Editor's Note: Source of historical information for this story is "The South Carolina Encyclopedia" (2006), edited by Dr. Walter Edgar, by permission of The Humanities Council SC.

Thinking about Women's History Month brought the lyrics of "Wind Beneath My Wings" to mind: "It must have been cold there in my shadow/To never know sunlight on your face."

Yeah, it is, but never knowing sunshine on their faces doesn't seem to come natural to native Carolina girls.

When Hernando de Soto and his conquistadors passed through the middle of the state in 1540, they were greeted by canoes bearing the "Lady" of Cofitachiqui and her chiefdom, a moment they later compared to Cleopatra's arrival by barge. The Spanish wrote that the female leader supplied them with food and offered de Soto pearls from around her neck, but historians today say he faked a friendly visit to the "Lady's" mother, captured her and then probably demanded the food and pearls. The Spanish took the Lady and her attendants hostage, but the natives escaped near the Cataloochee River in today's North Carolina.

Many of our state's heroes may have been women, but leafing through the history books, especially those written before the 1970s, women are as scarcer than, shall we say, hen's teeth.

As ingredients of the juicy slice of pie known as South Carolina, the female gender might be compared to the filling -- they make up more than half of the population, their contributions weigh in heavily in the artistic, literary, naturalist (or beautiful) part of our culture, and as mothers and wives, of course, they hold the tops and bottom together.

Also like that pie filling, they have frequently been under the cover of the opposite sex, working underneath, providing the meat of the matter inside, unseen and unglorified from the outside. "Ahh," you may say, "I don't know," but statistics even in this century still show that South Carolina women, who today make up a lot of the muscle and brains of the state's working world, still make less money and are afforded less education and health care.

But March was set aside as Women's History Month not to right all wrongs, but simply to remedy the omission of women from those history books studied by the majority of adults over 40. Today, historians attempt to include more women in their texts but would have to be handicapped in their research still by the lack of previous records of what women were doing during all those wars they just loved to write about. Maybe they were birthing and rearing the kids, keeping the fires going, planting the garden, gathering the crops, cooking the food, overseeing the help, washing the clothes, but they didn't think that was interesting until Martha Stewart tapped into it and made a bundle off their mistake -- okay, I'll stop.

Before 1868, a married woman did not own property and could not sign a contract in South Carolina; anything she owned became the property of her husband. But single women could own their inheritance and sign contracts.

One single woman who signed a contract was Affra Harleston (ca. 1651-1698), who was from an English family of some wealth. After her family's property was ravaged by war, Affra left for South Carolina in 1669 onboard the ship Carolina. She had signed on as an indentured servant for two years to receive 100 acres in the New World when her time expired.

Like in the movie "Titanic," she became attached to John Coming, a ship's mate, and the two weathered a horrible storm off the Leeward Islands, but they reached land safely at Port Royal in 1670. John decided to stick with his work as a ship's mate and his courtship of Affra.

After her service was over in 1672, the couple married and founded the large Comingtee Plantation, ceding part of their land claim at Oyster Point for what is now Charleston to be built. The Comings took in orphans and sponsored the immigration of Affra's nephews. When John Coming, now ship's captain and member of Carolina's Grand Council, died in 1694, the couple had 740 acres and many servants. Affra lived four more years in a home she built at Wentworth and Philips streets. St. Philip's Church of Charleston was given its original 17 acres by Affra Harleston Coming.

Until 1949, when women got married in South Carolina, they had better be certain of their decision because there was no divorce, except for a brief period in the late 1860s. Marital rape was not a crime until 1991 and when, in the year 2000, South Carolina ranked number one in the rate of women being murdered by men, Gov. James Hodges appointed a task force to study domestic violence. A $20 fee was added to marriage licenses in 2001 to be used for women's shelters, and domestic violence became a felony in 2003. In 2002, South Carolina ranked third in the number of men killing their wives and female partners.

Although South Carolina women may have been treated like the property of their husbands, their talent, brains and tenacity sometimes found them serving as the family's chief source of income. An early example would be portrait painter Henrietta de Beaulieu Dering Johnston (ca. 1674-1729), the first professional woman artist in America. Probably born in northern France, she immigrated to London, where she married Robert Dering in 1694. The couple moved to Ireland, where he died, and Henrietta began painting pastels of her husband's extended family.

After she remarried, the Rev. Gideon Johnston of Dublin in 1706, he was sent to South Carolina and became rector of St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Charleston. When Johnston wrote to request his salary, which was often delayed, he admitted that without "the Assistance my wife gives me by drawing of Pictures ... I shou'd not have been able to live."

Her subjects were from her Huguenot associates (the Prioleaus, the Bacots, the Duboses) and members of St. Philips. Johnston had to import all her art materials, making them very precious, and her paintings grew smaller and lighter in South Carolina. About 40 portraits are extant in Irish private collections and in American museums, including the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Greenville County Museum of Art. She died in 1729 and is buried in St. Philip's Churchyard.

Although how Johnston received her art training in England is unknown, girls received little education in South Carolina until the 1840s, when wealthy girls had a chance through private schools. Poorer females had little education through the early 1900s; in 1900, only 54 percent of girls in the state were attending school. Before the Civil War, female education focused on domestic skills. Abolitionist Sarah Grimke of Charleston taught a class of women on sexual equality and described her pupils as "miserably deficient," but "butterflies of the fashionable world."

But before Grimke had ever taken her first breath of salty air, Hannah English Williams, also of Charleston, was not flitting around in the latest fashionable clothes. From 1701 to 1713, she was instead discovering unique butterfly species in the natural world of South Carolina and sending them to the Royal Society in London. The first female in the American British colonies to gather plants and animals for scientific collections, she helped catalog our state's natural resources and advanced botanical and zoological awareness here and in England.

Williams also sent the society snakes, scorpions, lizards, shells, a bee nest and insects. She promised mockingbirds and "Red birds" in the spring because she didn't want the trip to kill them. James Petiver of the Royal Society named some species for her: Williams' orange girdled Carolina butterfly (also known as the "viceroy"); Williams' yellow tipt Carolina butterfly ("dog's head") and Williams' selvedge-eyed Carolina butterfly ("creole pearly eye").

When her first husband died, she received 500 acres located near Stony Point in 1692 and then married William Williams. Three years later, their land holdings north of the Ashley doubled, and she continued her collections on this land. Although it is not known when she was born, in 1722 she was buried, like Johnston, in St. Philip's Churchyard.

Those wealthy women who were educated in private schools had access to religious colleges by the 1850s, but not until the 1868 constitution provided for public schools did the need for teachers translate to interest in women's colleges. The one-year course available at Winthrop Training School in 1886 evolved to state-supported vocational training for women in 1891 and eventually expanded to four years. Winthrop was exclusively for white women, however.

Before the civil rights era of the 1960s, South Carolina colleges were segregated. African-American women did not have access to private colleges, but when founded in 1869, Claflin College of Orangeburg offered coeducational studies to African-Americans. In the mid-1890s, the University of South Carolina admitted white women, but it was 1963 before Henrie Monteith became the first African-American woman to attend the University of South Carolina. Even at the end of the 20th century, the percentage of African-Americans attending college was relatively low considering their percentage of the state population.

The private and church colleges for women did not emphasize careers but only liberal arts for the "genteel" Southern woman. Even in the late 20th century, South Carolina women were less likely than women in the United States as a whole to finish high school, much less have a four-year college degree.

Elizabeth Timothy, like many South Carolina women, found herself having to pursue a career whether she had been prepared or expected to do so or not. Timothy, whom Benjamin Franklin said was born in Holland, came to Philadelphia in 1731 with her husband and four young children. When Franklin set her husband up as the printer of the South-Carolina Gazette in Charleston, Elizabeth stayed in Philadelphia to settle the family business before moving to Charleston in 1734.

When Timothy, who had become the official colonial printer, died in an accident in 1738, Elizabeth was left with six small children and "another hourly expected." She had already lost two children by 1737. Although her son, Peter, was expected by Franklin and her husband to carry on the business, he was too young, so she published the next issue in January 1739, pledging to make it as "entertaining and correct as may be reasonably expected."

By the end of that year, Elizabeth had bought out Franklin's interest and became the first woman in the colonies to own and publish a newspaper. Franklin praised her accounting and commended her ability to both raise a family and buy the business from him. Besides publishing the newspaper and the colonial laws, she sold legal blanks, broadsides and stationery and established a bookstore next door. She gave up control to Peter when he came of age in 1746. She wrote a will in 1757, died two days later and, like Johnston and Williams, was buried in St. Philip's Churchyard.

In early South Carolina, some women, such as Timothy, did run businesses or shops, but by the early 1800s, American culture dictated that women stay in the private sphere. Middle- and upper-class women were expected to act as hostesses for their husbands and run the home. The Southern lady became a cultural icon, but this was not an option for poor white or for black women. By the late 1840s, around 13 percent of the white labor force was female. Because slavery existed until the mid-1860s, recovery for black women was much slower.By 1900, about 38 percent of white women worked, as did 66 percent of African-American women, mostly in the fields. White women also worked in the mills, and blacks as maids and laundresses.

Martha Daniell Logan (1704-1779) of Charleston, though her father owned 48,000 acres and was a two-term lieutenant governor, received the traditional "girl's education." Thankfully, she learned to cultivate plants from his nursery business.

When he died, she was 13 and inherited his vast Wando River property. She married at age 14 in 1719 and had eight children. She boarded and tutored students in the home, advertising her services in the Timothys' South Carolina Gazette. She began to teach at a boarding school when the family moved to town and her husband died in 1764.

Martha learned to cultivate plants, and other gardeners gave her seeds and roots, but when she asked Dr. Alexander Garden, known for his gardening ability, for specimens, she was refused. Martha Logan began to publish "The Gardener's Kalendar," which became a standard for state gardeners, and contributed a gardening guide for John Tobler's "South Carolina Almanack" (1752).

She exchanged seeds with other botanists, including the famed naturalist John Bartram, who visited her in 1760. She advertised her roots, cuttings and seeds at her nursery in the Gazette.

Logan died in 1779 and also is buried in St. Philip's Churchyard.

Women's History Month cannot compensate for the omissions from history of the contributions of so many women. The women named above, however, are examples of some of the earlier names not lost from the records, but whose faces have not been seen or whose names rarely are printed in state history books of our days.

They offer examples of the intellect, true grit, dignity, bravery and talent that flows through the veins as Carolina women. If you know of women who represent any of these character qualities and have assumed the role of hero or mentor to you, send us their photo, a description of who they are and how they have influenced you for the better, so that we might tell their story on our pages during the month of March, Women's History Month.

Send to nwooten@timesanddemocrat.com or by mail to Nancy Wooten, Features Editor, The Times and Democrat, P.O. Drawer 1766, Orangeburg, SC 29116.

Notes:

Revolutionary War heroine

Margaret Catherine Moore Barry (1752-1823), a native of County Antrim, Ireland, grew up on her father's Walnut Grove Plantation in Spartanburg County and lived there after marriage with her husband, Revolutionary Capt. Andrew Barry. Before the 1781 Battle of Cowpens, "Kate" Barry rode through the neighborhood to help summon the militia and then served as a scout for the Patriots. When captured by the British (and some accounts say beaten), she refused to reveal the position of Andrew's company. Her ride, now memorialized in poetry and monuments, served as British propaganda.

Civil war nurse, diarist.

Ada White Bacot (1832-1911) of Society Hill in Darlington District had lived her childhood on Roseville Plantation and, after 1861, her married life on Arnmore Plantation. Her husband and two daughters having died, in January 1861, at age 31, she volunteered to become a nurse for the Confederacy. With the help of Robert Woodward Barnwell, head of the South Carolina Hospital Aid Association, she finally got enough money to go to Virginia in December and served in one of the association's four hospitals there. At that time, respectable women did not provide hands-on medical care for men, so she was relegated to cooking, washing clothes, visiting, writing letters for the men and reading scripture to them.

She boarded with several South Carolina nurses and doctors, and her diary paints a picture of life as a young, single, upper-class Southern woman during the Civil War. Her Episcopalian faith and her love for South Carolina dominate the entries.

Physician

Sarah Campbell Allan (1861-1954) of Charleston graduated from the Charleston Female Seminary, a school for young women founded by Henrietta Aiken Kelly when her efforts to have women accepted at the College of Charleston failed. At 29, Allan was rejected for admission by the College of Charleston because she was female. She thought of becoming a nurse, but her father, Scottish merchange James Allan, urged her to pursue her real ambition. She then attended a medical preparatory course at the South Carolina College for Women in Columbia and graduated in 1894 from the Women's Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. After a short period as resident physician at a sanitarium in Baltimore, she was the only woman participating in the first sitting of the South Carolina Medical Board in 1894. She scored the highest average grade of the 14 applicants and was granted license number 40 by the board. She accepted a position at the South Carolina Hospital for the Insane in Columbia to care for the female patients in 1895 and also taught anatomy and physiology in a new nursing program. After 11 years, she resigned to care for her father in Charleston until his death one year later. Although she accepted some requests for psychiatric consultations after that, she never returned to regular practice and gave the rest of her life to charity and civic work. Known for her sense of humor, when asked about her earlier life, she would say she had spent 11 years in a mental institution.

Nurse.

Anna De Costa Banks (1869-1930) of Charleston was one of the first students to earn a diploma from the Hampton Institutes Training School for Nurses in Virginia and was head nurse for Hampton's Dixie Hospital for two years. By 1898, she was named first head nurse and later promoted to superintendent of nurses at Charleston Hospital and Training School where she worked for 32 years. She was a visiting public-health nurse for the Ladies Benevolent Society of Charleston for 24 years.

In 1899, she wrote an article for her alma mater stressing the need for money to create hospitals that would train black nurses who were denied rounds in most hospitals because of segregation. Doctors, she said, demanded trained nurses instead of "grannies." Racial violence, she noted, intensified the need for black emergency service and nursing schools, and she said victims of racial assaults had fled to her hospital from all over South Carolina. She sought funds from black churches and societies and established the Hospital Association to generate pledges. She also printed a journal to report hospital news.

Her hospital work was entirely among the poor, ignorant and superstitious class of Charleston, she once said while making a plea for medical aid to be put within their reach. When she died in 1930, she was believed to be the oldest trained nurse in South Carolina at that time. When relocated closer to the Medical University of South Carolina in 1959, McClellan Hospital was renamed McClellan-Banks Hospital to reflect her influence on regional care.

Educator, social activist, government official.

When Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955), born in Mayesville, was turned down for overseas mission work because the Mission Board would not assign an African-American, she took a teaching job at Haines Institute in Augusta, Ga. After one year, she took a teaching job at the Kendall Insitute in Sumter, where she met her husband. In 1899, the Presbyterian Church urged her to start a mission school in Palatka, Fla., and in 1904, she opened the Daytona Normal and Industrial School for Negro Girls. By 1910, she had more than 100 students there, and in 1911, she founded McLeod Hospital as the first local medi al opportunity for African Amiercians and to train African-American health-care professionals. In 1929, the institution merged with the Cookman Institute, a Jacksonville co-ed Methodist school, and became Bethune-Cookman College, with Mary McLeod Bethune as its president until 1942.

From 1917 to 1924, she was also president of the Florida Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, the Southeastern Association of Colored Women, the Florida State Teachers Association, the National Association of Colored Women and founder and president of the National Council of Negro Women. She was a member of President Herbert Hoover's Commission on Home Building and Home Ownership and vice president of the National Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Through these organizations, she was able to influence many changes, such as community welfare projects for African Americans and the inclusion of black women at all levels in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps.

President Franklin Roosevelt appoointed her as an adviser and spokesperson on New Deal programs and reforms. From 1936 to 1944, she was Roosevelt's director of the National Youth Administration's Office of Negro Affairs, where she was able to assure that African American youth received a fair share of government funding for education and employment. Among the first of her numerous awards and honorary degrees was an honorary master of science degree from South Carolina State University in Orangeburg.

Educator

In 1898, Mattie Jean Adams (1873-1947) of Utopia in Newberry County, was the first woman to graduate from South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina). For 18 years she served as the head of the Median College English Department in Meridian, Miss, taking a leave from 1903-1909 to organize the South Carolina Women's Christian Temperance Union. While traveling extensively in Europe in 1909, she wrote for The State newspaper in Columbia. After attending Oxford College in England and receiving an M.A. degree from Columbia University in New York City, she taught for five years at the Teacher's College in Livingston, Ala.

Museum administrator, educator.

Laura Bragg (1881-1978), deaf by age 6, earned a degree in library science as a member of Simmons College's first graduating class of 1906. After jobs in Maine and at the New York City Library, she was hired to be the Charleston Museum's librarian. Soon promoted to curator of books and public instruction, she started the first educational program in a Southern museum. Her Southern nature study course, with its traveling exhibits, were provided to all the Charleston schools for both races. The school board began requiring teachers to take classes to the museum weekly. Her tools became so well known that ...

Librarian, master storyteller.

Augusta Braxton Baker (1911-1998) was the first African-American to hold an administrative position in the New York Public Library. Her earliest memory, she said, was a storytelling grandmother, which "may have been the seed for my later interest." In 1953, she received the first Dutton-Macrae Award for advanced study of library work with children, and in 1956, the Georgia Teachers and Education Association asked for her consultation toward their Librarian's Section. She also served as a consultant to other programs, including educational television's "Sesame Street" and contributed to the development of the Coretta Scott King Book Award, first presented in 1970.

In 1980, she joined the University of South Carolina as "Storyteller-in-Residence," a position created for her to teach the creation of enthusiasm in children about stories and reading. In 1987, the city of Columbia established an annual festival in her honor, "A(ugusta) Baker's Dozen: A Celebration of Stories," which features authors, illustrators, storytellers and an address focusing on her dedication to the creation of African American Children's literature and the increased use of libraries by children.

Native American potter.

Sara Lee Harris Sanders Ayers (1919-2002) of the Catawba Indian Reservation near Rock Hill began selling pottery at the Cherokee Reservation in North Carolina when she was 9. By 1939, her work was so desired that she spent half the year selling pots in Philadelphia and half working in a Rock Hill textile mill. When her first husband died in 1945, she married Hazel Ayers, a Catawba who also made pottery. With their three children, they moved to West Columiba in 1962 and continued their pottery business. A 1973 show at the Columbia Museum of Art was a turning point in prices paid when pieces formerly selling for several dollars sold for as much as $125. Her work can be found in the Native American Museum and Heye Foundation of New York City, the Museum of York County, the University of South Carolina McKissick Museum, the South Carolina State Museum, the Mint Museum in Charlotte and the Schiele Museum in Gastonia.

Author

Dorothy Allison, now of northern California, was born in 1949 Greenville to a single drop-out mother and, from age 5 to 11, was beaten and raped by her stepfather. After attending Florida Presbyterian College on a National Merit Scholarship, Allison joined a lesbian-feminist collective and severed ties to her family until 1981. She credits the women's movement with making possible her writing career and overcoming a drive to burn all her stories and poems. She wrote "The Women Who Hate Me," (1983), a collection of poems; Trash (1988), stories and poems about her childhood, "Bastard Out of Carolina" (1992), a semi-autobiographical novel adapted to film by Anjelica Huston; "Skin: Talking About Sex, Class and Literature" (1994); "Two or Three Things I Know for Sure" (1995), a lyrical memoir; and Cavedweller (1998), a novel exploring the connection between identity and place.

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