Ernestine Rose

Born	Ernestine Louise Polowsky (1810-01-13)January 13, 1810 Piotrków Trybunalski, Duchy of Warsaw (now Poland)
Died	August 4, 1892(1892-08-04) (aged 82) Brighton, England
Resting place	Highgate Cemetery, London, England
Nationality	Polish (by birth) American (naturalized)
Other names	Ernestine Louise Polowsky
Occupation	Manufacturer of perfumed paper
Known for	Women's rights Women's suffrage Feminism Civil rights Atheist feminism
Spouse	William Ella Rose

Ernestine Louise Rose (January 13, 1810 – August 4, 1892)^[1] was a suffragist, abolitionist, and freethinker who has been called the “first Jewish feminist.”^[2] Her career spanned from the 1830s to the 1870s, making her a contemporary to the more famous suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.^[3] Largely forgotten in contemporary discussions of the American women's rights movement, she was one of its major intellectual forces in nineteenth-century America.^[4] The quote, "women's rights are human rights," was believed to be first coined by her.^[5] Her relationship with Judaism is a debated motivation for her advocacy.^[6] As a rabbi's daughter, Ernestine had received more education than other women her age. Although less well remembered than her fellow suffragists and abolitionists, in 1996, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, and in 1998 the Ernestine Rose Society was founded to “revive the legacy of this important early nineteenth century reformer by recognizing her pioneering role in the first wave of feminism.”^[7]

Early life

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She was born on 13 January 1810 in Piotrków Trybunalski, Duchy of Warsaw, as Ernestine Louise Potowska.^[2] Her father was a rabbi; her mother was the daughter of a wealthy businessman.^[8] Unusual for the time, she was educated and learned Hebrew.^[2] At the age of five, Rose began to "question the justice of a God who would exact such hardships" as the frequent fasts that her father performed. "I was a rebel at the age of five."^[9] As she grew older, she began to question her father more and more on religious matters. He told her, "A young girl does not want to understand the object of her creed, but to accept and believe it."^[9] She later said that she dated her disbelief and women's rights principles from that event.

When she was sixteen her mother died and left her an inheritance. Her father, without her consent, betrothed her to a Jewish friend of his, to "bind her more closely to the bosom of the synagogue." Rose, not wanting to enter a marriage with a man she neither chose nor loved, confronted him, professing her lack of affection towards him and begging for release. However, Rose was a woman from a rich family, and he denied her plea. In a highly unusual move, Rose traveled to the secular civil court — a difficult trip in winter — where she pleaded her case herself. The court ruled in her favor, not only freeing her from her betrothal, but ruling that she could retain the full inheritance she received from her mother.^[2] Although she decided to relinquish the fortune to her father, she gladly took her freedom from betrothal. She returned home only to discover that in her absence her father had remarried, to a sixteen-year-old girl. The tension that developed eventually forced her to leave home at the age of seventeen.

Rose then traveled to Berlin, where she found herself hampered by an antisemitic law that required all non-Prussian Jews to have a Prussian sponsor. She appealed directly to the king and was granted an exemption from the rule.^[2] Soon afterward, she invented perfumed paper for use as a room deodorizer, which she sold to fund her travels.^[9]

England and the United States

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She traveled to Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and finally England. Her arrival in England was less than smooth, however, as the ship in which she was sailing was shipwrecked. Although Rose did make it to England safely, all her possessions had been destroyed, and she found herself destitute. In order to support herself, she sought work teaching German and Hebrew; she also continued to sell her perfumed paper. While in England, she met Robert Owen, a Utopian socialist,^[2] who was so impressed by her that he invited her to speak in a large hall for radical speakers. In spite of her limited knowledge of English, the audience was so impressed that from then on her appearances were regular. She and Owen were close friends, and she even helped him to found the Association of All Classes of All Nations,^[2] a group that espoused human rights for all people of all nations, sexes, races, and classes. He called her "his daughter."^[9] During her time there she also met William Ella Rose, a Christian jeweler and silversmith, an Englishman, and a "fervent disciple" of Owen.^[9] They were soon married by a civil magistrate, and both made it plain that they considered the marriage a civil contract rather than a religious one.

In May 1836 the Roses emigrated to the United States, where they later became naturalized citizens and settled in a house in New York City in 1837. The Roses soon opened a small "Fancy and Perfumery" store in their home, where Rose sold her perfumed toilet water and William ran a silversmith shop.

Abolitionist, atheist, feminist, suffragist

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Rose soon began to give lectures on the subjects that most interested her, joining the "Society for Moral Philanthropists" and traveling to different states to espouse her causes: the abolition of slavery, religious tolerance, public education, and equality for women. Her lectures were met with controversy. When she was in the South to speak out against slavery, one slaveholder told her he would have "tarred and feathered her if she had been a man."^[2] When, in 1855, she was invited to deliver an anti-slavery lecture in Bangor, Maine, a local newspaper called her "a female Atheist... a thousand times below a prostitute." When Rose responded to the slur in a letter to the competing paper, she sparked off a town feud that created such publicity that, by the time she arrived, everyone in town was eager to hear her. Her most ill-received lecture was likely in Charleston, West Virginia, where her lecture on the evils of slavery was met with such vehement opposition and outrage that she was forced to exercise considerable influence to get out of the city safely.^[10]

In the 1840s and 1850s, Rose joined the "pantheon of great American women," a group that included such influential women as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis, and Sojourner Truth, along with William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass,^[2] to fight for women's rights and abolition.

In the winter of 1836, Judge Thomas Hertell submitted a married women's property act to the New York State Legislature to investigate methods of improving the civil and property rights of married women, and to allow them to hold real estate in their own name. When Rose heard of this resolution, she drew up a petition and began to solicit names in support of it. In 1838, this petition was sent to the state legislature in spite of having five signatures. This was the first petition ever introduced in favor of rights for women. During the following years, she increased both the number of petitions and the number of signatures. In 1849, these rights were finally won.^[2]

Rose also attended and spoke at numerous conferences and conventions, including, but not limited to the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, on October 23–24, 1850,^[11] First National Convention of Infidels, the Hartford Bible Convention, the Women's Rights Convention in the Tabernacle, New York City, the tenth national convention of the National Women's Rights Convention in Cooper Institute, New York City, the State Women's Rights Convention in Albany, New York, and the Equal Rights Association meeting in which there was a schism.

Rose was elected president of the National Women's Rights Convention in October, 1854, in spite of objections that she was an atheist. Her election was heavily supported by Susan B. Anthony, who declared that "every religion – or none – should have an equal right on the platform."

Although she never seemed to attach great importance to her Jewish background, in 1863 Rose had a published debate with Horace Seaver, the abolitionist editor of the Boston Investigator, whom she accused of being antisemitic.^[2]

In 1869, she successfully lobbied for legislation in New York that allowed married women to retain their own property and have equal guardianship of children.^[2]

In her later years, after a six-month trip to Europe, she attempted to stay away from platforms and controversy. However, within 6 months, she made the closing address at the nationwide Women's Rights Convention. Her health once again took a downward turn, and on June 8, 1869, she and her husband set sail for England. Susan B. Anthony arranged a farewell party for them, and the couple received many gifts from friends and admirers, including a substantial amount of money.

After 1873, her health improved, and she began to advocate women's suffrage in England, even attending the Conference of the Woman's Suffrage Movement in London and speaking in Edinburgh, Scotland at a large public meeting in favor of woman's suffrage. She died in Brighton, England, in 1892 and was buried at Highgate Cemetery.^[2]

References

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^ Suhl, Yuri (1970-01-01). Eloquent Crusader: Ernestine Rose. J. Messner. p. 1. ISBN 9780671322113.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m "Ernestine Rose". Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved 2018-03-25.
^ Lazarus, Joyce B. (2022). Ernestine L. Rose: To Change a Nation. Lanham, Maryland: Hamilton Books. ISBN 9780761873426.
^ Anderson, Bonnie S. (2017). The Rabbi's Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist Pioneer. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199756247.001.0001. ISBN 9780199756247.
^ Davin, Anna (2002). "Honouring Ernestine Rose, London, 1 and 4 August 2002". History Workshop Journal. 54 (54): 276–277. doi:10.1093/hwj/54.1.276. ISSN 1363-3554. JSTOR 4289820.
^ Berkowitz, Sandra J.; Lewis, Amy C. (September 1998). "Debating anti-Semitism: Ernestine Rose vs. Horace Seaver in the Boston Investigator, 1863–1864". Communication Quarterly. 46 (4): 457–471. doi:10.1080/01463379809370115.
^ "Rose, Ernestine Louise Potowski". National Women’s Hall of Fame.
^ "Life Story: Ernestine Rose (1810-1892)". The New York Historical. Retrieved 2025-04-08.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e American Atheists (2008). "Ernestine Rose: A Troublesome Female". Archived from the original on November 20, 2010.
^ Underwood, Sara A. Francis (1876). Heroines of Freethought. New York: Charles P. Somerby. p. 271. OCLC 2735604.
^ Cady Stanton, Elizabeth; et al. (1887). History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1. p. 237.

Sources

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Primary sources

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Mistress of Herself: Speeches and Letters of Ernestine Rose, Early Women's Rights Leader, Paula Doress-Worters, ed. Feminist Press, 2008, ISBN 978-1-5586-1543-4
History of Woman Suffrage Vol 1. (Internet Archive)

Secondary sources

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Lazarus, Joyce B. (2022). Ernestine L. Rose: To Change a Nation, Hamilton Books, Lanham, Maryland, ISBN 978-0-7618-7342-6
Jacoby, Susan (2005). Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, "Lost Connections: Anticlericalism, Abolitionism, and Feminism." Henry Holt And Company, New York, ISBN 0-8050-7776-6
"Great Minds Ernestine L. Rose: Freethinking Rebel", Carol Kolmerten, Summer, 2002, (Volume 22, No. 3), p53-55, Free Inquiry
Kolmerten, Carol (1998). The American Life of Ernestine L. Rose. Syracuse University Press, ISBN 0-8156-0528-5
Anderson, Bonnie S. (2017) The Rabbi's Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist Pioneer. Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-975624-7
Davin, Anna (2002). "Honouring Ernestine Rose, London, 1 and 4 August 2002". History Workshop Journal (54): 276–277. ISSN 1363-3554.

Further reading

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Yuri, Suhl (1990). Ernestine L. Rose: Women's Rights Pioneer. New York: Biblio Press. ISBN 0-930395-09-3

External links

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Wikiquote has quotations related to Ernestine Rose.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ernestine Rose.

Wikisource has the text of a 1900 Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography article about Ernestine Rose.

Inductees to the National Women's Hall of Fame

1970–1979

1973	Jane Addams Marian Anderson Susan B. Anthony Clara Barton Mary McLeod Bethune Elizabeth Blackwell Pearl S. Buck Rachel Carson Mary Cassatt Emily Dickinson Amelia Earhart Alice Hamilton Helen Hayes Helen Keller Eleanor Roosevelt Florence Sabin Margaret Chase Smith Elizabeth Cady Stanton Helen Brooke Taussig Harriet Tubman
1976	Abigail Adams Margaret Mead Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias
1979	Dorothea Dix Juliette Gordon Low Alice Paul Elizabeth Bayley Seton

1980–1989

1981	Margaret Sanger Sojourner Truth
1982	Carrie Chapman Catt Frances Perkins
1983	Belva Lockwood Lucretia Mott
1984	Mary "Mother" Harris Jones Bessie Smith
1986	Barbara McClintock Lucy Stone Harriet Beecher Stowe
1988	Gwendolyn Brooks Willa Cather Sally Ride Mary Risteau Ida B. Wells-Barnett

1990–1999

1990	Margaret Bourke-White Barbara Jordan Billie Jean King Florence B. Seibert
1991	Gertrude Belle Elion
1993	Ethel Percy Andrus Antoinette Blackwell Emily Blackwell Shirley Chisholm Jacqueline Cochran Ruth Colvin Marian Wright Edelman Alice Evans Betty Friedan Ella Grasso Martha Wright Griffiths Fannie Lou Hamer Dorothy Height Dolores Huerta Mary Putnam Jacobi Mae Jemison Mary Lyon Mary Mahoney Wilma Mankiller Constance Baker Motley Georgia O'Keeffe Annie Oakley Rosa Parks Esther Peterson Jeannette Rankin Ellen Swallow Richards Elaine Roulet Katherine Siva Saubel Gloria Steinem Helen Stephens Lillian Wald Madam C. J. Walker Faye Wattleton Rosalyn S. Yalow Gloria Yerkovich
1994	Bella Abzug Ella Baker Myra Bradwell Annie Jump Cannon Jane Cunningham Croly Catherine East Geraldine Ferraro Charlotte Perkins Gilman Grace Hopper Helen LaKelly Hunt Zora Neale Hurston Anne Hutchinson Frances Wisebart Jacobs Susette La Flesche Louise McManus Maria Mitchell Antonia Novello Linda Richards Wilma Rudolph Betty Bone Schiess Muriel Siebert Nettie Stevens Oprah Winfrey Sarah Winnemucca Fanny Wright
1995	Virginia Apgar Ann Bancroft Amelia Bloomer Mary Breckinridge Eileen Collins Elizabeth Hanford Dole Anne Dallas Dudley Mary Baker Eddy Ella Fitzgerald Margaret Fuller Matilda Joslyn Gage Lillian Moller Gilbreth Nannerl O. Keohane Maggie Kuhn Sandra Day O'Connor Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin Pat Schroeder Hannah Greenebaum Solomon
1996	Louisa May Alcott Charlotte Anne Bunch Frances Xavier Cabrini Mary A. Hallaren Oveta Culp Hobby Wilhelmina Cole Holladay Anne Morrow Lindbergh Maria Goeppert Mayer Ernestine Louise Potowski Rose Maria Tallchief Edith Wharton
1998	Madeleine Albright Maya Angelou Nellie Bly Lydia Moss Bradley Mary Steichen Calderone Mary Ann Shadd Cary Joan Ganz Cooney Gerty Cori Sarah Grimké Julia Ward Howe Shirley Ann Jackson Shannon Lucid Katharine Dexter McCormick Rozanne L. Ridgway Edith Nourse Rogers Felice Schwartz Eunice Kennedy Shriver Beverly Sills Florence Wald Angelina Grimké Weld Chien-Shiung Wu

2000–2009

2000	Faye Glenn Abdellah Emma Smith DeVoe Marjory Stoneman Douglas Mary Dyer Sylvia A. Earle Crystal Eastman Jeanne Holm Leontine T. Kelly Frances Oldham Kelsey Kate Mullany Janet Reno Anna Howard Shaw Sophia Smith Ida Tarbell Wilma L. Vaught Mary Edwards Walker Annie Dodge Wauneka Eudora Welty Frances E. Willard
2001	Dorothy H. Andersen Lucille Ball Rosalynn Carter Lydia Maria Child Bessie Coleman Dorothy Day Marian de Forest Althea Gibson Beatrice A. Hicks Barbara Holdridge Harriet Williams Russell Strong Emily Howell Warner Victoria Woodhull
2002	Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis Ruth Bader Ginsburg Katharine Graham Bertha Holt Mary Engle Pennington Mercy Otis Warren
2003	Linda G. Alvarado Donna de Varona Gertrude Ederle Martha Matilda Harper Patricia Roberts Harris Stephanie L. Kwolek Dorothea Lange Mildred Robbins Leet Patsy Takemoto Mink Sacagawea Anne Sullivan Sheila E. Widnall
2005	Florence E. Allen Ruth Fulton Benedict Betty Bumpers Hillary Clinton Rita Rossi Colwell Mother Marianne Cope Maya Y. Lin Patricia A. Locke Blanche Stuart Scott Mary Burnett Talbert
2007	Eleanor K. Baum Julia Child Martha Coffin Pelham Wright Swanee Hunt Winona LaDuke Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Judith L. Pipher Catherine Filene Shouse Henrietta Szold
2009	Louise Bourgeois Mildred Cohn Karen DeCrow Susan Kelly-Dreiss Allie B. Latimer Emma Lazarus Ruth Patrick Rebecca Talbot Perkins Susan Solomon Kate Stoneman

2010–2019

2011	St. Katharine Drexel Dorothy Harrison Eustis Loretta C. Ford Abby Kelley Foster Helen Murray Free Billie Holiday Coretta Scott King Lilly Ledbetter Barbara A. Mikulski Donna E. Shalala Kathrine Switzer
2013	Betty Ford Ina May Gaskin Julie Krone Kate Millett Nancy Pelosi Mary Joseph Rogers Bernice Sandler Anna Schwartz Emma Willard
2015	Tenley Albright Nancy Brinker Martha Graham Marcia Greenberger Barbara Iglewski Jean Kilbourne Carlotta Walls LaNier Philippa Marrack Mary Harriman Rumsey Eleanor Smeal
2017	Matilda Cuomo Temple Grandin Lorraine Hansberry Victoria Jackson Sherry Lansing Clare Boothe Luce Aimee Mullins Carol Mutter Janet Rowley Alice Waters
2019	Gloria Allred Angela Davis Sarah Deer Jane Fonda Nicole Malachowski Rose O'Neill Louise Slaughter Sonia Sotomayor Laurie Spiegel Flossie Wong-Staal

2020–2029

2020	Aretha Franklin Barbara Hillary Barbara Rose Johns Henrietta Lacks Toni Morrison Mary Church Terrell
2022	Octavia E. Butler Judy Chicago Rebecca S. Halstead Mia Hamm Joy Harjo Emily Howland Katherine Johnson Indra Nooyi Michelle Obama
2024	Patricia Bath Ruby Bridges Elouise P. Cobell Kimberlé Crenshaw Peggy McIntosh Judith Plaskow Loretta Ross Sandy Stone Anna Wessels Williams Serena Williams