Career
GREENE, FRANCES HARRIET WHIPPLE [See Green, Frances Harriet Whipple, 1805-1878]. She was born as Frances Harriet Whipple on a farm in Smithfield, Rhode Island. She descended from two of the state's oldest, most distinguished families, but after her father's serious financial reversal she had to earn her own living at a very early age.
In 1842, during the conflict of Rhode Island's Dorr Rebellion, Frances Whipple supported Dorr's efforts to achieve reform of the state's voting laws. After this uprising was harshly suppressed, she fled to Connecticut where she lived "in exile" with her new husband, an artist named Charles Green. Their unhappy marriage ended in 1847 when Frances divorced Charles on grounds of non-support and desertion. She then moved to the area of New York City where she taught botany and wrote for spiritualist publications. In 1861 she moved to San Francisco. There she lectured and wrote against slavery, worked for women's rights and served on the board of the first local women's typographical union. She also continued her spiritualist writing. At the age of 57 she married William McDougall, a miner who had been a California assemblyman and was the brother of the state's second governor, John McDougall.
