Title...
Proclamation honoring the memory of the late Jane Grey Swisshelm upon the occasion of her 200th birthday.
Body...
WHEREAS, Jane Grey (Cannon) Swisshelm was born on December 6, 1815 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Thomas Cannon, a merchant and real estate speculator, and Mary Scott. Reared in a strict Presbyterian family, she attended local schools and at age fourteen became a schoolteacher. In 1836 she married James Swisshelm, a farmer’s son; they had one daughter. He expected deference and submission from the strong-willed Jane, and their marriage followed a long, rocky path; and
WHEREAS, in 1938, Jane and her husband moved to Louisville, Kentucky, a move occasioned by James desire to go into business with his brother. Already an abolitionist before they traveled South, Jane was radicalized by the experience of witnessing slavery first hand. She returned to Pittsburgh the next year to care for her dying mother, and James rejoined her there after his business went bankrupt; and
WHEREAS, after the death of her mother, Jane became director of a seminary in Butler, Pennsylvania. She also embarked on a career as a journalist for a local newspaper and wrote for a Pittsburgh antislavery journal. After this journal folded, she started her own antislavery paper, the Saturday Visiter in which she voiced her unbending opposition to slavery and advocated for women’s rights. Her newspaper gradually achieved a national circulation of 6,000 and bore her distinctive imprint on every page; and
WHEREAS, Jane finally divorced her husband in 1857, relinquished editorial control of her newspaper, and moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota with her six-year-old daughter, Zo, where she promptly took control of another publication, the St. Cloud Visiter. She turned that paper into a powerful antislavery journal and soon clashed with Sylvanus B. Lowry, a politically influential Southern slaveholder and Indian trader. He and his supporters destroyed her newspaper office a...
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