Anna Howard Shaw — Suffragist and War Hero
Near Wilmington, Pennsylvania
Near this intersection in Media, Anna Howard Shaw made her home for the last eleven years of her life. By the time she moved here in nineteen oh eight, she had already accumulated more credentials than most people manage in a lifetime. She held degrees in medicine and theology, rare enough for any person of her era, extraordinary for a woman.
Shaw served as the lead national lecturer for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, traveling the country alongside Susan B. Anthony to argue the case for women's right to vote. Her oratory was considered among the most powerful in the suffrage movement.
When the United States entered World War One, Shaw took on a new role: chair of the Women's Committee of the United States Council of National Defense. She coordinated the entire range of women's contributions to the war effort across the country. For that work, she was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the first woman so honored.
She died in nineteen nineteen, just before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. She did not live to cast the ballot she had spent her life fighting for.
