Original Description:
How to play:
The 8 women pictured on the game board were important characters in Ohio’s history. Try to identify them using the clues provided. There are 7 clues for each woman and the first one is always free. You can get more clues by clicking the "New Clue" button, but each new clue costs 100 points. You start the game with 4 books. Each time you click on the wrong woman you lose 500 points and one book. Each time you click on the correct woman you receive 1000 points and another book. You can accumulate up to 8 books. The game ends when you have identified all 8 women or you run out of books. The object is to finish with as many points as possible.
Hint: You can go to the "Biographies" section on this page while you are playing the game to look for information about the women.
Florence E. Allen:
Florence Ellinwood Allen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1884. Her father had been a professor at Western Reserve College in Cleveland, Ohio before moving his family to Utah. Florence was educated at home by her parents. She could read and write by age four. She also studied Greek and Latin, and she learned to play the piano, violin and cello. After her early schooling, Allen attended the Salt Lake Academy. She also attended the New Lynne Institute in Ashtabula County, Ohio. Allen graduated with honors from Western Reserve College in Cleveland in 1904.
After college, Allen was a music critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer for a brief time. When a nerve injury in her arm forced her to give up her dream of becoming a concert pianist, she decided to study law. Allen applied to law school at Western Reserve College, but was refused because she was a woman. Instead, she attended the Chicago University Law School and then entered the New York University Law School. After finishing her studies, she received the first law degree ever granted a woman.
Allen became a lawyer in 1914. That was at the height of the suffragette movement. Suffrage is a word meaning the right to vote. At that time, women in the United States were not allowed to vote. The suffragette movement was an attempt by women to get the right to vote. In this environment, Allen became interested in women's rights and the law.
Allen earned the reputation as an outstanding attorney that had a firm grasp of the issues most important to women. Her success as an attorney made Allen a natural candidate for public leadership positions. She became the first woman assistant prosecutor for Cuyahoga County. Later, she became a judge on the Court of Common Pleas. In 1922, Allen was elected as the first woman to serve on the Ohio Supreme Court. Twelve years later, President Roosevelt appointed Allen as a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals. She held that position for 25 years.
Allen died in 1966. Her skills as an attorney and her wisdom as a judge served all Ohioans, but she is most fondly remembered for a pioneering spirit that opened doors for women.
Alice Cary:
Alice Cary and her sister Phoebe were Ohio farm girls who became noted poets and writers of the mid-nineteenth century. Cary was born in Mt. Healthy, Ohio, near Cincinnati, in 1820. As was the practice of the time, the sisters did not receive much formal education. Nonetheless, both were avid readers and writers from an early age. Their mother died when Alice was 17 and Phoebe was 13. Two years later, their father remarried. Their stepmother, who saw little practical use for reading and writing, discouraged their studies.
Alice persisted, however, and published her first poems in a Cincinnati newspaper when she was 18. Soon she and Phoebe were at work on a book of poems. Named the Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary, the book was printed in 1849. The book was so successful that John Greenleaf Whittier, one of America’s leading poets, wrote them a letter praising their works. The famous writer, Edgar Allen Poe, stated that Alice’s poem "Pictures of Memory" was "one of the most musically perfect lyrics of our language." This early success convinced Alice to move to New York City to pursue a career as a writer. Phoebe soon followed her older sister and the two became regular writers for national magazines.
Both sisters wrote columns for New York newspapers and published more books. They became important people in New York. Leading artists and writers often gathered in their home to discuss their works and ideas. They also started a club for women called the Sorority of Sisters (Sorosis) in 1869. The purpose of the club was to get more rights for women. Had they lived during the late 20th century, they would have been frequent guests on television talk shows.
Phoebe took care of Alice after she became an invalid late in life. Alice died in 1871. A grief-stricken Phoebe fell ill with malaria and died five months later. Alice's books include Clovernook Papers and Hagar: A Story of Today. Among Phoebe’s famous works is Poems of Faith, Hope and Love.
Victoria Claflin:
Victoria Claflin was born in Homer, Ohio in 1838. As a youth, her family was forced to flee Homer when her father was suspected of arson. She spent her youth traveling from town to town with her family’s medicine and fortune telling show. Claflin had no formal schooling, but she learned much from her travels.
Claflin married Dr. James Woodhull in 1853, but divorced him eleven years later. After the marriage, Claflin and her sister, Tennessee, settled in New York City. With the help of Cornelius Vanderbilt, they made a small fortune buying and selling stock. In 1870, the sisters began publishing a newspaper called The Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly. They often wrote about women's rights, complained of double standards and carried sensational stories about the rich and famous of the day. One such story that accused Henry Ward Beecher, a leading minister, of misbehavior, landed the sisters in legal trouble.
In 1872, the Equal Rights Party nominated Claflin to be its candidate for President of the United States. A woman running for President was unheard of at a time when women not only could not vote, but also were not welcomed in the discussion of politics. Claflin accepted the nomination and became the first woman to run for President. She received far fewer votes than U. S. Grant, another Ohioan, who won the election.
A few months after the election, Claflin was arrested for some things she had printed in her newspaper. In 1877, she and her sister moved to England where they became popular lecturers on the subject of women’s rights. Claflin married a wealthy banker in England and started a magazine called the Humanitarian. She died in 1927, having seen much of what she had fought for come to pass. By the time of her death, American women had the right to vote and were achieving much more independence during "Roaring 20s."
Frances Dana Gage:
Frances Dana Gage was born as Frances Dana Barker in Marietta, Ohio in 1808. She was the ninth child of Joseph and Elizabeth Dana Barker. Her family was among the first to settle Marietta. In 1829, Frances married James Lampson Gage, an attorney from McConnellsville, Ohio. After their marriage, the couple settled in that town.
During her life, Gage became a leader in the three great reform movements that reshaped American life in the years before the Civil War: the temperance (anti-alcohol) movement, the women's rights campaign and the anti-slavery crusade. Like many women in Ohio prior to the Civil War, Gage was committed to making life better for the disadvantaged. These women saw an American dream that promised equality for all. They fought hard, often against great odds, to make their dream a reality.
Gage first gained national attention as chairwoman of a convention in Akron, Ohio in 1851. That convention was called to encourage the people who were re-writing Ohio’s constitution to include more rights for women in the new law. Gage shocked many white members of the convention by allowing Sojourner Truth, an African-American, to speak to the group. Truth’s famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech caused many people to recognize that women’s rights applied to all women, white or black. It also did much to bring the women’s rights crusade and the abolitionist movement closer together. Soon after this convention, Gage became a widely recognized anti-slavery spokeswoman. Her writing and speaking for this cause were so forceful that she received threats against her life.
During the Civil War, Gage followed the Northern armies south, serving first as an agent of the Sanitary Commission that looked after wounded soldiers. Later, she was superintendent of a Paris Island, South Carolina camp for freed slaves. After the war, she took up the crusade against alcohol, again as a lecturer and writer. Using the pen name "Aunt Fanny," Gage also wrote stories and poems for children.
Frances Dana Gage died in 1884 having spent much of her life improving the lives of children, women, African Americans and people addicted to alcohol. She, like her parents, was a pioneer. As her parents had expanded the boundaries of the nation, she helped extend the rights of all Americans.
Annie Oakley:
Annie Oakley was born in Darke County, Ohio in 1860. Her real name was Phoebe Anne Oakley Mozee. Her father died when she was four years old. By age nine, Oakley was providing food and money for her family by shooting game. At age 17, she had become such a good shot that she traveled to Cincinnati to take part in a shooting match. She won the match, defeating the world’s best shot, Frank Butler, by one shot.
Butler fell in love with Oakley and they married several years later. The couple joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and toured as performers between 1885 and 1902. Buffalo Bill's show was a famous traveling show. It included performances and re-creations of western scenes and displays of frontier skills. Oakley was the marksman. The show also featured Sitting Bull, the famous Indian Chief, and a number of other celebrated Westerners. While with the show, Oakley entertained audiences, including Queen Victoria, around the world. She was able to hit the thin edge of a playing card, shoot a dime tossed into the air and shoot a cigarette out of her husband's mouth.
Oakley’s traveling career was ended when she was injured in a train wreck in 1901. She continued to give some exhibitions until her death in 1926. By the time she died, she had become a legend. Irving Berlin, the noted American playwright, produced a musical entitled "Annie Get Your Gun" that recounted Oakley’s life. Today, she is memorialized by a statue at Greenville, Ohio and in countless tails of daring and skill that are still told in western Ohio.
Alice Schille:
Alice Schille was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1869. Her father owned a soda manufacturing and bottling factory. As a teenager, she attended the Columbus Art School. She also taught for a time at the Ohio Institution for the Deaf and Dumb.
Schille wanted to become an artist. Sensing that she needed to further develop her talents, she moved to New York for study. That was an uncommon step for a young single woman in those days. Schille studied at the New York Art School beginning in 1897. Afterward, she traveled to Europe, eventually settling in Paris. There she won several art awards and mounted the first of many displays of her work.
By 1920, many critics viewed Alice Schille as one of the best American women painters. She had won a gold medal at the Panama Pacific Exposition for her art. She had also displayed her work at the world-famous French Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
Beginning in 1906, Schille divided her time between Columbus and Paris. For almost 40 years, she taught art or was Dean at the Columbus Art School. During those years, she often traveled back to Paris. There, her circle of friends included the famous painter Pablo Picasso, the sculptor Rodin and many of the leading writers of the 1920s and 1930s. She created many watercolors during her long life, some of the most notable being "Mother and Child in a Garden," "Storytime" and "Poplars."
Harriett Beecher Stowe:
Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut in 1811. Her father was the famous minister, Lyman Beecher. During her youth, she became well educated reading from her father’s library. In 1832, Harriet moved to Cincinnati when her father became President of Lane Theological Seminary. In Cincinnati, she met and married Calvin Ellis Stowe, a biblical scholar. He, like Harriet’s father, believed that slavery should be done away with, or abolished.
After arriving in Cincinnati, Harriet came to know slavery first hand from visits to Kentucky. On these visits and through stories told by her father's friends, she heard of slaves being mistreated and of their efforts to escape. Ohio, a state that had outlawed slavery in 1803, bordered Kentucky and western Virginia, two states in which slavery was legal. In the years before the Civil War, slaves running from their masters in those states set a course for Ohio and freedom. Once in Ohio, they found people who would hide them and help them get to Canada. In Canada, slaves were beyond the reach of their masters. All across Ohio, but particularly in Cincinnati, church sermons and newspapers repeated the accounts of fleeing slaves being chased by their masters. Stowe read and listened to those stories.
By 1850, Stowe and her husband were living in Maine. In 1852, she wrote a book that drew upon her experiences in Kentucky and the stories she had heard and read in Ohio. Entitled Uncle Tom's Cabin, the book told the story of a fictional character escaping from a cruel slave owner. The vivid story came at a time when the country was turning against slavery. In the first year, it sold over 300,000 copies and eventually was published worldwide. The book was also made into a play that was performed throughout the North.
Uncle Tom's Cabin aroused abolitionist feelings in the years before the Civil War because Stowe skillfully described the horrors of slavery. In fact, the book was so influential that President Lincoln is reported to have said upon meeting Stowe during the Civil War "So you're the little woman who started the big war."
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote many other books--32 volumes to be exact--during her life but none had the impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin. She died in 1896 having changed the world forever with the power of her pen.
Lillian D. Wald:
Lillian D. Wald was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1867. She was the third of four children. She moved with her family to Rochester, New York when she was a child. Wald received her early education from private tutors and graduated from high school when she was 15. After high school, she spent the next six years traveling around the world, sometimes working as a reporter.
In 1889, Wald decided to study nursing at New York City Hospital. After graduating from nursing school, she entered the Women’s Medical College, studying to become a doctor. While in medical school, Wald volunteered to help poor people who lived on New York City's Lower East Side. She was so concerned with their problems that she dropped out of medical school in 1906 to help even more. Wald moved to a house on Henry Street so that she could live among the people that she was trying to help. There, she and her partner, Mary Brewster, set up the Henry Street Settlement House to provide care and health education for the poor. The Henry Street Settlement House later became the Visiting Nurse Society (VNS) of New York. The VNS brought medical care to people who could not visit doctors and hospitals.
In addtion to being a good nurse, Wald was a skilled leader. She convinced others to join her effort. She started with 10 nurses and by 1916 she had 250 nurses giving care to 1,300 patients a day. All of the money for salaries and medicine came from donations. The VNS became a model that was copied in cities around the globe. Wald was called upon to provide advice to others.
Wald’s contributions went beyond the VNS. She convinced the New York Board of Education to hire a nurse. Eventually, all of the schools in New York, as well as in other cities, had nurses in them. Wald also convinced President Teddy Roosevelt to create the Federal Children's Bureau to protect children from abuse and neglect. As the suffrage movement pressed for women's right to vote, Wald took up the cause. She fought for reform in divorce laws. Wald joined Margaret Sanger in a crusade to educate women about birth control. She led several peace marches to try to keep the U.S. out of World War I. Yet, when war came, she volunteered to work for the Red Cross. Wald encouraged businesses to create safer working conditions and to keep nurses or doctors on work sites. She also improved the quality of nursing education by convincing Columbia University to appoint the first professor of nursing at a U.S. college.
Lillian Wald died in 1940 having been recognized as one of the most influential women of the 20th century. Her first cause, the Visiting Nurse Society, now serves over 700,000 patients a day. Wald believed that "Nursing is love in action and there is no finer manifestation of it than care of the poor and disabled in their own homes."