Anne M. Boylan

Women in Groups: An Analysis of Women's Benevolent Organizations in New York and Boston, 1797–1840

Historians have long recognized the importance of organizations in womens history. From a pioneering 1940 article by Mary Bosworth Treudley, through the work of Eleanor Flexner, to recent works by Nancy F. Cott, Keith E. Melder, and Barbara J. Berg, scholars have outlined the basic pattern of womens organizational beginnings. By 1800 the first permanent womens societies, such as the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children in New York, the Boston Female Asylum (founded in 1800), and womens missionary groups had appeared on the urban scene. Members of those societies combined an interest in social meliorism with an emphasis on social deference while also exhibiting concern for the spiritual welfare of those whom they aided. During the 1810s and 1820s, under the influence of the Second Great Awakening, there formed new womens organizations whose members sought first to alleviate spiritual want, then to deal with temporal deprivation. Through Sunday school, tract, Bible, and missionary societies, women labored to convert the objects of their attention as well as to minister to their daily needs. During the late 1820s and 1830s, more actively reformist, even millennialist, womens organizations developed. The New-York and the Boston Female Moral Reform societies worked to reform prostitutes and to eradicate the sexual double standard; female abolitionist societies sought immediate emancipation of slaves; and groups such as the Seamens Aid Society, Boston, became actively involved in the problems of working women. 1

CLAIMING VISIBILITY: WOMEN IN PUBLIC / PUBLIC WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES, 1865-1910

Department of History Office: 206 Munroe Hall University of Delaware Phone: 831-2371 Newark, DE 19716 e-mail: aboylan@udel.edu EDUCATION University of Wisconsin, Madison, M.A., 1970; Ph.D., 1973 Mundelein College, Chicago, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1968 ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE University of Delaware, Professor of History, 2002-present Joint Appointment with Women’s Studies, 1991-present Associate Professor of History, 1988-2002 (tenured 1991) Assistant Professor of History (part-time), 1986-88 Harvard University, Spring Semester, 1985 Visiting Scholar in History and Instructor in University Extension University of New Mexico, 1979-85 Lecturer in History University of Texas at El Paso, 1977-79 Lecturer in History University of New Mexico, 1976-77 Lecturer, Pueblo and Navajo Teacher Education Programs University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 1973-76 Visiting Assistant Professor of History Teaching and Research Fields U.S. Women’s History U.S. Social & Cultural History Women and Religion History and Memory