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Boston Women's Heritage Trail facts for kids

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The Boston Women's Heritage Trail is a series of walking tours in Boston, Massachusetts, leading past sites important to Boston women's history. The tours wind through several neighborhoods, including the Back Bay and Beacon Hill, commemorating women such as Abigail Adams, Amelia Earhart, and Phillis Wheatley. The guidebook includes seven walks and introduces more than 200 Boston women.

The BWHT was created in 1989 by a group of Boston schoolteachers, librarians, and students. It is funded by the nonprofit Boston Educational Development Foundation. The BWHT presents teacher workshops, guided walks, and other activities to promote women's history.

Walking tours

The list of BWHT walking tours currently includes tours of the Back Bay (East), Back Bay (West), Beacon Hill, Charlestown, Chinatown/South Cove, Dorchester, Downtown, Jamaica Plain, Lower Roxbury, Roxbury, the South End, and West Roxbury. It also includes the Artists Walk, which focuses on local women artists, and the Ladies Walk, which commemorates Abigail Adams, Lucy Stone, and Phillis Wheatley.

Artists

The Artists walk centers on the Back Bay, where many women artists have lived, worked, and exhibited. The walk was designed to complement the 2001 Museum of Fine Arts exhibition, A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870–1940. Women mentioned include Helen M. Knowlton, Anne Whitney, and others.

Back Bay East

The Back Bay East walk begins and ends at the Public Garden. Women mentioned include:

Also mentioned are Fisher College, Simmons College, and the Winsor School.

Back Bay West

This walk starts at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square and ends at the Boston Women's Memorial on the Commonwealth Avenue mall. Women mentioned include:

Beacon Hill

The Beacon Hill walk begins at the State House and winds through Beacon Hill, often in parallel with the Black Heritage Trail. Women mentioned include:

Charlestown

Women mentioned on the Charlestown walk include:

Chinatown/South Cove

The Chinatown/South Cove walk begins at the Boston Common Visitor Center, passes through Chinatown, and ends at Park Square. Women mentioned include:

  • Sarah Caldwell, opera conductor and impresario
  • Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney, writer, reformer, and philanthropist
  • Chew Shee Chin, founder of the New England Chinese Women's Association
  • Harriet Clisby, physician and founder of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union
  • Jennie Collins, humanitarian, and one of the first working-class American women to publish a book
  • Helena Dudley, director of Denison House
  • Amelia Earhart, aviator and social worker at Denison House
  • Ruby Foo, restaurateur
  • Margaret Fuller, journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with American transcendentalism
  • Pauline Hopkins, author, editor of The Colored American
  • Mary Morton Kehew, social reform leader
  • Rose Lok, aviator, the first Chinese-American woman pilot to solo at Logan Airport
  • Mary A. Mahan, first woman to be admitted to the Massachusetts Bar Association
  • The Maryknoll Sisters
  • Annie McKay, Boston's first school nurse
  • Rose Finkelstein Norwood, labor organizer
  • Julia O'Connor, labor organizer
  • Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, labor organizer
  • Elizabeth Peabody, founder of the first English-language kindergarten in the U.S.
  • Vida Dutton Scudder, co-founder of Denison House
  • Hannah Sabbagh Shakir, founder of the Lebanese-Syrian Ladies' Aid Society
  • Frances Stern, one of the first nutritionists in the United States
  • Phillis Wheatley, poet
  • Members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
  • Members of the Boston Women's Trade Union League
  • Residents of the YWCA "Working Girls Home"

Dorchester

The Uphams Corner walk in Dorchester, developed by students at Codman Academy, is the first in a planned series of Dorchester walks. Women mentioned include:

  • Alice Stone Blackwell, women's suffragist, journalist, and human rights advocate
  • Elida Rumsey Fowle, Civil War volunteer and adoptive mother of two emancipated slave children
  • Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton, poet
  • Anna Clapp Harris Smith, founder of the Animal Rescue League
  • Hepzibah Swan, socialite and art patron
  • Geraldine Trotter, editor and activist
  • "Ann & Betty", two slaves buried in Dorchester's oldest graveyard
  • Local women's abolitionist groups

Downtown

Starting at the State House and ending at the corner of Franklin and Washington Streets, the Downtown walk passes some of Boston's oldest historic sites. Women mentioned include:

Jamaica Plain

Women mentioned on the Jamaica Plain walk include:

Ladies Walk

The Ladies Walk celebrates the lives of First Lady Abigail Adams, suffragist Lucy Stone, and poet Phillis Wheatley. It starts at the Boston Women's Memorial on Commonwealth Avenue and ends at Faneuil Hall.

Lower Roxbury

Women mentioned on the Lower Roxbury walk include:

  • Melnea Cass, civil rights activist
  • Mildred Daniels, community activist
  • Sisters residing at the local Carmelite Monastery
  • Students of Girls' High School

North End Walk

The North End walk begins at Faneuil Hall, passes through the North End, and ends at St. Leonard's Church, one of the first Italian churches in the U.S. It overlaps at several points with the Freedom Trail. Women mentioned on this walk include:

  • Charlotte Cushman, actress
  • Goody Glover, the last person to be hanged in Boston as a witch
  • Fanny Goldstein, librarian and the founder of Jewish Book Week
  • Edith Guerrier, founder of the Saturday Evening Girls
  • Sarah Josepha Hale, founder of the Boston Seaman's Aid Society
  • Lina Frank Hecht, founder of the Hebrew Industrial School
  • Harriot Kezia Hunt, an early female physician
  • Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, mother of John F. Kennedy
  • Clementina Poto Langone, Italian-American civic leader
  • Judith Sargent Murray, women's rights advocate, essayist, playwright, and poet
  • Rachel Walker Revere, wife of Paul Revere
  • Pauline Agassiz Shaw, founder of the North Bennet Street Industrial School
  • Helen Osborne Storrow, philanthropist
  • Sophie Tucker, entertainer
  • Female fundraisers for St. Leonard's Church

Roxbury

Women mentioned on the Roxbury walk include:

South End

The South End walk starts at Back Bay Station and ends at the Boston Center for the Arts. Women mentioned on the Sound End walk include:

West Roxbury

Women mentioned on the West Roxbury walk include:

  • Kathleen Coffey, first woman Chief Justice of West Roxbury District Court
  • Mary Draper, Revolutionary war activist
  • Margaret Fuller, journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with American transcendentalism
  • Sophia Ripley, feminist associated with American transcendentalism
  • Evelyn Shakir, Lebanese-American scholar and author
  • Marian Walsh, Massachusetts state senator
  • Local activists Alice Hennessey, Ellen McGill, and Pamela Seigle

See also

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