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.

🍵 Rebecca’s Lullaby – A complex chamomile blend that is highly drinkable, a premium herbal tisane

▶︎Complex and soothing, this is our favorite evening tisane. Slight aroma of root beer.

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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.

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, later becoming her husband.

When 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."

🍵 Ginger Peach Rooibos – Refreshing early summer sweet peach tones with light ginger hints.

▶︎Superb bright finish that makes your taste buds come alive. With sharp hints of ginger offset by juicy sweet peach overtones, this is one tea you’ll never be able to forget.

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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.

🍵 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.

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Marie Curie 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.

She 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.

She 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.

🍵 Radiance Tea blend has Smooth Turmeric combined with Ginger, Carrot, Beet and Pineapple pieces, Calendula Petals and natural flavors.

This blend has multiple infusions available from the same batch of tea. Each infusion will have a slightly different personality.

▶︎This tea makes an amazing latte. We make ours with unsweetened almond milk.

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