Amelia Bloomer started The Lily, a women’s focused newspaper in Seneca Falls, New York, in the mid 1800s.
What you probably already know: It’s Women’s History Month and today we’re taking you back to the 1800s to meet a little-known but extremely influential woman whose work forged a path for women in publishing and also changed the way women dressed. Amelia Bloomer was an early suffragist with a knack for writing. She lived in Seneca Falls, New York, and, not long after she got married to a newspaper publisher, she starting writing a column for the local paper. That experience prompted her to start her own paper, The Lily, which was dedicated solely to women and the issues that mattered most to them.
The newspaper, which was the first of its kind in the U.S., focused on the temperance movement at first, but then began to expand to women’s rights in general. When her husband was elected Postmaster for Seneca Falls, he appointed Amelia as his assistant and continued to champion her increasing role as an advocate for the suffrage movement. From that position, she was able to set up a headquarters for the women’s rights movement and lead the advocacy from a place of political power.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton began writing for the paper under the pseudonym “Sunflower” and took a more radical stance than Bloomer had previously taken. It was Bloomer who introduced Stanton to Susan B. Anthony, a relationship that lasted more than 50 years and changed the course of the women’s rights movement. Stanton often wrote Anthony’s speeches for her and, once her children were older, Stanton herself began to travel the country as well, drumming up support for the suffrage movement.
One of Bloomer’s significant contributions — certainly the one she is best remembered for — was her push for more relaxed clothing for women. She used her platform at The Lily to encourage women to wear pantaloons under their skirts, which now are called Bloomers as a nod to their original champion. Bloomers became a political statement, derided by more conservative people and adopted by those who supported women’s rights.
By the time Bloomer sold The Lily in 1853, it had a circulation of 6,000 per month. She and her husband moved to Iowa but even after she sold it, though, she continued to contribute articles. Bloomer almost immediately got involved in the Iowa women’s rights efforts and served as the president of the Iowa Suffrage Association from 1871-1873.
