Josepha Newcomb Whitney

Josepha Newcomb Whitney (born September 27, 1871 – died after 1955) was an American clubwoman, pacifist, suffragist, and politician.

Josepha Newcomb Whitney
Josepha Whitney, from a 1922 newspaper.
Born
Anna Josepha Newcomb

(1871-09-27)September 27, 1871
Washington, D.C.
NationalityUnited States of America
Known forPeace and suffrage activism, politics
RelativesSimon Newcomb (father)
Anita Newcomb McGee (sister)
Edward Baldwin Whitney (husband)
Hassler Whitney (son)
William Dwight Whitney (father-in-law)
Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler (great-grandfather),
William John McGee (brother-in-law)

Early life

Anna Josepha Newcomb was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Nova Scotia-born astronomer Simon Newcomb and Mary Caroline Hassler Newcomb. Physician Anita Newcomb McGee was her older sister. Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, first head of the United States Coast Survey, was their Swiss-born great-grandfather.[1] The Newcomb daughters were mainly educated at home by their father.[2] Josepha Newcomb later joined classes with the Art Students League of New York.[3]

Activism

Whitney was a prominent suffragist in Connecticut and New York.[4] In 1912, Whitney planned the first suffrage meeting in Cornwall, Connecticut.[5] She was president of the local Equal Suffrage League and the Housewives' League. "Where dirt is," she said of corruption in politics, "it is the custom of woman to get her broom and clean it up."[6] During World War I, she worked on the assembly line at a munitions plant in Winchester, Connecticut to study the working conditions of women in the war effort. She also conducted a food price survey.[7]

Whitney supported young opera singer Olympia Macri through and after her 1925 murder trial,[8][9] and protested to end all-male juries in Connecticut.[2] "Women demand a little less gush for the sacredness of motherhood and a great deal more actual consideration," she explained.[10] In 1928 she led a group of active New Haven women in leaving the Daughters of the American Revolution over a blacklist of speakers.[11]

Whitney was chair of the Connecticut Women's Peace Party before and after the war,[12] and president of the New Haven, Connecticut chapter of the League of Women Voters.[13] She was founder of the Connecticut League of Nations Association in 1924,[14] and attended the League of Nations Conference in Geneva in 1927.[15]

Politics

Whitney ran for the Connecticut state senate in 1922;[16] she lost that race, but she became the first woman on the New Haven board of aldermen in 1927,[7][17] and won a seat in the Connecticut General Assembly in 1932.[12]

Personal life

Josepha Newcomb married twice. Her first husband was lawyer and judge Edward Baldwin Whitney, the son of William Dwight Whitney, grandson of Roger Sherman Baldwin and the great-grandson of American founding father Roger Sherman. They married in 1896[18] and had seven children together; one, Sylvia, died in infancy. Judge Whitney died suddenly in January 1911,[19] leaving Josepha Whitney a pregnant widow, age 29, with five children under age 12.[20] She married again in 1952, to Harry LaTourette Cavenaugh, a retired army colonel;[21] she was widowed again in 1954, when Cavenaugh died.[22]

Her daughter Caroline (1901-1938) was an economist and expert on the dairy industry.[23] Her son Hassler Whitney (1907-1989) was a noted mathematician.[2][24] Another son, William Dwight Whitney (1899-1973), was an international antitrust lawyer who married English actress Adrianne Allen.[25]

References
  1. Daughters of the American Revolution, Lineage Book, Volume 4 (1897): 6.
  2. Keith Kendig, Never a Dull Moment: Hassler Whitney, Mathematics Pioneer (American Mathematical Society 2018): 11. ISBN 9781470448288
  3. Andrew Newcomb, 1618-1686, and His Descendants, Volume 1 (Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Company 1923): 542.
  4. "Speeches to Start Suffragists' March" The Washington Times (June 26, 1914): 4. via Newspapers.com
  5. "Women's Rights: Cornwall's Radicals, Rebels and Reformers", online exhibit, Cornwall Historical Society.
  6. "Mass Meeting of Suffragists" Poughkeepsie Eagle-News (April 10, 1915): 1. via Newspapers.com
  7. "Women Invade Aldermanic Chamber" The Hartford Courant (December 4, 1927): 61. via Newspapers.com
  8. "Wealthy Woman Comes to Aid of Olympia Maori" Chillicothe Gazette (December 9, 1925): 5. via Newspapers.com
  9. "Olympia, Free, Taken to Home of Rich Woman" Daily News (December 9, 1925): 146. via Newspapers.com
  10. "Female Jury Urged by Society Woman Aiding Girl Slayer" Brooklyn Daily Eagle (April 26, 1925): 22. via Newspapers.com
  11. "Eleven Tell Why They Resigned from D. A. R." Boston Globe (May 3, 1928): 22. via Newspapers.com
  12. Carole Nichols, Votes and More for Women: Suffrage and After in Connecticut (Routledge 2013): 48, 59. ISBN 9781135818005
  13. "Josepha Whitney" Women in Peace.
  14. Danelle L. Moon. "The Local is Global: Broker for Human Rights Florence Kitchelt, Connecticut Peace Activist and Feminist1920-1961" 34th Annual Meeting of the Social Science and History Association (2009): 7.
  15. "Farewell Party Given Roberts" Bridgeport Telegram (November 4, 1927): 24. via Newspapers.com
  16. "Two Democratic Candidates Address Big Rally in Town Hall" Norwich Bulletin (October 23, 1922): 5. via Newspapers.com
  17. Michael Sletcher, New Haven: From Puritanism to the Age of Terrorism (Arcadia Publishing 2004): 117. ISBN 9780738524672
  18. Untitled society item, Evening Star (April 11, 1896): 7. via Newspapers.com
  19. Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University (Yale 1915): 84-86.
  20. Thomas Townsend Sherman, Sherman Genealogy Including Families of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, England (T. A. Wright 1920): 407.
  21. "Couple Marry in Winter Park College Chapel" The Morning News (March 21, 1952): 39. via Newspapers.com
  22. "Col. Cavenaugh Dies at 83" Orlando Sentinel (October 31, 1954): 34. via Newspapers.com
  23. "Dr. Caroline Whitney; Rites for Milk Expert" Daily News (November 21, 1938): 357. via Newspapers.com
  24. Kai Cieliebak, Y. Eliashberg, From Stein to Weinstein and Back: Symplectic Geometry of Affine Complex Manifolds (American Mathematical Society 2012): 349-350. ISBN 9780821885338
  25. "William Whitney, Lawyer, 74, Dies" New York Times (December 30, 1973): 31. via ProQuest
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