Ann Pamela Cunningham was an early leader in historic preservation and is often credited with saving President George Washington’s estate Mount Vernon.

Famed author Louisa May Alcott created colorful relatable characters in 19th century novels.

Sarah Josepha Hale is best known for creating the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Her influence can also be seen in historic sites and a national holiday still widely celebrated today.

Author, lecturer, and chief philosopher of the woman’s rights and suffrage movements.

Abolitionist author, Harriet Beecher Stowe rose to fame in 1851 with the publication of her best-selling book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which highlighted the evils of slavery, angered the slaveholding South.

Although raised on a slave-owning plantation, Angelina Grimké Weld became an ardent abolitionist.

Despite spending much of her life enslaved, Phillis Wheatley was the first African American woman to publish a book of poems.

Harriet Tubman escaped enslavement and helped others reach freedom.

A former slave, Sojourner Truth was an advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights in the 19th century.

Julia Ward Howe was a writer, lecturer, abolitionist and suffragist.

Prudence Crandall bravely defied prevailing patterns of racial discrimination when she opened one of the first schools for African American girls in Connecticut in 1833.

Clara Baron was an educator, humanitarian, and founder of the American Red Cross.

Isabelle “Belle” Boyd was was one of the most famous female Confederate spies, hailed by some as the “Cleopatra of Secession.”