Living History Farms

For our final Women's History Month post, we're shining the spotlight on a woman especially important to Living History Farms. Ellen Flynn and her husband Martin built the Flynn Mansion and Barn as their country home here, in the early 1870s. Ellen Flynn was an anti-suffrage supporter from the 1870s to the early 1900s. Ellen felt that voting would affect a woman's role in the home and their femininity. However, after her husband's death in 1906, she began to have a change of ...heart. After taking charge of her own affairs and watching her daughters help run the family business, she began to support the suffrage movement. At a pro-suffrage rally in 1916 she was quoted by the Des Moines Register saying, " I have decided that voting doesn't take away our femininity." Read more about Ellen's story on our blog: https://www.lhf.org//differing-opinions-women-suffrage-in/ #WomensHistoryMonth See more

It's National Ag Day! Join us in saying thank you to our agricultural experts on staff. We appreciate the knowledge they share day to day about the importance of farming and how crops moved from field to fork throughout history. Thank you to farmers who produce the food, fiber, and fuel to power our lives! #nationalagday #agday2021

Tune in to Hello Iowa today at 11am on WHO-TV 13 featuring Family Easter at Living History Farms!

This month we're focusing on notable women from Iowa's history in honor of Women's History Month. Just like Gertrude Rush who we featured in our last post, our next subject is an Iowa transplant - Amelia Bloomer. Bloomer was born in 1818 in Homer, New York, and moved to Iowa with her family in 1852. Bloomer was activist for the cause of temperance and then women's suffrage. In 1851, she introduced two icons of the women's suffrage movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Susan B. Anthony. She herself became a leader of the suffrage movement in Iowa. However, she became more famous for promoting a new style of clothing, bloomers, that offered women freedom from long, restrictive skirts. Bloomers were not named after her, but she became associated with them when she endorsed them. #WomensHistoryMonth