- Ernestine Rose (1810-1892). Polish American feminist orator and activist, reformer, and freethinker. Born in a Polish Russian ghetto, the daughter of a rabbi, she ran away from home in her teens to make her own way in the world. She travelled and learned languages with great fluency, supporting herself by inventing and marketing an early kitchen deodorant. In England, she met and married silversmith William Rose, a man of her own views on every subject, the beginning of a long and harmonious marriage. They emigrated to America in 1836. In this country, they devoted their lives to humanitarian causes: free education, women’s rights, abolition. Ernestine Rose made her name as Page 142 →“Queen of the Lecture Platform,” with a moving, eloquent style and perfection of debating skill that packed halls wherever she went. Women speakers were an oddity, and detractors were many, but her charm and sincerity won the crowd in most cases. A close friend and colleague of Anthony and Stanton, she was considered to be the greatest speaker on her causes in her time by many of her contemporaries.
|