Brown Emma

Notes:

EMMA BROWN
EMMA BROWN brought the firstpower press and the Cayuga Chief, a temperance paper, to Wisconsin fromupstate New York in 1856. She joined her brother, Thurlow Weed Brown, inFort Atkinson, and published the Wisconsin Chief, until 1889. It becamethe nation's longest- lasting temperance sheet.
Thurlow, a prominent temperance lecturer and author on the national lecturecircuit, sent his speeches and press reviews to Emma for publication. Emma,trained as a typesetter and compositor, ran the production side of the business,writing copy, setting type, selling ads and balancing the books. It wasnot until Thurlow's death in 1866 that Emma's role as the Chief's real editorbecame public.

Term: Brown, Emma, 1827-1889
Definition:
Co-founder of the journal "Wisconsin Chief" and the first successful woman editor and publisher in Wisconsin; her paper supported the temperance movement and women's suffrage. View more information elsewhere at wisconsinhistory.org.
View newspaper clippings at Wisconsin Local History and Biography Articles .
[Source: McBride, Genevieve G. On Wisconsin women. (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993)]

The momentum for women's rights in the decades after the war was kept alive largely through the labors of Emma Brown (1827-1889). She was the first successful woman editor and publisher in Wisconsin, producing the weekly paper "Wisconsin Chief" out of her office in Fort Atkinson . She had started the paper in 1849 in new York, and it became the country's longest-running temperance paper. In its pages she supported not only the temperance movement but also women's suffrage, exposed harsh conditions in factories and prisons, and argued passionately for women's roles in public life. She produced the weekly paper almost singlehandedly from 1866 to 1889.