FREE PDF download (70 pgs.)

Printed copies: Unfortunately we are out of FREE printed copies and there are no immediate plans for reprinting. We welcome grants to reprint the books.

Book Introduction

Uncommon Lives of Common Women: The Missing Half of Wisconsin History booklet by Victoria Brown demonstrates the sacrifices and hardships women have endured throughout Wisconsin history. The stories of these women’s lives are both interesting and inspiring for women today, as we see how women showed strength, creativity, and vision in their own place and time. Perhaps Brown best expresses the importance of such a collection of stories when she writes, “This book was written in the belief that to appreciate our survival, we must know what we have endured; to take pride in our creativity, we must know all that we have created; and to understand our growth, we must examine our historic roots.”

Book Review
by Heather Priess

In 1975, Victoria Brown wrote Uncommon Lives of Common Women: The Missing Half of Wisconsin History under the auspices of the Wisconsin Feminists Project Fund, Inc. and with primary funding by the Kohler Foundation of Milwaukee. She hoped to share with readers the lives of some of Wisconsin’s women from the days of early Native Americans up to the 1950s.

To gather information, Brown issued a statewide press release asking for stories about Wisconsin women. Out of over 100 letters received, she chose to write about 20 of these women. Additionally, she provided accounts of the lives of 17 other women, most of whom were found in historical societies throughout Wisconsin. Through this process, Brown worked to ensure that her book would provide a broad view of Wisconsin women throughout history.

Uncommon Lives is divided into four sections, each representing a different period in history. “Wisconsin’s First Women and the Wisconsin Frontier,” tells the stories of Native women and early pioneers. Brown portrays the harsh and demanding circumstances in which these early Wisconsin women lived. She also explores early education, along with the beginnings of the Temperance movement, which took place, in part, to protect women from drunken relatives.

“The Civil War and Wisconsin Women,” illustrates the continued struggle of women on the frontier. Just as families were beginning to grow accustomed to their new way of life, the Civil War called upon most of the state’s young men for military service. Women were left to carry out their usual chores and run the family farm while husbands were off fighting in the war. During this period, many urban women went to work in a variety of jobs for pay. These women faced tremendous discrimination in the workplace but also began to be their own breadwinners, giving them a sense of power similar to women workers of World War II. In this section of the book, Brown tells the particularly interesting story of Elizabeth Stone, a Civil War nurse, who used moldy bread to heal injuries 70 years before penicillin’s “discovery.” Brown also discusses the fight for coeducation and the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement.

“The Progressive Years” expands on the suffrage movement, since it was during this time that suffragists began to make their most progress and eventually won the vote. While Brown looks briefly at this movement, she focuses primarily on women beginning to take on more work outside of the home. Several conservative women were active in social work during this period, as were educators, including Jane and Ellen Lloyd-Jones, who began a unique hands-on learning place in the location where Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesen now stands. The progressive years were an important time when women began to group together, both socially and to fight for causes they believed in.

Brown ends her book with “The Twenties and Beyond.” In this final section, Brown looks at the various work women are doing outside of the home, whether for pay or as volunteers. The positions are varied and include those working as judges, doctors, midwives, athletes, writers, firewatchers, educators, nuns, naturalists, mayors, and state employees. This period saw more women involved in unions and an increase in labor laws. Brown explains that besides women in this period being very influential, they also “raised a generation of daughters who expected to be equal, active participants in the work of life,” a foreshadowing of the civil and women’s rights movements of the 1960s.

Excerpts: