Sarah Ellen Blackwell

[1] She was born in Bristol, England, and her family emigrated to the United States four years later, eventually settling in Cincinnati, Ohio.

[1] She funded her trip in part by writing weekly letters for two Philadelphia newspapers, an opportunity that opened up after one of her stories won a prize in a magazine contest.

[2] She eventually closed this studio in order to work with her physician sisters, though she continued to write for magazines and newspapers.

[2] She published a series of letters about Anna Ella Carroll, whose role as an adviser to President Lincoln's cabinet during the American Civil War was being much discussed at the time by feminists.

[1] She died in 1901, and many of her letters are held among the Blackwell family papers at Radcliffe College's Schlesinger Library.