Marie Curie (1867 – 1934) lost her mother and eldest sister to typhus when she was just 10 years old.

Her father was a teacher, and imbued all his children with a love of learning.

Marie graduated high school at 15 with highest honors. Knowing they had to travel west from their native Poland to find universities that would accept them, Marie and her older sister Bronya made a pact.

► Marie worked as a governess for three years to help cover the costs of Bronya’s studies as a medical student in Paris. Once established, Bronya would help Marie pay for her university education.

Marie taught her charges, and also the children of the Polish peasant workers in the village, although that was illegal.

⚗️ Marie also found a chemist in a nearby beet sugar factory who was also willing to risk arrest to teach her. Marie followed Bronya to Paris, and with little money past tuition she completed her degree in physics and math in three years.

🎓Marie Curie’s curiosity led her to two masters degrees in Physics and Math, a PhD in Physics, and two Nobel Prizes.

⭐️The first (with her husband Pierre Curie) was in Physics, for the discoveries of Polonium and Marie Curie (1867 – 1934) is certainly not the last woman to be asked how she managed her career and her family.

It seems we, as women, will have to answer this question forever.

►And the answer is as unique women are – every single woman figures out how to balance a career and a family in the way that works for her.

🔬For Marie, the solution was to marry a scientist, Pierre Curie, who shared in her work.

Marie’s daughter Irene was also a scientist, and followed her mother’s path by also marrying a scientist.

Marie’s family holds more Nobel prizes than any other family in history.

Biography notes:

📍11/7/1867 Warsaw Poland – 7/4/1934 France
Polish, worked as a governess to fund sister’s education, radiant, discovered Polonium and Radium, won 2 Nobel Prizes in different disciplines, coined word radioactive, research materials still kept in lead lined cases – still radioactive.
Source: Women in Science

• First woman to win a Nobel Prize, Physics, with her husband Pierre Curie
• Second Noble in Chemistry – only woman to win 2 Nobles.
• Got 2 masters degrees, first in Physics, second in math.
• Also got a PhD First and only woman entombed in France’s national mausoleum, the Pantheon
• Died of a rare blood disease in her 60’s, caused by exposure to excessive radiation – at the time no one knew radioactive elements could be deadly.

Source: Fight Like A Girl by Laura Barcella

In their words:

“Not only did she do outstanding work in her lifetime and not only did she help humanity greatly by her work, but she invested all of her work with the highest moral quality. All of this she accomplished with great strength, objectivity, and judgement. It is very rare to find all these qualities in one individual.” – A. Einstein

Her Quotes:

“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”

“You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for our own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.”

“I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy.”

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be obtained.”

“I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.”

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

🍵 Tea inspired by this remarkable woman:

Radiance Herbal Blend

The post Marie Curie: Radiance Herbal Blend appeared first on Tea and Strumpets.

Biography notes:

📍1824-1923 born in Gränna Sweden.
Orphaned at age 10, by a cholera outbreak, Amalia took work as a maid to support herself. When the family she worked for moved to Gränna, she went with them.

❤️ There she met Anders Eriksson, a tailor. They fell in love and married, commencing Amalia’s happiest year. The union was blessed in the first year with the promise of children.

🍵 Amalia was pregnant with twins, but only one daughter survived. Her husband died of dysentery within a few weeks of little Ida’s birth, and Amalia is once again alone, and with a child to raise. Widowed and impoverished at age 35 … baby Ida fell ill soon after and Amalia was unable to afford medicine from a druggist. Desperate to relieve her daughter’s sickness, she blended peppermint oil, vinegar, and sugar, along with other ingredients, into what she hoped would be a health-restoring concoction. Although Eriksson’s creation, which she dubbed “polkagris,” did not prove to have medicinal value, its taste was a big hit with little Ida and, eventually, with children all over Sweden.

🌿 Her store was visited by the Swedish royals, Prince Carl and Princess Ingeborg. Amelia continued making her candy until she died at 99, and only on her death bed would she divulge her secret recipe to Ida, who continued the business until 1945.

Amalia is the grandma – mormor in Swedish – we might all want, so we call her tea MorMor Peppermint – fresh mint combined with chocolate tea for a decadent cup, far better than an after dinner mint, and delicious iced or hot.

Although women were not permitted to own businesses in Eriksson’s hometown of Gränna, she petitioned the town council and won an exception. Polkagris and the confectionery she established remain beloved icons of Swedish ingenuity and business acumen.

🍵 Tea inspired by this remarkable woman:

Mor Mor Peppermint Tea

The post Amalia Eriksson: MorMor Peppermint appeared first on Tea and Strumpets.

Jeanne Baret sailed around the world as part of the first French circumnavigation of the globe, led by admiral Louis-Antoine de Bougainville from 1766 to 1769.

Her journey was not smooth sailing, however. Because the French Navy did not allow women on their ships, Baret bound her breasts with linen bandages and boarded the Étoile dressed as a man. Jeanne became “Jean” in a masquerade that planted her place in history.

Trained by her family in their identification and medicinal uses, she earned a reputation as an “herb woman,” . . . won her the attention of a young widowed nobleman and fellow botanist, Dr. Philibert Commerçon.

Commerçon scored the botanist position on the round-the-world French Naval expedition. Then they hatched a plan for getting Baret on board as his assistant.

Because of the aforementioned “no girls allowed” rule, the couple decided she would have to live and look like a young man during the years-long journey.

In 1764, they had a son who was placed in a foster home due to the circumstances of his birth. The boy only lived one year.

Over the course of seven years there, Baret had another baby that she gave up for adoption.

Philbert’s ill health, from a recurring ulcer on his leg, and his seasickness, meant Jeanne toted equipment, supplies and plant specimens wherever they landed and cataloged the plant collection.

In Rio de Janeiro, Jeanne found a beautiful flowering vine that Philbert named Bougainvillea. As they traveled, rumors about Jeanne’s gender surfaced, and in Tahiti in 1768, her disguise was revealed.

Her exposure marked the end of the journey for Baret and Commerçon. 

In the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) Philbert discovered an old friend serving as Governor. Philbert and Jeanne stayed on as his guest, solving for Admiral Bougainville the problem of a woman on board.

As Philbert’s health deteriorated, Jeanne established herself independently. She was awarded property in Port Louis, Mauritius, where she ran a tavern.

Philbert died in 1773, and in 1774 Jeanne married Jean Dubernat, a noncommissioned officer in the French Army and the two returned to France completing her trip around the world. Jeanne was granted a pension from Admiral de Bougainville, who cited her exemplary service during the expedition.

It is 1775 and Baret was a different woman than the girl dressed as a boy who’d departed nearly a decade before. She had seen the world. She had broken boundaries, made discoveries, lost a lover, and found a husband.

Though Baret was met with no fanfare, the French government did award her a pension of 200 livres a year for her work gathering plant specimens, even remarking on record that she was an "extraordinary woman."

Biography Note:

📍7/27/1740 – 8/5/1807
🌿 1766 expedition netted more than 70 plants, all named after the trip’s lead botanist, Commerçon. He had intended to name a beautiful Madagascar genus after his partner, but died before the paperwork was published.

🌿Biologist Eric Tepe to name a vegetable related to the tomato and potato after Baret: Solanum baretiae. “I have always admired explorers,” Tepe explained, “Especially botanical explorers. We know many of their names, and they all have endured hardships in pursuit of interesting plants, but few have sacrificed so much and endured so much as Baret.”

Source

🌿Ridley writes that while the boat was docked at Rio—with (captain of the ship) Bougainville investigating the at-port murder of the Étoile’s chaplain, and Commerson handicapped by lingering leg infections after a dog bite—Baret scrambled into the jungle to scour for specimens. Here, her discovery of the dense and brightly-colored bougainvillea vine (likely plucked for the medicinal potential it would have held for Commerson’s gangrene) made history.

🌿Though Commerson originally christened the plant under a genus Baretia, the genus has since been reclassified.

Source

🍵 Tea inspired by this remarkable woman:

Ginger Peach Beret Tea

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With every need she saw, she formed a society to meet it.

Rebecca Gratz could not see the widows and orphans of the Revolutionary war without doing something to ease their suffering — with every need she saw, she formed a society to meet it.

She was a Jewish woman from Philadelphia who founded many organizations to help women and children. 

The first one was the Female Assoc. for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances, which she founded with her mother and sister. 

Then, still seeing need all around her, she founded the Fuel Society, The Sewing Society, The Philadelphia Orphan Asylum – and when she learned the orphans were all taught Christianity, she opened the first Jewish Orphanage in America, with Hebrew language and Hebrew Sunday School for kids gathered from all over the USA and Canada.

She also found time to raise her 6 nieces and nephews after her sister died.  It’s rumored that the character Rebecca, a Jewish woman whose love of Christian Ivanhoe is doomed in Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe is based on Rebecca Gratz.

Biographical notes:

📍3/4/1781 Pennsylvania

“The crowning happiness of my days has been my association with my beloved companions [the teachers and managers of the Hebrew Sunday School] in the duties we have shared together.”

🕊 Rebecca Gratz died on August 27, 1869.

Although she outlived all but her youngest sibling, Benjamin, most of her friends, and many of her nieces and nephews, she remained actively involved on the boards of the Philadelphia Orphan Society, Female Hebrew Benevolent Society, Hebrew Sunday School and Jewish Foster Home well into her eighties.

Gratz's enduring legacy can be measured by the success and longevity of the many institutions she founded. 

Through them, she helped provide material sustenance to thousands of women and children.

She trained generations of Jewish women to be active participants in their religion and to operate the benevolent foundations and schools she founded, so they would continue long after Rebecca’s own death.

The Philadelphia Orphan Society and Female Association provided material sustenance to thousands of women and children.

The Jewish Foster Home thrived until it eventually merged with other institutions to create the Philadelphia Association for Jewish Children.

The Female Hebrew Benevolent Society and Hebrew Sunday School continued their work for almost 150 years. In 1986, the flourishing School merged with the Talmud Torah Schools of Philadelphia and continues to provide coeducational Jewish learning for thousands of young students.

In their words:

As historian Dianne Ashton writes,

“By training younger Jewish women in administering the agencies she founded, Gratz ensured that the FHBS, HSS and JFH would continue to flourish long after her death. In their work, these organizations continued to provide Jewish women and children a way to be both fully Jewish and fully American.”

Her Quotes:

I love children—and children’s talk—their own words expressing their own thoughts goes quicker to my heart than anything wiser that is said for them.

 How hard… it is to have the tastes, the habits, the longings and recollections, if not of affluence, at least of comfort, and yet to be poor.

🍵 Tea inspired by this remarkable woman:

Chamomile blend Herbal Tea

The post Rebecca Gratz: Rebecca’s Lullaby appeared first on Tea and Strumpets.

As a freed slave in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia she started a carting business, hauling luggage and freight with her wheelbarrow. She also offered a wake up service, and was soon the self appointed law of the wharf and the town.

The Association of Black Law Enforcers has created a scholarship in her name, and her descendant Daurene Lewis became the first Black female mayor in North America.

Biographical notes:

📍3/13/1774 Philly, PA – 2/20/1864 Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, Canada
Slave born, AA, escaped to Canada with family, entrepreneur, self appointed peace keeper, first woman cop in Canada, family run business 100 years Lewis Transfer, law scholarship in her name,
Source: Women Who Dared

📍Sun, 03.13.1774
Rose Fortune, Law Enforcement Officer born

The birth of Rose Fortune in 1774 is celebrated on this date. She was a Black Canadian law enforcement officer and businesswoman.

Fortune was born into slavery in Virginia, owned by the Devone family. In 1783 when she was ten years old, they escaped to New York City, then the Nova Scotia (Canada) town of Annapolis Royal.

Fortune came from a family of Black Loyalists (escaped slaves and free Blacks who joined the British army during the American Revolution). The British army promised any slave freedom in return for their loyalty.

⭐️ In the late 1700s, she appointed herself policewoman of the Annapolis Royal, located on the north shore of Nova Scotia.

👗 Although Fortune carried no badge, she had a unique way of dressing. Her petticoat showed under her dress, and over her dress, she wore a man’s waistcoat and an apron. She wore a lace cap tied under her hair and a straw hat on top of the lace cap. Her painted shoes had heels that were several inches high. She usually carried a straw basket and wore white gloves or mittens. Her dress was later adopted by many of the Black Pioneer women when they went to market.

🚚 Fortune also started a trucking service for ferry boat passengers using a wheelbarrow to carry luggage to their homes or hotels.

🕊 Fortune died in 1864 at the age of 90. Her funeral was held at St. Luke’s Anglican Church in Annapolis Royal. She is buried in an unmarked grave in the Royal Garrison cemetery.

In their words:

Some 20 years later, a Lieutenant-Colonel Sleigh of the 77th Regiment wrote of a chance encounter with Rose in 1852:

“I was aided in my hasty efforts to quit the abominable inn by a curious old Negro woman, rather stunted in growth…and dressed in a man’s coat and felt hat; she had a small stick in her hand which she applied lustily to the backs of all who did not jump instantly out of the way. Poor old dame! She was evidently a privileged character.”

🍵 Tea inspired by this remarkable woman:

Spicy Ginger Rose Tea – Feisty Fortune Tea

The post Rose Fortune: Spicy Ginger Rose appeared first on Tea and Strumpets.

Still, Artemisia’s earliest paintings were all sold bearing her father’s signature. In spite of her successful career, supporting herself and her children, painting for the highest echelons of European society in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples and London, including the Grand Duke of Tuscany and Philip IV of Spain, her work was still nearly lost to history.

A rare woman artist, and it isn’t only her talent that made her rare.

🎨 Artemisia Gentileschi’s first known work (which some scholars have attributed, in part, to her father) was painted in 1610, when she was 17 years old.

🖼 Titled Susanna and the Elders, the work depicts a biblical story in which a fair, pious wife is ogled by a group of lecherous male elders as she bathes. Though it wasn’t an uncommon subject for artists at the time, Gentileschi rendered it differently than most. In her version, the woman being aggressed—and her response upon discovering that she’s being watched—takes center stage. “Artemisia’s Susanna presents us with an image rare in art, of a three-dimensional female character who is heroic,” Gentileschi’s biographer Mary D. Garrard has explained. Unlike other representations, “the expressive core of Gentileschi’s painting is the heroine’s plight, not the villains’ anticipated pleasure,” Garrard continued.

Biography notes:

📍7/8/1593 Rome – 1653 Naples Italy
Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Baroque painter, first successful female painter, painted strong courageous rebellious powerful females as protagonists, first woman accepted into Florence’s Academy of Design,
Source: Bad Girls Throughout History

Artemisia’s hands were crushed with thumbscrews to prove the truth of her testimony in the trial against her rapist.
Source: Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough

Raped by Agustino Tassi, who was engaged to teach her perspective. The only reason there was a trial was her father, also a painter though of lesser skill than Artimisia, agreed to sue Tassi for the property damage that resulted from the rape, (to his daughter, now unmarriagable) – trial went on for 7 months.

She maintained her innocence, which was tested through many physical examinations to determine the date of her lost virginity. She shouted at Tassi, “This is the ring you give, and these are your promises!”

She went on to paint powerful depictions of women from mythology and the Bible, many showing scenes of great violence. She made 5 paintings of Judith, who saved the Hebrews by beheading Assyrian general Holofernes. Collected by King Charles 1 of England and by Michelangelo’s nephew, she was a friend to Galileo, another member of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence.

💰 Artemisia also had to pursue fair pay.

To one patron she wrote, “I was mortified to hear that you wanted to deduct one third from the already low price I had asked. I must tell your Lordship that this is impossible, and that I cannot accept a reduction, both because of the value of the painting and my great need.”

To another, “I have made a solemn vow never to send my drawings because People have cheated me. Just today, I found out that, having done a drawing of souls in purgatory for the Bishop, he, in order to spend less, commissioned another painter using my work. If I were a man, I can’t imagine it would have turned out this way.”

🕊After her death she was nearly forgotten. Her father was credited with most of her work.

Only recently has Gentileschi finally been recognized as one of the greatest painters of her time - the most celebrated female painter of the 17th century.

She worked in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples and London, for the highest echelons of European society, including the Grand Duke of Tuscany and Philip IV of Spain.

Following the trial, Artemisia married a little-known Florentine artist by the name of Pierantonio di Vincenzo Stiattesi, and left Rome for Florence shortly thereafter. There she had five children and established herself as an independent artist, becoming the first woman to gain membership to the Academy of the Arts of Drawing in 1616.

Artemisia returned to Rome in 1620, beset by creditors after running up debts, and she remained there for 10 years (except for a trip to Venice in 1628).

📍Our tea honoring Artemisia  is called Go For Baroque. It’s an herbal blend that brews up ruby red, as rich as the colors in Artemisia ’s paintings of strong, powerful, courageous women.

🍵 Tea inspired by this remarkable woman:

Go for Baroque

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