by Celia Love

Created on: April 25, 2008

The First Giant Steps Taken By Women - The first professional milestones achieved by women were so resisted, it took two centuries to produce the first ten. After the foundation was laid by these ten remarkable women, that rate almost tripled. The arts and media were the first fields to have professional women.

In 1650, Anne Bradstreet, the first published American woman writer, her book of poetry "The Tenth Muse", made its way to America from England where it made its original debut.

Over a half century passed before the next professional woman emerged to take her place in history. Henrietta Johnston, the first known professional Artist in America, began work as a portrait artist in Charles Town, South Carolina, which later became known as Charleston. During that same year, Mary Katharine Goddard and her widowed mother became publishers of "The Providence Gazette," and "The Annual Wests Almanac", making them the first women publishers in America. In 1775, Goddard became the first woman Post Master in the country. Two years later, she became the first printer to offer copies of "The Declaration of Independence" that included the signers names. In 1789, Goddard opened a book store in Baltimore, the first recorded woman in American history to do so.

In 1767, Maryland first made history when Anne Catherine Hoof Green, became the first American woman to run a Print Shop after taking over her late husbands' Printing and Newspaper business. The following year, she was named "The Official Printer for the Colony of Maryland".

In 1790, Maryland became home to a Carmelite Convent near Port Tobacco, when Mother Bernardina Matthews established the first community of Roman Catholic Nuns in thirteen colonies. (The Ursuline Convent established in New Orleans in 1727, was still in french territory.)

Suzanne Vailonde, appeared in the "Bird Cather" in New York, in 1792, the first ballet presented in the U.S. She was also, the first known woman in the United States to work as a Choreographer and Set Designer.

"The House Of Industry", the first charitable organization for women in America was established in 1795, by Ann Parish.

The first patent ever granted to a woman, was given to Mary Kies, in 1809, for a method of weaving straw with silk. In that same year, the first American Community Of The Sisters Of Charity, was established by Elizabeth Ann Selton. She went on to become the first native born American woman to be made a Saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

Last by certainly not least of these ten amazing women, Elizabeth Blackwell, became the first woman in the U.S. with a medical degree when she graduated from The Medical Institution of Geneva, N.Y. in 1849.

These ten amazing women opened a world of opportunities to women, changing the world, and making history.

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