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By Bob Dyer
Beacon Journal columnist
Published on Thursday, Apr 24, 2008
A woman running for president? Big deal.
In 1872 — a full 135 years before Hillary Clinton threw her pantsuit into the ring — a woman with local ties made a run at the White House.
Ohio native Victoria Claflin Woodhull was nominated by the Equal Rights Party. Her running mate was legendary African-American author and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
If this bit of American history doesn't ring any bells, don't worry. You're in good company.
In fact, when one of Woodhull's distant relatives was attending elementary school in Cuyahoga Falls in the 1960s, he was sent to the school psychologist because he kept insisting he was related to a woman who ran for president in the 1800s.
Scott Claflin got the last laugh years later when he helped place a marker honoring Woodhull in front of the library in her hometown of Homer, a Licking County berg about a 100 miles southwest of Akron as the car drives.
Victoria Claflin Woodhull simply hasn't carried much clout with the people who write the history books.
Granted, she was clobbered in the general election by Ulysses S. Grant, and eventually faded from the scene, living her final years in England. But you'd think historians would give an occasional nod to a woman who not only ran for president before women could even vote but was the first female Wall Street stockbroker and the first woman to testify before a congressional subcommittee.
She also published a newspaper, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, with her sister. Profits from the brokerage firm enabled them to launch the newspaper, which was a big success — and extremely controversial. Maybe that's why mainstream historians initially gave her the back of their hand.
By the standards of the day, Ms. Woodhull was quite the hussy. In addition to lobbying for women's suffrage and equal rights, she was a champion of sex education and free love. That didn't play real well in the 1870s.
Speaking of which, part of her poor showing at the polls might be attributable to the fact that on Election Day she was sitting in jail, accused of sending obscene material through the U.S. mail. (Even Hillary's sniper-fire-in-Bosnia fib pales next to jail time.)
Scott Claflin thinks his relative's biggest problem was that ''there was no female press to rally to her aid.'' He insists she was jailed by vindictive hypocrites for using a word that appears in the Bible.
''She was arrested for sending the word 'adultery' through the mail in her newspaper,'' he says. ''The post office had her arrested in 1872 — and about 20 years ago, they were issuing a stamp (featuring her image).''
Now there's an about-face.
''The post office and I still haven't settled up on this,'' jokes Claflin, who lives in Silver Lake.
Only during the last quarter-century has Woodhull started to climb out of obscurity. A slew of biographies have been written and at least two documentaries were produced, one by a professor at Denison University near Homer.
But even at that, Woodhull struggles for respect. In the (frequently suspect) online dictionary Wikipedia, she is misidentified as a native of Homer Township in Medina County. (Google ''Homer Township Ohio.'')
The Claflins arrived on these shores in 1640. Victoria was a seventh-generation Claflin; Scott is 11th-generation.
Today he is involved in a family business in Hudson that manufactures clipboards.
And if he needs the services of a psychologist, it's not because of historical delusions.
@16@17@99yes
A woman running for president? Big deal.
Get the full article here.
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