Mary Birdsall

Mary B. Thistlethwaite Birdsall (1828 in Chester, Pennsylvania – February 1, 1894 in Philadelphia) was an American suffragette, temperance worker, and journalist.

Born to English immigrants,[1] she grew up on a farm near Richmond, Indiana, where she married Thomas Birdsall in 1848.[1][2] They had three sons together. She began her journalism career as the woman's editor at the Indiana Farmer newspaper.[3] For about five years she owned The Lily, a newspaper for women, which she purchased from suffragist Amelia Bloomer in 1854.[4][5] She helped organize the second women's rights convention in Indiana.[6] At that Indiana convention in 1852, she was elected as secretary for the newly-formed Indiana Woman's Rights Association (renamed the Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association (IWSA) in 1869, and eventually became president of the organization.[7] Birdsall was a vice-president at the fourth National Women's Rights Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1853.[8] She was among the first three women to address the Indiana legislature in 1859 to present a women's rights petition, speaking for a half-hour in support of women's suffrage.[9] Birdsall died in Philadelphia in 1894 and interred at Earlham Cemetery in Richmond.[10] Her Richmond home, a model of progressive architecture as espoused by Catherine Beecher, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.[3][11]