Caroline Healey Dall

Famous for her associations with the American Transcendentalists, Caroline Healy Dall was active in the National Woman’s Rights Convention, the New England Women’s Club, and co-founded the American Social Science Association. Dall was raised and lived most of her life in Boston. She married Charles Dall, a Unitarian minister, and had two children, but her husband soon proved himself mentally unstable and their union was not a happy one. When he finally abandoned the family in 1855 to take a post as a missionary in Calcutta, Dall was released to write and give public lectures on women’s rights and abolitionism. She co-founded the pioneering feminist journal, Una, with Paulina Davis.

Dall’s books include: Woman’s Right to Labor, or Low Wages and Hard Work (1860); Historical Pictures Retouched: a Volume of Miscellanies (1861), a revisionist feminist history; Women’s Rights Under the Law (1861); The College, the Market, and the Court; or Woman’s Relation to Education, Labor, and Law (1867); Egypt’s Place in History (1868) What We Really Know About Shakespeare (1885); Barbara Fritchie (1892); Margaret and Her Friends: Ten Conversations with Margaret Fuller (1895); Transcendentalism in New England (1897); and her memoir, Alongside (1900). She contributed articles to such publications as the Springfield Republican, the Cambridge Tribune, and The Nation.

From 1842 to 1844, Dall lived in the Georgetown neighborhood and was vice-principal at Miss Lydia English’s School for Young Ladies (now converted to the Colonial Apartments). In 1879, Dall retired to DC to live with her son, a naturalist and curator at the Smithsonian Institution. That is now the Turkish American Assembly. She became close friends with First Lady Frances Cleveland, and was a guest lay-preacher in Unitarian churches. Alfred University awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1877.