Blanche Ames Ames
Blanche Ames Ames | |
---|---|
North Easton, Massachusetts, US | |
Nationality | American |
Education | Smith College |
Occupation(s) | Artist, political activist, inventor, writer |
Spouse | Oakes Ames |
Children | 4 |
Parents |
Blanche Ames Ames (February 18, 1878 – March 2, 1969) was an American artist, political activist, inventor, writer, and prominent supporter of women's suffrage and birth control.
Personal life
Born Blanche Ames in
Ames attended the Rogers Hall School in Lowell.[4] She was later one of few women of her time to attend college,[5] earning a B.A. in Art History and a diploma in Studio Art from Smith College in 1899.[4][6] She was the president of her graduating class.[5]
In 1900, she married Harvard University botany professor Oakes Ames (no relation). She took the married name Blanche Ames Ames. Ames illustrated her husband's botanical research on orchids.[2]: 112 The Ameses had four children: Pauline (born 1901), Oliver (born 1903), Amyas (born 1906), and Evelyn (born 1910).[5] Ames managed her professional work and family by having a studio at home and hiring domestic servants to assist her with domestic work.[2]: 113
Ames' daughter, Pauline, grew up to write many books about her family, including "Oakes Ames, Jottings of a Harvard Botanist" (1979), and "The Plimpton Papers, Law and Diplomacy" (1985).
Ames is buried in the
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Ames_Mansion_Borderland.jpg/220px-Ames_Mansion_Borderland.jpg)
The Ames estate, which includes Blanche Ames' art studio, in
Artist
Ames was a talented artist in a variety of media. Her work included portraiture, primarily done in oil paint, botanical illustration, and political cartoons.[9] She had a studio in her home in North Easton, Massachusetts.[2]: 113
Though introduced to art through her mother Blanche Ames's lifelong interest in painting, Blanche Ames Ames first became seriously interested in practicing art as a college student. Praised by her professors and classmates, she began to envision her life as an artist. Through her persistence, and with the encouragement her husband Oakes (who gifted her with an extravagant set of books on famous artists while courting her) this vision became reality.[3]
Beyond the knowledge of art history she gained at Smith, Ames was well aware of artists of her own time. In Boston, she sat for a portrait by prominent American Impressionist Edmund C. Tarbell in 1906.[6] She attended the armory show of modern art in New York City in 1913.[3] Though not a part of the circle of women producing suffrage cartoons in New York, who were connected through Heterodoxy and other organizations, she kept close watch on their work and other efforts toward suffrage in both England and America, hiring a newspaper clipping service to save suffrage news from 1915 to 1916.[3][2]
In 1902, she began illustrating Oakes Ames's botanical publications, including his seven volume treatise on
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/Double_the_Power_of_the_Home_--_Two_Good_Votes_are_Better_Than_One.jpg/220px-Double_the_Power_of_the_Home_--_Two_Good_Votes_are_Better_Than_One.jpg)
During the 1910s Blanche Ames Ames produced a number of political cartoons promoting women's suffrage, which appeared in publications including Woman's Journal, and the Boston American. In 1915 she became the art editor of Woman's Journal (along with Fredrikke Palmer and Mayme B. Harwood).[2]: 100 Three years before in 1912, the Woman's Journal's offices had relocated its headquarters from New York to nearby Boston.[2] Ames' work called, "Cradle of Liberty", was selected to be the state's suffrage poster.[2]: 117 Political cartoons like Ames' were essential to winning women's voting rights.[11][12]
Ames's etchings are on display at the
Women's rights activist
Ames held a lifelong passion for women's rights. including women's voting rights. In 1915, when Massachusetts voters would decide whether to allow women the right to vote, Blanche attended 40 events throughout the commonwealth to spread the word of female equality.[13] She was president of the Easton Woman Suffrage League, and, from 1915 to 1918, she was Treasurer of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage League.[4] Ames lobbied for women's voting rights at a Republican National Convention. She combined her art with her activism as the art editor of the longest running women's rights newspaper, the Woman's Journal.[2]: 117 From 1913 through 1916, Ames hired a news clipping service to collect suffrage news, including cartoons, to inspire her work.[2]: 117
Ames also supported birth control. In 1916 she helped found the Birth Control League of Massachusetts, an affiliate of
In 1941 Ames also served as a board member and later as President of the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston.[4] NEH was managed by women serving purposely only women and children. They intended to give medical care services to the same sex . In 1952 because of financial circumstances they opened up to the possibility of employing male staff. Ames fought to keep the hospital as only female staff and administration through funding methods.[16]
Inventor
Ames held patents for inventions which included a hexagonal lumber cutter and a method for entrapping enemy aircraft.[9]
During World War II, Ames came across the realization that thread could snarl and jam a sewing machine motor, Blanche then used that same principle to design a device to ensnare low-flying aircraft. The machine was demonstrated on the lawn at Borderland for guests from the Pentagon. Although it was accepted by the U.S. Army, it came too late for it to be applied in war.[5]
The Ames color system
In the early 1910s Ames' brother,
Author
At age 80, Ames wrote a biography about her father,
Patents
- US1612791A, Ames, Blanche Ames & Ames Jr, Adelbert, "System of color standards", issued 4 January 1927
- US2374261A, Ames, Blanche Ames, "Propeller snare", issued 24 May 1945
- US3488780A, Ames, Blanche Ames & Davis, Evelyn Ames, "Apparatus for antipollution of sewage systems at toilet source", issued 13 January 1970
References
- ^ Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. "Ames Family History". Borderlands Park. Archived from the original on 9 November 2017.
- ^ ISBN 9780826314581.
- ^ a b c d e Clark, Anne Biller (1994). My Dear Mrs. Ames: A Study of the Life of Cartoonist and Birth Control Reformer, Blanche Ames Ames, 1878-1969. University of Massachusetts Amherst.
- ^ a b c d e f Summary, Ames Family Papers, 1812-2008 Archived 2010-05-04 at the Wayback Machine, Sophia Smith Collection, Five College Archives and Manuscript Collections.
- ^ a b c d e "Blanche Ames Ames". Mass.gov. Archived from the original on 25 August 2017.
- ^ S2CID 192975252.
- ^ Thomas, Robert McG. Jr. (17 April 1995). "Pauline A. Plimpton, 93, Author of Works on Famed Relatives". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 October 2014.
- ^ "Borderland State Park". Mass.gov. Retrieved 22 October 2014.
- ^ a b c d "Blanche Ames". Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Frederick. 4 September 2010. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
- ^ Ames, Oakes (1905). Orchidaceae: Illustrations and Studies of the Family Orchidaceae. Cambridge: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
- ^ Lange, Allison (2020). Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women's Suffrage Movement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- ^ "Discovering Blanche Ames". August 2012. Retrieved 2016-10-05.
- ^ "Selected articles from Imposing Evidence: Gems from the Stacks (December 2004)". Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Libraries. Archived from the original on 12 November 2014. Retrieved 31 October 2014.
- ^ "Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College: Newsletter Articles: Blanche Ames Ames". www.smith.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-10-01. Retrieved 2016-10-05.
- ^ "Blanche Ames Ames: Artist & Women's Rights Activist, 1878-1969". 2012-07-29. Retrieved 2016-10-05.
- ^ "Blanche Ames | Lemelson". lemelson.mit.edu. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
- ^ Virtue, Jordan (November 13, 2023). "How John F. Kennedy Fell for the Lost Cause". The Atlantic.
External links
- Ames Family Papers Archived 2010-05-04 at the Wayback Machine at Smith College
- Papers, 1860–1961: A Finding Aid. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
- Suffrage cartoons by Blanche Ames Ames, Social Welfare History Image Portal, Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries
Further reading
- Virtue, Jordan (December 2023). "Kennedy and the Lost Cause". The Atlantic: 91–94.
- "Blanche Ames". Lemelson-MIT. Retrieved March 22, 2019.
- Kenneally, James J. (1991). Blanche Ames and woman suffrage: the story of the fight for passage of the woman suffrage amendment in the town of Easton and the state of Massachusetts, 1915-1920. North Easton, MA : Friends of Borderland.
- Van Voris, Jacqueline (February 2000). "Ames, Blanche Ames (18 February 1878–01 March 1969), artist and women's rights activist". American National Biography Online. American National Biography. ISBN 978-0-19-860669-7.