Abstract

Business Ladies: Midwestern Women and Enterprise, 1850-1880

Business Ladies: Midwestern Women and Enterprise, 1850-1880 Lucy Eldersveld Murphy In 1880, Elise Heimle retired from the millinery business. A German-born woman who had apprenticed to the trade in Paris and practiced her craft in several English cities before coming to Illinois, she established Springfield's largest millinery shop in 1852. During her twenty-eight years in business, she and her husband William, a carver, raised eight children.1 When she died in 1905, The Springfield Journal recalled that, In the course of business and on account of her attractive personality, she was widely known among the people of the county and numbered among her friends such men as Mr. Lincoln and Senator Douglas . Her business standing was of the highest and the older business men of this city will remember that they were proud to recognise her as a colleague.2 Qearly, Madame Heimle (as she liked to be called) had achieved a delicate balance between the private world of family and the pubfic world of commerce. In this respect, she was typical of midwestern businesswomen in the mid- to late nineteenth century. In 1870, over thirty thousand women ran their own businesses in the midwestern states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin, providing goods and services to their communities. (Table 1) In this region, businesswomen roughly equalled women teaching school and outnumbered female factory workers by four thousand. Selfemployed women made up over 10 percent of employed women and included proprietors of a wide variety of concerns.3 The majority lived in the new towns and smaller cities that were sprouting across the Midwest. We may view these female proprietors as women on the edges of their sphere, with one foot in the male world of profit-seeking, but the other firmly planted in a world of tradition and female culture. They sold goods and services in the marketplace while relying on kin and community for support, assistance, and encouragement. They were businesspeople, but while they ignored some of the northeastern dictates of true womanhood, most were enough immersed in middle-class women's culture to be considered "ladies" by midwestern standards. Historians have recently begun to examine the self-employed women of the Midwest, and while they have learned much about women's businesses , the women themselves and their familial and community relationships have been given little attention.4 © 1991 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 3 No. ι (Spring) 66 Journal of Women's History Spring Table 1: Midwestern Businesswomen, 1870 Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin Accommodations Barkeepers 4 Boardinghousekeepers 1,667 Hotelkeepers 182 Livery Stable Keepers 2 Restaurant Keepers 138 X993 merchants Bankers & Brokers 3 Books & Stationery 5 Boots & Shoes 3 Cigars & Tobacco 7 aothing, Hats & Caps 7 Cloths & Textile Fabrics 1 Crockery, China & Stoneware 2 Drugs & Medicine 7 Dry Goods 48 Gold, Silverware & Jewelry 5 Groceries, Produce & Provisions 102 Hucksters & Peddlers 103 Liquors & Wines 3 Music & Musical Instruments 1 Newspapers & Periodicals 2 Real Estate 4 Sewing Machines 36 Traders & Dealers (Not Specified) 232 5Ü Artisans Artists 42 Bakers 21 Basketmakers 31 Candle-, Soap- & Tallowmakers 18 Gun- & Locksmith 1 Hairdressers 128 Manufacturers 23 Mattressmakers 2 Millers 5 Milliners, Dress- & Mantuamakers* 19,234 Mirror & PictureFrame Makers 5 Photographers 54 Seamstresses & Tailoresses* 6,649 Tinners 5 Wood Turners & Carvers 22 26,240 professionals Dentists 3 Midwives 174 Physicians & Surgeons 91 Teachers of Music 1,894 Teachers of Drawing & Painting 21 2,183 Grand Total 30,987 Female Population, Age 10 & Over 3,729,442 Percentage with Occupations: 7.9% Businesswomen as a Percentage of Working Women: 10.5% Source: U5. Census Bureau, Ninth Census of the U.S.: 1870,1:686-694. *Adjusted to reflect self-employed women only using Ninth Census, 1:782-86,789; ΠΙ: 426,459,649,682-83,744. 1991 Lucy Eldersveld Murphy 67 The central questions of this study are these: Who were the businesswomen of the small midwestern communities, and what roles did they play in their families and local society? This article seeks to answer these questions, using census data, business directories, memoirs, newspapers, and other primary sources. Illinois is used as a case study because its settlement occurred at the midpoint for this region, and because both its...