Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920
Biography of Helen Louise Mosher James, 1862-1907
By Elizabeth Cunningham, student, Rosemont College
Helen Louise Mosher (known most commonly as Louise) was born in New York on April 29, 1862, to Hannah Anthony Mosher and Eugene Mosher. Her mother died in 1877 and Louise went to live with her aunts, Susan B. and Mary Anthony, in Rochester. She graduated from the Rochester Free Academy in 1883 and went to Philadelphia, where she studied to teach kindergarten. She operated a private kindergarten in Philadelphia in 1888 and perhaps earlier. Louise married Alvan T. James on July 30, 1889 in a Quaker ceremony, and they had one daughter, Helen Miriam James.
James and Anthony spent much time together in later years. Louise and her husband joined Anthony in Washington, DC in 1890 for her 70th birthday celebration. In 1895 Louise and her husband joined Aunt Susan in New York to help celebrate Elizabeth Cady Stanton's 80th birthday. Anthony visited James at her home in Philadelphia in March-April 1902, staying three weeks while recuperating from bronchitis; then James and Anthony vacationed together in Atlantic City; then Anthony visited James in Philadelphia again to complete her recovery.
James and her husband attended the Twenty-Fifth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Washington, D.C., in 1893, where they recorded the minutes of the meetings and donated money. James was elected the recording secretary of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association in 1902. In 1905, James attended the 37th annual session for the Pennsylvania advocates of Equal Suffrage.
James did not live long enough to participate in the 1915 woman suffrage referendum movement in Pennsylvania. She passed away in Philadelphia, December 23, 1907
Sources:
Bryn Mawr College Yearbook: Class of 1921. Has material on daughter of Helen Mosher James. Accessed online at http://repository.brynmawr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=bmc_yearbooks.
Gordon, Ann D., ed. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Vol. 3, National Protection to National Citizens, 1873 to 1880. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003.
Gordon, Ann D., ed. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Vol. 4, When Clowns Make Laws for Queens, 1880-1887. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006.
Gordon, Ann D., ed. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Vol. 5, Their Place Inside the Body-Politic, 1887 to 1895. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009.
Gordon, Ann D., ed. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Volume 6, An Awful Hush, 1895 to 1906. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013.
"Miss Anthony's Projects," Philadelphia Inquirer, March 2, 1900, 5.
"Remains to Lie in State," Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle, March 14, 1906, 15.
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, and Susan B. Anthony, National Woman Suffrage Association Report of the Sixteenth Annual Washington Convention, March 4-7, 1884. Rochester, NY: Charles Mann, 1884.
"State Suffrage Meetings," Bucks County (PA) Gazette, Nov. 16, 1905, 2.
Upton, Harriet Taylor (Ed.). Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Jan.16-19, 1893. Washington, D.C.: Stormont & Jackson, 1893.
"Women Seek to Vote," Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 8, 1902, 2.