Women of the Week

Author Flora Haines Loughead and poet Rose Hartwick Thorpe 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(s) number to the left of their images.

Author Flora Haines Loughead was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 12, 1855.  By 1870, her family had moved to West Lincoln, Illinois.  Flora graduated from Lincoln University in 1872.  She married Charles E. Apponyi in Sacramento in August of 1875.  Eleven years later, after divorcing her husband, Flora married John Loughead in San Francisco, California.  She had children with both husbands.   

Flora was the author of and a contributor to many books, including the 1898 novel The Black Curtain.  She also edited Life, Diary and Letters of Oscar Lovell Shafter, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of California, January 1, 1864, to December 31, 1868, in 1915.  In 1899, Flora accused Charles H. Hoyt of plagiarizing books she had written in the early 1890s for his play "A Contented Woman."

In addition to penning her books, Flora also wrote for newspapers and periodicals.  In 1895, she was writing for The San Francisco Call. Flora was a contributor to Household in 1903, and "When The Prince Came," her story about California, began its run as a serial in the June 1905 edition of Sunset Magazine.  By 1908, Flora was editing for The San Francisco Chronicle.

During her career, Flora became friends with Helen Hunt Jackson and many other writers.

Also very interested in libraries, she wrote The Libraries of California: Containing Descriptions of the Principal Private and Public Libraries Throughout the State in 1878,

By 1897, Flora was a member of the Woman's Parliament of Southern California.  That October, she was one of many participants at the Woman's Parliament's convention in Los Angeles.

After Florence and John's divorce, she married David A. Guitierrez, who was twelve years her junior, in November of 1908. 

During the 1930s, Flora lived at 1871 Park Drive in Los Angeles.  She later moved to Alameda, where she passed away on January 27, 1943. She was buried in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California.

Rose Hartwick Thorpe was born in Mishawaka, Indiana on July 18, 1850, and she spent her teenage years in Litchfield, Michigan.

She became famous for her poem "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight," which was published in the Detroit Commercial Advertiser in 1870. 

Rose married  Edmund C. Thorpe in 1871.  Their family expanded to include a daughter, and the Thorpe family lived in Chicago, Illinois.

She became the editor of three monthly periodicals, Temperance Tales, Well-Spring, about the home, and Words of Life, a Sunday School monthly, all published by Chicago publisher Fleming H. Revell.  

Later, while she was living in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1883, Rose was awarded an honorary M.A. degree from Hillsdale College. The same year, "Curfew Must Not Ring To-Night" was published as a book.  

Due to Mr. Thorpe's health issues, the family then moved to San Antonio, Texas and resided there for four years.  In the late 1880s, Rose and her family moved again, this time to San Diego, California.  She kept writing, and Ringing Ballads, including Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight made its debut in 1887.

During her long and successful career, Christian Science Journal, Detroit Free Press, Happy Days, Our Continent, St. Nicholas, Wide Awake, and Youth's Companion published Rose's work.

In 1895, "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight" was published as a song, with music by Stanley Hawley.  During the same year, Rose wrote the "Introduction" to As Others See Us, or, The Rules and Customs of Refined Homes and Polite Society.  She published The Poetical Works of Rose Hartwick Thorpe, Compiled by the Author in 1912.

When Litchfield, Michigan celebrated its anniversary in 1934, Rose wrote the Centennial Theme Song. In addition, July 21 was designated Rose Hartwick Thorpe Day and the Rose Hartwick Thorpe Memorial was dedicated.  

Rose passed away in 1939.