Minna Littmann
A well-respected journalist in southeastern Massachusetts and beyond, Minna Littmann (c. 1893-1984) was a staff writer for The Evening Standard and later The Standard-Times from the 1920s through the 1950s.
Alberta Simmons Brownell
Alberta Simmons Brownell (1882-1918) used book knowledge and personal experience to write articles on the social problems of the day.
Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence
Veterinarian. Veterinary anthropologist. Veterinary school professor. Westport’s Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence (1929-2003) overcame misogyny in veterinary school to become perhaps the only veterinary anthropologist in the U.S.
Rosemary S. Tierney
In the 100th anniversary year of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Rosemary S. Tierney (1932-2020), the first woman elected mayor of the City of New Bedford, became the 100th woman profiled in Lighting the Way: Historic Women of The SouthCoast.
Mary Ricketson Bullard
Accomplished historian and author Mary Ricketson Bullard (1926-2014) wrote scholarly articles, books and even a libretto as part of an opera based on the life of Elizabeth “Zabette” Bernardey, the biracial common law wife of Cumberland Island, Georgia plantation owner Robert Stafford.
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.
Carrie Lee
Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts accepted New Bedford High School graduate Carrie Evelina S. Lee (1895-1979) for admission in 1913. Upon arrival, rejection from her assigned dormitory became the impetus for a cornerstone in the founding of what would become Smith College’s Black Student Alliance.
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.
Belmira Nunes
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.
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.