by Isabella’s older half-sister Catharine Beecher, who was an educator who pioneered education for female students.[2] Later, when Isabella returned to Connecticut, she attended the first school that Catharine ever founded, the Hartford Female Seminary.[3]

It was during her time at the Hartford Female Seminary that Isabella met her husband, John Hooker. According to the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame, Isabella was inspired to dedicate her work to the pursuit of rights for women when reading with her husband. The couple were reading a passage by William Blackstone in which he asserted that, in the eyes of the law, a husband and wife were one; in essence, as soon as a woman married, she had no rights of her own. Learning this fueled her desire to create change. [4] With John’s help, Isabella wrote a bill in the hopes of ensuring that married women would have property rights. Though it was initially rejected, Beecher Hooker submitted it annually until it was finally passed in 1877.[5]

Beecher Hooker’s career as a suffragist began when she went to several conventions in Boston and New York. This led to her participation in the founding of the New England Women Suffrage Association in 1869.[6] She served as its director for nearly forty years.[7] In 1871 Beecher Hooker organized and funded her own women’s rights convention in Washington, D.C. She did so to “call the attention of Congress to the fact that women were already citizens of the United States under the Constitution, interpreted by the Declaration of Independence, and only needed recognition from that body to become voters.”[8]

Throughout the 1880s, Beecher Hooker continued to advocate for women, though the focus of her campaigns shifted slightly to encompass women’s rights more generally, as opposed to only suffrage.[9] In particular, she frequently advocated for women to be allowed to take on more prominent roles in society; this was a common topic of her lectures. Though her ideas often being met with mocking and dismissal from certain groups, Beecher Hooker’s lectures were often both published and reported on.

In her later years, Beecher Hooker continued to advocate for women’s rights. Even once she could no longer travel and give lectures, she wrote letters to and gave an annual presentation to the Connecticut General Assembly in which she argued for the passing of various voting bills. Throughout her life, Isabella Beecher Hooker championed the voices of women and used her own to empower others across the nation.

[1] Isabella Beecher Hooker. [Online] Available https://www.cwhf.org/inductees/isabella-beecher-hooker.2024.

[2] Catharine Beecher. [Online] Available https://www.cwhf.org/inductees/catharine-beecher.2024.

[3] May 20: Catharine Beecher Opens Hartford Female Seminary. [Online] Available https://todayincthistory.com/2019/05/20/may-20-hartford-female-seminary-opens/.2024.

[4] Isabella Beecher Hooker. [Online] Available https://www.cwhf.org/inductees/isabella-beecher-hooker.2024.

[5] Stowe's Hartford Neighborhood, Nook Farm. [Online] Available https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20170704040524/https:/www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/hbs/nook_farm.shtml.2017.

[6] Isabella Beecher Hooker. [Online] Available https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Beecher_Hooker.2024.

[7] Isabella Beecher Hooker. [Online] Available https://www.cwhf.org/inductees/isabella-beecher-hooker.2024.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Isabella Beecher Hooker. [Online] Available https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Beecher_Hooker.2024.