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North Carolina native Dolley Madison becomes First Lady when James Madison is inaugurated as the fourth president. She remains one of the most popular First Ladies in the nation’s history.
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Harriot Jacobs is born in Edenton to enslaved parents. Around the age of 12, she becomes the property of a child, Mary Norcom, and lives in her family’s home. Jacobs establishes a relationship with future US Congressman Samuel Sawyer. Enraged, Dr. Norcom removes Jacobs to a plantation from which she escapes. After living for seven years in the attic of her free grandmother, Jacobs escapes to New York where she writes Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861.
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The General Council of the Cherokee Nation goes against tribal tradition of gender equality by drafting a constitution patterned after that of the United States which excludes women from holding office and denies them franchise.
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Oberlin College becomes the first coeducational college in the United States. In 1841, Oberlin awards the first academic degrees to three women.
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Mary Jane Patterson, the first African American woman in the United States to receive a B.A. degree is born in Raleigh.
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Amelia Jenks Bloomer publishes and edits Lily, the first prominent women's rights newspaper.
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Antoinette Brown (later Blackwell) becomes the first American woman ordained as a minister in a Protestant denomination, serving two First Congregational Churches in New York.
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Lucy Stone becomes the first woman on record to keep her surname after marriage, setting a trend among like-minded women, who become known as "Lucy Stoners."