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Women Through History, Miami, WV (2026)

09/05/2026

She walked onto a stage at only five years old, singing before a crowd at a church gathering in Brooklyn. By seven, she was already performing in vaudeville. And long before Hollywood knew her name, Mae West had spent years shaping herself into the woman she wanted the world to remember.

Born Mary Jane West in Brooklyn in 1893, she never waited for permission to become who she was. At thirty-two, she was writing and starring in her own Broadway plays. One of them, S*x, caused such an uproar that police shut down the production. Mae was arrested, convicted of corrupting public morals, and spent eight days behind bars.

But the scandal did not break her.

It made her unforgettable.

When Hollywood finally came calling, she was thirty-nine—an age when many actresses of that era were already being pushed toward the sidelines. Mae simply refused to accept that fate. She became a star anyway.

She wrote much of her own material, fought for control of her contracts, and became one of America’s highest-paid entertainers during the 1930s. Her fearless humor and unapologetic personality challenged Hollywood so dramatically that censorship became even stricter because of performers like her.

Even the RAF gave their inflatable life jackets the nickname “Mae Wests,” inspired by their unmistakable shape. Salvador Dalí designed a famous sofa inspired by her lips. And while most people were slowing down with age, Mae was still recording rock-and-roll albums in her eighties and made her final film at eighty-five.

Born on this day in 1893, Mae West.

She was arrested at thirty-two for refusing to be ordinary, became a Hollywood star at thirty-nine, and spent the rest of her life proving that she would never shrink herself to make anyone else comfortable.

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09/04/2026

She was discovered crying beneath a staircase, holding a teddy bear tightly, only days after arriving in Greece. She was just sixteen—the new queen of a country whose language she barely understood, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, ceremonies, and expectations. She was frightened and overwhelmed. Yet within a year, she had learned Greek, English, and was already working to build hospitals for her new people.

Olga Constantinovna was born at Pavlovsk on this day in 1851, the granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I. She grew up surrounded by the grandeur of Russia’s imperial palaces before being chosen to marry the newly established King George I of Greece. She arrived at a young royal court still struggling to find its identity in a kingdom less than forty years old—and slowly transformed it through compassion and determination. She established hospitals, schools, asylums, a women’s prison, a juvenile prison, and a soup kitchen that also taught poor girls how to cook, personally helping finance much of the work. When she attempted to provide wounded soldiers with the Gospels in modern Greek instead of ancient Koine, violent riots erupted in 1901, becoming so serious that the government eventually fell. That was the kind of queen she became.

She endured the assassination of her husband, George I, in Thessaloniki in 1913, the Russian Revolution that stripped away her property, and the heartbreaking death of her grandson, King Alexander, after a monkey bite in 1920. She reached Tatoi only hours after he had already died. Soon afterward, she was asked to serve as regent of Greece until her son Constantine returned to the throne. She was seventy years old.

Born on this day in 1851, Olga Constantinovna of Russia, Queen of the Hellenes. She arrived in Greece frightened and in tears, learned the language, built hospitals, cared for the forgotten, and eventually helped govern the country at seventy. Her story began with a frightened young girl—and ended with a woman who had become a pillar of the nation.

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09/04/2026

She died at Windsor Castle on this day in 1369, at around fifty-nine years old, after suffering from what people then called dropsy. Edward III remained beside her during her final hours. According to tradition, Philippa asked him to settle the debts of her household and to ensure she was buried at Westminster beside him. He honored both wishes. Eight years later, when Edward died, he was laid to rest beside her. He never married again.

Philippa of Hainault had been Queen of England for forty-one years, yet her influence was rarely dramatic or loudly displayed. Instead, it could be felt in the quiet moments when someone needed compassion, courage, or a powerful voice.

In 1347, while heavily pregnant, she knelt before Edward and begged him to spare the lives of the six burghers of Calais. He eventually agreed. In 1346, while Edward was away fighting in France, Philippa helped rally English forces before the Battle of Neville's Cross, where Scotland's David II was captured.

She also helped shape England in ways that lasted long after her reign. She encouraged Flemish weavers to settle in Norwich, helping strengthen the country's growing cloth industry. She supported Jean Froissart, who became one of the great chroniclers of the age, and offered early encouragement to Geoffrey Chaucer.

Even her tomb feels remarkably personal. Her effigy at Westminster Abbey does not portray some flawless, distant queen—it shows a mature woman with a gentle face, someone who looks surprisingly human after nearly seven centuries.

Died on this day in 1369, Philippa of Hainault, Queen of England. She protected lives, encouraged artists and writers, helped strengthen an industry, and left behind a likeness that still makes her feel strangely close after all these centuries.

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09/03/2026

On this day in 1857, Caty Schuyler, the youngest daughter of Philip and Catharine Schuyler, quietly passed away at the age of 76.

From childhood, Caty was known for having a curious mind and a genuine hunger for knowledge. Her father encouraged her love of books, reading, and geography—interests that were not always encouraged in women during her time. She was taught to wonder about the world, even when society expected women to remain within much smaller boundaries.

Caty married twice during her lifetime, first to Samuel Malcolm and later to James Cochran. Sadly, both men died before her, leaving Caty to continue her life without them.

With the passing of her siblings, she eventually became the last surviving child of Philip and Catharine Schuyler. She even lived two years longer than her celebrated older sister, Elizabeth.

When Caty died in 1857, a remarkable generation of the Schuyler family had nearly disappeared into the pages of history.

She had been the youngest child, yet she became the one who lived the longest. In the end, she was the last daughter left carrying the memories of an entire family—and then, those memories went with her.

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09/03/2026

When a bomb landed less than two yards from her home in England, she somehow walked away unharmed. When her security detail came to collect her after she abdicated in 1948, she calmly reminded them that she was now a princess, not a queen, and asked them to leave the car. And when she died in 1962, she had already made one final request: her funeral should be entirely white, because she believed death was not the end, but the beginning of something beyond this life. Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was never a woman who simply followed the path others chose for her.

She became Queen of the Netherlands at just ten years old after her father died, spending eight years under her mother’s regency before being inaugurated on her eighteenth birthday in 1898. She would reign for an extraordinary fifty-eight years, witnessing two world wars, the Great Depression, and the painful collapse of the Dutch colonial empire. When German forces invaded in May 1940 and her ministers urged surrender, Wilhelmina refused. She escaped to London, continued speaking by radio to the occupied Netherlands throughout the war, and became one of the strongest symbols of Dutch resistance. Winston Churchill famously praised her courage. Before her daughter Juliana was born, Wilhelmina endured four miscarriages. She would eventually outlive her husband by twenty-eight years.

She abdicated in 1948 and withdrew to Het Loo Palace, hoping for a quieter life. But when devastating floods struck the Netherlands in 1953, she returned to the public eye, visiting ruined communities and comforting people who had lost homes and loved ones before retreating once again to her beloved garden.

Born on this day in 1880, Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. She survived danger, refused to surrender, spoke to her people from exile, and even dismissed her guards when her crown was gone. She gave her country fifty-eight years of strength—and the Dutch people never forgot her.

09/02/2026

Before Dolly Parton had the towering hair, glittering dresses, hit songs, or worldwide fame, she had something far more precious — a simple tin can and a dream.

As a little girl growing up in the mountains of East Tennessee, Dolly would pretend that tin can was a microphone. She’d stand outside her family’s small cabin, singing her heart out and imagining the day she might perform on the Grand Ole Opry.

She was one of twelve children, and there was rarely much money to spare. But music was always around her. Her mother sang, her family played instruments, and by the age of five, Dolly was already creating little songs and rhymes of her own.

And somehow, that childhood dream refused to disappear.

By the time she was 10, Dolly was appearing on local radio and television in Knoxville. Her family didn’t even have a television, so she used some of the money she earned performing to help bring one into their home.

At 11, she co-wrote “Puppy Love” with her uncle Bill Owens. Two years later, she and her grandmother made a 30-hour bus journey to Louisiana so 13-year-old Dolly could finally record the song.

Then came the moment she had pictured for so many years.

The Grand Ole Opry.

In 1959, at only 13, Dolly stood backstage at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. Johnny Cash introduced her as a “little girl from East Tennessee.”

She stepped onto that legendary stage and sang George Jones’ “You Gotta Be My Baby.”

The audience wanted more.

Then they asked for more again.

And once more.

Dolly received three encores that unforgettable night.

Ten years later, she officially became a member of the Grand Ole Opry.

The little girl who once sang into a tin can had finally reached the stage she had dreamed about from her childhood porch.

Sometimes the biggest dreams begin with almost nothing — just a little courage, a little imagination, and enough faith to believe they might one day come true.

09/01/2026

In 1884, a woman visited a respected Philadelphia physician because she was unable to become pregnant. What happened during that examination would remain hidden from her for decades.

Dr. William Pancoast of Jefferson Medical College discovered that the problem was not his patient. Her husband was infertile.

But instead of telling the couple the truth, Pancoast made a decision that would change their lives forever.

He brought the woman before six medical students, placed her under chloroform, and performed an experiment while she was unconscious—without her knowledge or consent.

The semen did not come from her husband.

According to an account later written by one of the students, Pancoast chose the “best-looking” man in the medical class to provide it.

Using a rubber syringe, he inseminated the unconscious woman.

Nine months later, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

But what happened afterward may be even harder to believe.

Pancoast reportedly told the husband what had happened. Then the two men made another decision without the woman: she would never be told the truth.

Neither would her son.

For the next 25 years, the secret remained buried.

Then, in 1909, Addison Davis Hard, one of the medical students who had witnessed the procedure, published the story in the journal Medical World. Before doing so, Hard reportedly contacted the son, who was now 25 years old, and finally revealed the truth about his birth.

His mother, however, apparently lived the rest of her life believing that her husband was the biological father of her child.

The procedure became recognized as one of the earliest recorded successful examples of donor insemination.

But behind the medical achievement was a deeply troubling reality.

A supposed breakthrough had been carried out by taking away something we now understand to be fundamental: a woman’s right to know what is being done to her own body.

And for one mother, the truth about her own child was kept from her for an entire lifetime.

09/01/2026

Her daughter burned her diaries after her death. Yet the letters survived, because Lady Mary had wisely given copies to a trusted friend years earlier, knowing that one day someone might try to erase her story. She understood something few people did: sometimes, protecting your own voice is the only way history remembers the truth.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu died on this day in 1762, returning to England only seven months before her death after spending twenty-two years abroad. She had left partly because of a painful infatuation, partly because the endless gossip had become unbearable, and partly because she simply loved Italy. Once one of England’s most talked-about women, she spent her final years near Lake Brescia in Lombardy, writing to her daughter, reading constantly, and enjoying a life far away from public attention. For her, that quiet life seemed like a fair trade.

But she had already changed history in ways she could never have fully imagined. In 1717, while living in Constantinople where her husband served as ambassador, she witnessed Ottoman physicians protecting children from smallpox by introducing material from infected pustules beneath the skin. Her own brother had died from the disease, while she survived it with permanent scars. She had her young son inoculated in 1718 and her daughter in 1721, then spent years urging England to adopt the practice despite fierce opposition from doctors unwilling to accept medical advice from a woman without formal training.

The method she helped bring from Turkey became an important forerunner of modern vaccination.

Died on this day in 1762, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Her daughter destroyed her diaries. The letters survived anyway. And the medical practice she championed went on to save millions of lives. History may remember her letters most—but her greatest legacy was far more powerful.

08/31/2026

When cannon fire echoed from Prague’s walls during the Battle of White Mountain in November 1620, her advisers begged the queen to escape. She was eight months pregnant, yet she refused to leave. Her secretary later wrote that the sound of the guns was enough to frighten another queen. Her Majesty is nothing troubled therewith. In the end, two English ambassadors had to physically pull her from the city. She had been Queen of Bohemia for only one winter.

Elizabeth Stuart was born at Dunfermline Palace on this day in 1596, daughter of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark, whose stories also appear in this series. Named after her godmother, Queen Elizabeth I, she grew into one of Europe’s most admired and captivating women. The King of Sweden, the King of Spain, and Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, all sought her hand. Her father chose Frederick. They married on Valentine’s Day 1613 and welcomed thirteen children over eighteen years. By every account, theirs was a marriage filled with genuine affection.

When Frederick accepted the Bohemian crown in 1619 despite experienced political warnings, the decision helped ignite the Thirty Years’ War and destroyed everything they had built. The couple fled into exile and spent the next decade at The Hague. Frederick died in 1632. Elizabeth lived another thirty years, keeping a modest court, appealing to European rulers for support, and watching her children spread across the continent. She finally returned to England in May 1661, only months before her death. She died from pneumonia at Leicester House in February 1662. Only her son Rupert attended her funeral.

Her daughter Sophia became Electress of Hanover. After the Act of Settlement passed in 1701, Sophia was named heir to the British throne. She died before Queen Anne, but her son inherited the crown as George I. Every British monarch since has descended from Elizabeth Stuart.

Born on this day in 1596, Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen. She was pulled from Prague while cannons thundered around her, and generations later, her descendant became King of Britain. One winter on a throne. A legacy that lasted for centuries.

08/29/2026

Ithell Colquhoun (British painter, writer, and occultist) 1906–1988

Nativity, 1929

Oil on canvas

40.5 x 51 cm. (16 x 20 in.)

Signed, inscribed and dated 1929

Private collection

© Photo Bonhams

Catalogue Note — Bonhams

Accompanied by a copy of a letter from Toni del Renzio, Ithell Colquhoun’s husband, explaining that the painting was created around 1929 while Colquhoun was studying at the Slade. The number 64 written on the front of the work is believed to have been connected to the competition in which she entered the painting.

Poet, author, painter, and lifelong student of the mysterious, Ithell Colquhoun explored the worlds of occultism, alchemy, Celtic mythology, and ancient lore. Born in Assam, India, she went on to study under Henry Tonks (1862–1937) at the Slade School of Fine Art between 1927 and 1931, where she won the Slade Summer Competition Prize in 1929.

Her journey soon carried her to Paris, where she encountered some of the most influential artists of the surrealist movement, including Man Ray, René Magritte (1898–1967), Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí (1904–89), and André Breton, whose first Manifeste du Surréalisme had appeared in 1924.

After traveling throughout Europe, Colquhoun returned to England and held her first one-person exhibition in Cheltenham in 1936, the same year she exhibited with the Fine Art Society. She also became connected with the emerging British surrealist circle, attending meetings alongside artists such as Sir Roland Penrose, John Banting (1902–72), and Eileen Agar.

During the 1940s, she married Toni del Renzio, publisher of the surrealist magazine Arson. Although their marriage eventually ended, this period became an important chapter in her artistic life. While living in Hampstead, she wrote surrealist poetry and began experimenting with “automatic” painting techniques, allowing chance and instinct to guide her hand. She also developed a deep connection with Cornwall, which she visited regularly.

Her career continued to unfold across Britain and Europe. She exhibited at the Mayor Gallery in London in 1947 and the Leicester Galleries in 1948. In 1949, she purchased Gluck’s former Hampstead studio for £2,500. The following year, she moved to Paul, near Penzance, and exhibited her work in Berlin and Hamburg.

In 1976, the Newlyn Orion Gallery presented a retrospective of her work, and in 1977 the Tate acquired her painting Scylla (1938). Her writings included The Living Stones (1957), Goose of Hermogenes (1961), and Sword of Wisdom (1975).

Colquhoun’s work was never simply about what could be seen. Her portrait of archaeologist Humfry Payne is held by the National Portrait Gallery, and its preparatory drawing shares striking qualities with her self-portrait. Ink washes create a mysterious sense of transparency, while chance becomes part of the creative process itself.

She allowed the ink to move, spread, and form unexpected shapes across the paper. This delicate balance between control and accident created an atmosphere of uncertainty and mystery—perhaps reflecting the same restless, spiritual, and unconventional life that made Ithell Colquhoun such a fascinating figure.

Source: Wikipedia / Bonhams

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