[1] Born in Wilmington, Delaware, she made a name for herself at a young age as the founder of that city's first public kindergarten and for her efforts to introduce child labor laws in that state.

In 1883, she founded an organization, now known as the West End Neighborhood House that originally provided social services to Wilmington's immigrant Irish and German families.

The purported speaker launches an attack on the Elizabethan playwright Shakespeare for placing his female characters in unsuitable situations, where they are not allowed to demonstrate their true abilities.

[8] In March 1903 she addressed a packed meeting in Concord, New Hampshire speaking against a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would strike out the word "male" from the suffrage clause.

Though the idea failed at first, Bissell was able to gain enough publicity from a Philadelphia newspaper to make $3,000 for the National Tuberculosis Association, ten times the amount she originally hoped to get.