Wisconsin women who made history

March 7, 2025 Marci Glaus Leave a Comment

The PBS Wisconsin Education collections The Look Back and Wisconsin Biographies provide important stories of women who have made history in our state. From the first public school teacher in Wisconsin to a bowling shirt icon, women from Wisconsin have contributed their time and talents even before Wisconsin was a state. Celebrate Women’s History Month by learning about and sharing these great stories.

Electa Quinney: Mohican Teacher and Mentor

Electa Quinney was a Mohican educator and mentor who is known to many as Wisconsin’s first public school teacher. She taught both Native and non-Native students together and led her community with generosity and a commitment to education for all. This telling of Quinney’s story starts many years before her birth, when her ancestors were forced to leave their homelands in the East, and follows her to the area in Wisconsin that is now the present-day home of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians.

A Stitch in Time

Using a needle and thread was considered a necessary household skill for girls and women in the 1800s. They made samplers to practice stitches and show off what they could do. Margaret Miekel’s sampler helps us stitch together the living and learning in the area before Wisconsin was officially a state!

Carrie Frost: Fly Fishing Boss

Carrie Frost was a fly fishing entrepreneur who paved the way for other female business owners in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Even though women could not vote and in many cases could not own property, Frost created a successful manufacturing company and gave over 150 Stevens Point women a chance to earn wages at a time when they were not often able to do so.

Belle Case La Follette: Ballots and Bloomers

At a time when women were expected to stay at home, Belle Case La Follette went out — first to pursue a university education, and then to fight for women’s access to the ballot box and for peace. Her ideas and way with words made her a trusted advisor in a family of political leaders, and she went on to advise both from backstage and then at the podium. Case La Follette stepped over the stereotypical expectations of women of her time to advocate for important changes that continue to resonate today.

Milly Zantow: Recycling Revolutionary

When Milly Zantow learned about a problem in her Sauk County community — a landfill closing much earlier than it should — she took action. Seeing for herself that there was too much plastic waste, she thought it should be recycled. At that time, no one was recycling plastics, but Zantow figured it out. She went on to develop the idea for the numbering system to identify plastics for recycling, now used worldwide, and she helped with the writing of Wisconsin’s recycling law, making her a real revolutionary for an important cause.

Bowled Over

Bowling got its start at least as far back as the Middle Ages, but the game we know today became big in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, and Wisconsin got in on the game. What began as an individual project for Earlene Fuller to make a bowling shirt for herself turned into a full-time job designing and making bowling shirts for decades.

PBS Wisconsin Education Made in Wisconsin The Look Back Womens History Month Wisconsin Biographies