Women of the Week

Vocalist Julie Rosewald, editor Elizabeth Cameron, author and poet Emelie Tracy Y. Swett Parhurst, who celebrated birthdays between March 3 and March 9, are this week's Women of the Week.  

• To learn about them by viewing their items, please click on their images.  

• To read their biographical sketches in A Woman of the Century, please click on the highlighted page numbers to the left of their images.

Vocalist Julie Rosewald was a member of the talented musical family called Eichberg. She was born in Stuttgart, Germany, on March 7, 1850. Her studies began at the conservatory there and continued at the exclusive Royal Theater School in Stuttgart, where only two of the most accomplished and advanced students from the conservatory were selected by the king. From early on, her talent and potential were recognized.

On completing her education, Julie immigrated to the United States, where her sister was already established. In 1869, at the age of nineteen, she married J. H. Rosewald of Baltimore, Maryland.  Rosewald also had a musical background, and she performed as a solo violinist as well as a composer.

Soon after, Julie left for Europe to pursue her studies, this time with instructor Marie Von Marra, in Frankfurt. The composer Franz Apt was engaged to tour some of the major US cities, and Mrs. Julie Rosewald was contracted to interpret Apt's work.

In 1875, her career turned to opera and operatic interpretation. Julie made her debut as Marguerite in Toronto and became very successful and popular. More opportunities opened up and she traveled with the Carol Richings Opera Company and Clara Louise Kellogg English Opera Company. She and her husband toured various European cities. As a prima donna with the Emma Abbot Opera Company, Mrs. Julie Rosewald developed her career and eventually concluded her performing, having achieved critical acclaim.

The couple moved to San Francisco in 1884. It was there that she began the next segment of her professional life, as a well-respected vocal instructor and composer. She earned a reputation as a cultural change agent in her adopted city. Fluent in English, German, Italian and French, Mrs. Rosewald was most accomplished.

Elizabeth Millar Cameron, an editor, a publisher, and a temperance and women's rights reformer, was born in Niagara, Ontario, Canada on March 8, 1851, to Scottish parents.  She married John Cameron and became the mother of five children. The Camerons lived in London, Ontario, Canada.

Bessie, as she was known, and Agnes Ethelwn Wetherald worked together as publishers of the journal Our Wives and Daughters. As Elizabeth's A Woman of the Century profile notes: 

"As presiding genius of that journal, her mission has been and is to stimulate women to become, not only housekeepers in the highest sense, but to be better furnished mentally by systematic good reading, more intelligent as mothers, well informed concerning the chief wants of the day and thoroughly equipped intellectually and spiritually for all the duties of womanhood" (146).

When she wasn't working to fulfill that ambitious goal, Elizabeth was serving as a leader in the London Woman's Christian Temperance Union, participating in women's reading groups, and spending time with her family.

Bessie moved to Port Huron, Michigan, in 1927.  She passed away in Evanston, Illinois on November 17, 1929, and was buried in Chicago, Illinois.

Emelie Tracy Y. Swett Parkhurst was born in San Francisco, California, on March 9, 1863.  

During her career, Emelie was an author, a biographer, a poet, a music teacher, and a playwright. She created the Pacific Coast Literary Bureau and was a founder of the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association in 1890. Emilie contributed to California Literary Magazine, Magazine of Poetry, Overland Monthly, and San Francisco Chronicle.  She also became one of the many contributors to A Woman of the Century. 

She married John W. Parkhurst, a banker, in 1889.  Emelie's personal network also included Ella Rhoads Higginson and  Helen Hunt Jackson  

A short time after giving birth to her daughter, twenty-nine-year-old Emeline passed away in San Francisco on April 21, 1892.  Emelie was buried in Oakland's Mountain View Cemetery.