Jane Cannon
Jane Cannon Swisshelm was born on this date in 1815. She was a white-American educator, publisher, and abolitionist.
She was born in Pittsburgh, PA., and her father died when she was eight. She helped her mother support the family by lace-making and, at 14, as a schoolteacher. In 1836, she married James Swisshelm and moved to Louisville, Kentucky. Here, she became involved in the campaign against slavery and became a member of the Underground Railroad. In 1848, Swisshelm established her antislavery newspaper, the Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter.
Swisshelm used the newspaper to advocate women's rights. Horace Greeley paid her $5 a week for contributing a weekly article for the New York Tribune. On April 17, 1850, Swisshelm became the first woman to sit in the Senate press gallery.
She moved to Minnesota, where she established the St. Cloud Visiter. In response to readers' letters, she wrote comments and advice. In 1853, she published a collection of these columns in book form called "Letters to Country Girls." The venture was short-lived; a group of men supporting slavery destroyed her printing press later that March. Sylvanus B. Lowry, a Tennessean, organized a "Committee of Vigilance" and conducted a midnight raid on the newspaper office.
Swisshelm purchased another and launched a new antislavery journal, The St. Cloud Democrat. On the outbreak of the American Civil War, Swisshelm sold her newspaper and worked as a nurse for the Union Army in Washington and Fredericksburg until 1864.
After the war, Swisshelm retired to Swissvale, Pennsylvania, where she wrote her autobiography, "Half a Century" (1880). Jane Cannon Swisshelm died in Swissvale on July 22, 1884.
The World Book Encyclopedia.
Copyright 1996, World Book, Inc.
ISBN 0-7166-0096-X
