Industry Archives - Lighting the Way, Historic Women of the SouthCoast

Eulalia Mendes

When 20,000 textile workers went on strike in the 1928 New Bedford Textile Workers Strike, 18-year-old factory worker Eulalia Mendes (1910-2004) became a leader in her mill and community by promoting Portuguese industrial migrant worker participation in the strike.

Suzanne Marjorie Stockard Underwood

Pioneering modernist architect Suzanne Marjorie Stockard Underwood (1917-2001) was one of the first women to graduate from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

Dora Bastarache

A stitcher in various New Bedford shops, Dora Bastarache (1915-1988) was a true rank-and-file leader in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union in southeastern Massachusetts, where she served as president of that union’s Local 361.

Ada Woolley Sullivan

A resourceful real estate investor and astute textile mill treasurer, Ada Woolley Sullivan (1888-1968) became New Bedford’s first woman textile mill treasurer and took full charge of the Sullivan Silk Mills in 1934.

Harriet Didriksen

Considered the matriarch of New Bedford’s working waterfront, Harriet Didriksen (1943-2019) advocated for fishermen, their families and the fishing industry.

Noelie Houle

Dartmouth residents learned kindness from Noelie Lemire Houle (1899-1993), the “Goat Lady of Dartmouth.” Noelie raised as many as 90 goats so that others could experience the benefits of goat’s milk. At first, neighbors complained about her farm, where goats roamed freely. Eventually, the community moved from intolerance to acceptance to celebration.

Laurinda C. Andrade

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.

Nora Ouimette Duprey

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.

Marie Equi

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.

Emily Howland Bourne

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.