Helen Hamilton Gardener

Background

Helen Hamilton Gardener was Alice Chenoweth by birth. She was the daughter of Rev. Alfred Griffith and Katherine A. (Peel) Chenoweth.

Alice was born on January 21, 1853, in Winchester, Virginia, and through her father was descended from a Welsh ancestor who settled in Maryland about 1700.

Education

Helen was graduated from the Cincinnati, Ohio, high school, from the Ohio State Normal School in 1872, and in 1873-74 was principal of the Ohio Branch State Normal School.

Like her father, who had broken away from political and religious traditions, she was independent in her thinking. She also demanded a substantial basis for her ideas and after her brief teaching experience studied biology, medicine, and sociology in New York.

Career

In addition to her writing, Helen lectured on sociological subjects at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences and in university extension courses.

As an editor of the Arena she contributed articles on humanitarian and feminist subjects.

As an advocate of woman’s suffrage Helen Gardener was associated with Susan B. Anthony, Anna Howard Shaw, and Elizabeth Cady Stantbn. In the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association she was known as the “Diplomatic Corps, ” having won, as vice-chairman of its congressional committee, the respect and support of senators and congressmen. She also held in the association the office of vicepresident.

At sixty- seven, after ill health had made her fear that her work was over, she was appointed United States civil service commissioner by President Wilson, April 13, 1920.

In suffrage activities and as commissioner, she was so strictly non-partisan that many of her friends did not know her political preferences.

She died in the summer of 1925 at Walter Reed Hospital, in Washington.

Achievements

• Helen Hamilton Gardener is remembered today for her role in the freethought and women's suffrage movements. She was an editor of the Arena and contributed articles on humanitarian and feminist subjects.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Facts and Fictions of Life

    (This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)

  • Is this your son, my Lord? a novel by Helen H. Gardene

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Facts and Fictions of Life

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • An Unofficial Patriot

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • A Thoughtless Yes

    ( A Thoughtless Yes by Helen H. (Helen Hamilton) Gardener)

  • Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter? (Classic Reprint)

    (Xife s Gifts. I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dr...)

  • Men, Women, and Gods And Other Lectures

  • book

Religion

Becoming a friend of Robert G. Ingersoll, Helen spent her Sunday evenings in his home for years and probably through his influence became agnostic and wrote in defense of agnosticism.

Views

Before the International Council of Women, assembled by the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association at Washington, C. , in March 1888, Helen read her paper, “Sex in Brain, ” which was prepared after fourteen months of biological study. It was prompted by statements of Dr. W. A. Hammond, surgeon- general of the United States, supporting the contention that brains of men and women are structurally different.

To disprove this, Mrs. Gardener consulted many brain specialists and studied in the laboratory of Dr. E. C. Spitzka of New York before writing her paper. Her conclusion was that no general differences in weight or complexity of convolutions can be detected between brains of males and females.

Quotations: "Women are indebted today for their emancipation from a position of hopeless degradation, not to their religion nor to Jehovah, but to the justice and honor of the men who have defied his commands. That she does not crouch today where St. Paul tried to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his God. "

Membership

Helen H. Gardener was a member of the United States Civil Service Commission.

Personality

Early in her career, Alice adopted the name Helen Hamilton Gardener, by which she was thereafter known, in private as well as public life.

Though she wrote with a directness and a vigor derived from deep feeling for her themes, her narrative style is without subtlety or distinctive art.

According to her direction, no religious service was held at her funeral, which took place at her home on Lamont Street. Instead, friends and colleagues spoke of her life and work. By her will she left her brain to Cornell University for research.

Connections

At twenty-two, Helen married Charles Selden Smart, who died in 1898. In 1901, she was married to Col. Selden Allen Day, U. S. A.

Father:

Alfred Griffith Chenoweth

9 February 1809 - 25 April 1864

Mother:

Catherine Ann Peel Chenoweth

1 June 1812 - 14 January 1881

Brother:

William E. Chenoweth

1837 - 24 February 1882

Brother:

Alfred Hamlin Chenoweth

17 December 1846 - 28 November 1887

Brother:

Bernard Peel Chenoweth

18 August 1836 - 21 June 1870

Sister:

Julia C Chenoweth Hatcher

7 September 1849 - 1 February 1873

Sister:

Catherine Davenport “Kate” Chenoweth Roehl

28 April 1844 - 25 May 1897

Friend:

Robert G. Ingersoll

husband:

Selden Allen Day

22 July 1838 - 22 December 1918

husband:

Charles Selden Smart

Died in 1898.