Jane Grey Swisshelm - A Strong Woman with a voice in Saint Cloud MN

Jane Grey Swisshelm -A Strong Woman with a voice in Saint Cloud MN

Strong women are an asset, and the central Minnesota area is full of these assets. It always has been. Strength comes in many different forms, being strong in your convictions, being powerful in business, and of course strength of the heart. Jane Grey Swisshelm a journalist, abolitionist, women's rights advocate and Civil War Nurse had all of these strengths and used them.

She started the Pittsburgh Saturday Visitor and was at the forefront of a movement that lead to the passage of a bill allowing women to own property. Her views on this subject became cemented when her mother died. As a woman Jane Swisshelm was unable to own the property she was to inherit due to the laws in Pennsylvania. Her husband aided greatly in her drive to see this changed through many of his actions. Her writings prompted the Pennsylvania Legislature to correct this injustice in property ownership rights. Thanks to her it's "two to sell."

Powerful, for the time, in her notoriety due to the success of her Pittsburgh newspaper, Jane Swisshelm eventually settled in St. Cloud Minnesota with her daughter Zo. From 1858 to 1863 Jane Grey Swisshelm ran 2 newspapers in Saint Cloud, the St. Cloud Visitor and the St. Cloud Democrat. The St. Cloud Visitor ran into difficulties when after a particularly scathing commentary by Swisshelm, directed at the abolishment of slavery, caused 3 angry readers to break into her office and throw her press and type into the river and street. Her supporters raised the money and she moved her offices, got new equipment and started the St. Cloud Democrat. This attack only strengthened her views and she became an advocate for the newly formed Republican Party and their abolitionists voice. A biographer of Jane Swisshelm wrote: "Her whole nature revolted against the wrong and injustice done to an entire race, and one of the great purposes of her life was then and there formed."

Swisshelm later moved to Washington DC to continue her work and took a job as the first female clerk in the Federal Government. During this time she became friends with the First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and founded the Reconstructionist. Always working to do good, she spent much of her free time during this period volunteering as a nurse treating Civil War Soldiers at Campbell Hospital.

If you would like to learn more about Jane Grey Swisshelm she wrote her autobiography, Half a Century. My life has always been full of strong women, including my mother, my wife and many of my clients, I have been very fortunate. Strong women of heart, of mind, of views and of voice are just one more wonderful reason to love St. Cloud MN.