Taken from The Daily Nonpareil's "Profile 94 Edition," written by Cathy Oelkers

Every married woman who cashes her own paycheck, owns property and has an equal voice in parenting decisions can partly thank a former Council Bluffs resident.

Amelia Jenks Bloomer died a century ago.

However, her efforts in the women's rights movement of the mid-1800s are alive today, according to Mary Lickteig, an education professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha who is writing a children's book about Amelia.

"It all started when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her husband honeymooned in London," Lickteig said.  "They wanted to attend an abolishment conference together in England.

"Lucretia Mott (another early women's rights campaigner), was also there, and the men would not seat Lucretia or Elizabeth inside the conference hall because they were women," Lickteig said.

"They were thrown out together, and that started their acquaintanceship and their interest in women's rights," she said.

When Elizabeth moved to Seneca Falls, NY, she brought her interest in the women's rights movement to another new town resident, Amelia Bloomer, the wife of the local newspaper editor.

What quickly happened was the transformation of a demure, young New York school teacher into a confident public speaker and author whose message of temperance, abolition and women's rights crossed the United States and Europe.

Amelia campaigned for married women to have the right to receive paychecks in their own names.

If a man allowed or forced his wife to work, depending upon their social and economic situation, it was the custom of employers to pay her wages directly to her husband, Lickteig said.

Equal pay for equal work was not the rallying cry of Amelia's time, but rather the right of women to hold out their hands and receive their own earnings, whatever the amount.

Amelia fought against the laws that made everything a woman owned the sole possession of her husband after marriage.

She was angry that children were considered the property of men and that the women who bore and cared for their offspring had little influence in decisions   regarding their welfare.

"It was common practice for a woman to give up everything at marriage and be subservient to her husband," Lickteig said.

"The Tennessee legislature (of the 1800s) justified this idea by saying that women didn't have souls, and therefore were not on the same standing as men," she said.

"When the book How to Rule Your Wife hit the stands, Amelia was so incensed by it that she started writing in earnest about the humane treatment of women and marriage.

"Amelia did not advocate divorce, but she said there should be some way to protect women and children in homes of alcoholics, what they then called 'plain drunkards of the demon rum,'" Lickteig said.

"Alcoholism was rampant at that time and it had dire consequences for women and children, either through abuse or neglect," she said.

Along with her own ideas about equality, Amelia was in the right place at the right time to put her thoughts into action.

In 1849, Amelia became editor of the first women's newspaper in the country, The Lily, which she filled with articulate, in-depth articles on the dignity and rights of women.

Unfortunately, Amelia is often remembered more for a fashion declaration of independence than for her long support of women's rights.

Her cousin, Elizabeth Smith Miller, visited Seneca Falls after a tour of Europe wearing Turkish pantaloons gathered at the ankle under a long skirt that reached below the knee, with the bodice free of constricting whale bones and corset ties.

The comfortable dress, which did not show any skins except the neck, face and hands, was pounds lighter and cooler than the standard dress of the day.  It also allowed free movement and easy breathing without the bones and wires that turned the female body into an exaggerated "figure 8."

Amelia said women had been unpaid street sweepers in their floor-length dresses for long enough and "our forms should be what nature made them."

Amelia endorsed the outfit in The Lily and wore it to speaking engagements.  Women around the country wrote to Amelia to obtain a pattern, and it quickly became known as "bloomers" even though she did not create or introduce the dress.

Bloomers and Amelia were attacked as decadent from pulpits to courtrooms and servant's quarters to gentlemen's clubs.

She gave up the dress after eight years because men used it as a target to divert attention from the messages she considered more important, she later wrote.

Amelia and Dexter Bloomer made the "perilous trek to the wild, unknown land" of Council Bluffs in 1855.

"There are really two interesting things about Amelia," Lickteig said.  "The first is that she was drawn to be an advocate for women.

"The second is that her husband was way ahead of his time. he was a liberated man who showed her tremendous support.

"They left out the 'to obey' part in their marriage vows, and he was willing to take criticism about his wife and the control he was supposed to have over her in order to let her speak," Lickteig said.

"He encouraged her to write, because he knew her skill from her love letters.  He published her articles and encouraged her to go on lecture circuits," she said.

"In fact, he was so impressed with his wife's intelligence and ideas that he valued her things enough to preserve them after her death," Lickteig said.

"They spent a happy Christmas with the Dodge family at the Dodge House and in a few days she slipped into unconsciousness and died," she said.   "Within a year, he published a book of her writings and personal papers - a great tribute to his wife."

Amelia Jenks Bloomer died Dec. 30, 1894, at her home in Council Bluffs, and was buried in Fairview Cemetery.

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