PROFILES – BY OCCUPATION

From Wareham’s cranberry bogs to New Bedford’s Aerovox assembly line, Rita Alice Lopes (1915?-1999) emerged as a community activist who advocated for children, the elderly and Cape Verdeans.

A dedicated activist who advocated for New Bedford’s neighborhoods, Loretta Bourque (1920-2018) was referred to as “Mayor of the South End” for her special commitment to this section of the city. Through the Cove Street Neighborhood Association, Loretta led efforts against such problems as negligent absentee landlords, crime and drugs. Loretta’s influence was a key factor that led the New Bedford City Council to pass the city’s Problem Properties Ordinance.

In 1917, Belmira Nunes (1899-1994) graduated as valedictorian and only Cape Verdean girl from Wareham High School. She attended Radcliffe College where she became the first Cape Verdean woman graduate. Belmira had a distinguished teaching career in the New York City School system.

From immigrant textile mill worker to Ivy League student to pioneering New Bedford educator, Laurinda C. Andrade (1899-1980) overcame barriers of tradition, poverty, language, and discrimination to establish the first high school Portuguese language department in the United States at New Bedford High School.

Nineteenth-century New Bedford’s Sarah Rotch Arnold (1786-1860) was dedicated to her community, social reform, religious tolerance, and horticultural beauty.

New Bedford’s Mother Teresa, Sister Aurora Helena Avelar (1903-1999) was a Roman Catholic nun who devoted her life to the underserved.

Active in the local 19th-century art community of William Street, New Bedford’s “Gallery Row,” Eliza Bierstadt (1833-1896) was likely America’s first female art dealer.

Emily Howland Bourne (1835-1922) showed the same careful planning in her inspired philanthropy as her father Jonathan showed as one of New Bedford’s most successful whaling merchants.

Born in 1838 to Black abolitionists, Martha Bailey Briggs (1838-1889) realized at a young age that education was essential to ending slavery.

Rosalind Poll Brooker (1928-2016) was a trailblazer for women in the fields of law and politics.

Equality was the vision of Elizabeth Carter Brooks (1867-1951) in her work as educator, social activist and architect.

New Bedford’s Lydia Grinnell Brown (1895-1945) became the first African American graduate of Simmons College in Boston.

Photographer and artist Theodosia Chase (1875-1972) was a librarian at the old stone Southworth Library in Padanaram, where she sold her photo postcards of residences, children and animals.

Her portraits won prestigious awards, her travels included battlegrounds, and her feminism was pervasive.

Fairhaven artist Elizabeth Terry Delano (1845-1933) created still-life paintings, portraits and landscapes in her studio at 91 Pleasant Street.

“If you bulldoze your heritage, you become just anywhere,” have become the most repeated words of Sarah Ashley Delano (1904-1994).

Abolitionist and social reformer Rosetta Douglass (1839-1906) continued a family legacy of activism that began in New Bedford with her father, Frederick Douglass.

When Nora Ouimette (1909-1987) was born in New Bedford, women could not vote! By the time of her death, she had voted in every election she was eligible for, become a labor union organizer, run for Congress and become one of the first female industrial engineers in companies on both the East and West Coasts.

The only woman to enlist in World War I from Mattapoisett, Florence Eastman (1894-1918) became the Head Army Nurse of the Isolation Hospital at Camp Mills, Mineola, Long Island, with 20 nurses and over 100 orderlies under her supervision.

What do a tea room in Westport, a bookstore in New Bedford, special exhibits at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and a children’s museum in Dartmouth all have in common?

New Bedford prepared physician and political agitator Marie Equi (1872-1952) for a lifetime of social justice advocacy. Marie’s Oregon medical practice and nationwide activism were influenced by her working class experiences while growing up in New Bedford.

Considered a living saint in New Bedford, Sister Mary Rosellen Gallogly (1930-2018) was a pioneer in developing services for the homeless, notably as director of Market Ministries Meals and Shelter, known today as Sister Rose House.

Although she began her career as a painter, Helena de Kay Gilder (1846-1916) increasingly dedicated her considerable energy and talent to advocating for art, artists, and women, according to her own vision.

Geraldine “Gerry” A. Gomes (1938-2011) was the first minority woman to run for political office in New Bedford.

Known as the “Mother of the 54th,” Martha Bush Gray was an African American Civil War nurse who served the troops of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments in the South.

Known as both “The Witch of Wall Street” and “The Queen of Wall Street,” Henrietta “Hetty” Howland Robinson Green (1834-1916) was the richest woman in the world, her worth estimated at over $100 million, the equivalent of about $2.5 billion today.

Abolitionist, women’s rights advocate and women’s club founder, Cornelia Grinnell Willis (1825-1904) advocated for and secured Harriet Jacobs’ freedom, making it possible for Harriet to write and publish what became an edifying “slave narrative.”

The first African American woman to become a registered pharmacist in southeastern Massachusetts, Rosamond Alice Guinn (1892-1923) graduated from New Bedford High School and the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy.

New Bedford educator Marial Harper (1934-2016) positively impacted numerous lives at New Bedford High School and was the first woman and minority to be appointed a Housemaster there.

A U.S. military veteran with overseas tours during three wars, Lieutenant Colonel Mary Elizabeth Hartley (1920-1999) served in the Army Nurse Corps for 25 years, from 1942 to 1967.

A “second mother to many South End boys” in New Bedford, Mary Ann Flanagan Hayden (1873-1946) founded the Donaghy Boys Club, becoming the first female director of a Boys Club in America.

The War on Poverty initiatives of the 1960s had a dedicated New Bedford foot soldier in Jennie Horne (1920-1998).

Peace, love, and understanding were hallmarks of Rachel Howland (1816-1902).

Once described as the wealthiest woman in New Bedford, philanthropist Sylvia Ann Howland (1806-1865) provided a legacy that benefited not only family members, caretakers, and charitable organizations, but also the residents of New Bedford through trusts to support education and business.

Writer, abolitionist and educator, Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813-1897) is the only African American woman known to have left writing documenting her enslavement.

Confectioner and abolitionist Polly Johnson (1784-1871) specialized in sweets and provided safe lodging to freedom seekers in New Bedford along the Underground Railroad.

Philanthropist Amelia Hickling Jones (1849-1935) focused on giving that benefited children.

Acushnet’s Laura Keene (1826-1873) is best known as an actress who starred in Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater the night President Lincoln was assassinated.

New Bedford’s Ellen Kempton (1840-1865) lost her life while in South Carolina to educate and assist formerly enslaved people.

A Renaissance woman who served as president of the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra for 18 years, Lillian B. Lamoureux (1921-2017) was an accomplished pianist, devoted Francophile, and skilled business partner at Lamoureux Funeral Home.

Wedding cakes became the specialty of baker Phebe Hart Mendall (1801-1887), widowed at age 35 when husband Elihu Mendall was lost at sea.

Pioneering educator and community activist Mary Hudson Onley (1889-1980) was one of the first African American graduates of Bridgewater State Normal School in 1912.

Abolitionist Amelia Piper (1796-1856), as one of the managers of the New Bedford Female Union Society, organized one of the first anti-slavery fairs in New Bedford held on January 1, 1840.

Annie Holmes Ricketson (1841-?) accompanied her husband on at least three whaling voyages, chronicled in journal entries filled with details about life as the lone woman aboard ship.

Dartmouth educator and author Kathleen Comiskey Roberts wrote a history for children in 1959 so that students could learn about their town.

Cara Leland Rogers (1867-1939) purchased the waterfront property at Fort Phoenix, presenting it to the town of Fairhaven in memory of her father Henry Huttleston Rogers.

Educator and labor leader Margaret A. Duggan Ryckebusch (1940-1998) was a professor, department head, and union leader at Bristol Community College.

Marian Shaw Smith (1866-1913) sailed the world’s oceans as a whaling captain’s wife, log keeper, photographer, navigator, correspondent, and business partner.

A distant cousin of Nathaniel Hawthorne, prolific writer Elizabeth Stoddard (1823-1902) was born in Mattapoisett.

Known as “Marion’s Fairy Godmother,” Elizabeth Sprague Pitcher Taber (1791-1888) became the town’s most significant benefactress.

The first American woman to visit China and one of the first to circumnavigate the globe, Fairhaven’s Mary Ann Hathaway Tripp (1810-1906) sailed with her husband, Captain Lemuel Carver Tripp, on several merchant voyages between 1833 and 1845.

Deeply rooted in her Azorean heritage, Dr. Mary T. Vermette (1934-2003) worked with the Azorean Maritime Heritage Society and the New Bedford Whaling Museum to promote Azorean culture and the shared whaling heritage between New Bedford and the Azores.

The humble philanthropist Florence Waite (1861-1946) left the bulk of her estate worth more than $7.5 million in today’s dollars to be carefully distributed among more than 20 hometown organizations, many of which she had helped for decades.

A pioneering doctor and champion of physical activity for women, New Bedford’s Helen Worthing Webster (1837-1904) graduated from New England Female Medical College in Boston as a Doctor of Medicine.

Charlotte White (1775?-1861), born to a Wampanoag Native American and a former slave, connected with the Native American and African American communities, worked for poor relief, and practiced folk medicine and midwifery during her lifetime in Westport.

A New Bedford teacher for more than 20 years, Betsey Baldwin Winslow (1836-1925) was elected to the New Bedford School Committee, serving in that capacity for nearly 39 years – the longest serving member in the history of the School Department.