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Learn how women played a crucial role in the construction and innovation of the Transcontinental Railroad, and how their involvement reshaped societal norms and expanded opportunities. Discover the contributions of women inventors and telegraphers, their impact on medicine and fashion, and the role of the railroad in spreading ideas of gender equality.
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Utah Women & the Transcontinental Railroad: Redefining & Expanding Spheres
Godey’s Lady’s Book August 1869
But where were the women? How did women impact the railroad? How did the railroad impact women?
Women Inventors Reduced derailments caused by seized axles and bearings with the “packing” device: Eliza Murfey (1870) Invented a system to deflect emissions from the smokestacks: Mary Elizabeth Walton (1879) Created the cattle car: Nancy P. Wilkerson (1881) Developed reclining passengers eats and individual window vents to allow fresh air in and trap dust: Olive Dennis (late 1890s) Circa 1910. Courtesy of Utah State Historical Society.
The Telegraph • Traditionally a man’s job, especially in the East • 1861: The transcontinental telegraph system completed in Salt Lake City 1866: Deseret Telegraph is completed & a telegraph school opens in Salt Lake City enrolling both young men and women throughout Utah • 1869: Western Union opens a telegraph school for women and begins to employ large numbers of women--paying them less than their male counterparts • Numbers of women telegraphers: 4% in 1870 (355 out of 8316) to 20% in 1920 (16,860 to 79,434)
A Response to the Claim Women Were Unfit for Telegraphing “One who is naturally refined will not lose her identity by coming in contact with others...And is it any worse to hand orders, etc. to a few workmen, than to give orders to the butcher, the baker, etc., at home? A woman cannot stay forever penned up at home, and only go out into the world hemmed in by a father or brother on one side and a husband on the other.” --Anonymous Letter to the Editor in an East Coast newspaper Emily Warburton and Barbara Gowans at the Deseret Telegraph in Tooele, 1871. Courtesy Daughter of Utah Pioneers.
Katherine Fenton Nutter Elizabeth McCune
Utah Women in Medicine Dr. Ellis Reynolds Shipp Dr. Romania Pratt Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon Board of the Deseret Hospital
“Miss Adams carried a muff of snowy lamb’s wool [a cylinder of fur with both ends open for keeping the hands warm] so huge that it reached from her waist down to her knees. Women were delighted with this muff. They said, ‘It not only keeps her hands warm, but all the lower parts of her as well. It is very picturesque to carry a muff so enormous…’ Miss Adams thinks the big muffs are delightful. “Yes, it is true,” she said, “that I made them the fashion. That is why I like them so much.’” --San Francisco Chronicle
“...I read an article ridiculing a little paper that was published in the City of New York called the “Revolution” in which I saw the names of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony. I looked at the little article of ridicule and I said “There is something I see in that which strikes me and I want it,” and I reached out after the little paper I was very much struck with it. It was very peculiar and said very many strange things, but I learned from that little paper the theory and object they had in view was to create thought, their idea was if you can get the people to talk upon this subject, if you can get them to agitate the subject, agitation produces reform...Now 52 years ago, I would not have dared to say the bold, grand things that Miss Anthony said, it would have made me so unpopular and I hardly dared to shoulder it; but the seed was planted within my soul and I have been laboring for the same cause.” --Sarah M. Kimball, May 13, 1895
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton visited Utah in 1871 and spoke in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Eastern suffragists frequently traveled to Utah via train.
Sarah M. Kimball Utah’s Emmeline B. Wells Group of State Presidents & Officers of the National American Woman Suffrage Association 1892. Photo courtesy of Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collections. Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony and the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw with leading Utah and Colorado suffragists at a suffrage convention in Salt Lake City, May 1895.
The Bicycle and Women’s Independence “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.” --Susan B. Anthony First Utah House of Representatives in 1896 with Henrietta Clark, clerk at the Constitutional Convention, with the bicycle.
