Elizabeth Mansfield was born at a time, the late 1800's, when women were challenging the assumptions they'd inherited about women's roles in society. She became very interested in oratory - public speaking - and by the time she went to college, Hillsdale College (Michigan), she was quite good at it. The art of oratory or elocution was considered the foundation of both public speaking and drama, so her passion was well recognized as an important practice and her skill was highly valued.
When it was proposed to Hillsdale College that she give an oration, however, she was denied, and it was a scandal. Hillsdale College was not ready to be a groundbreaker in the battle of women's rights.
She had a friend, Julia Reynolds, who also went to Hillsdale, and who would remain her close friend over many years. Julia married and moved to Council Bluffs, where she met Amelia Bloomer and became her close follower. Women's Suffrage was a big issue in those days, as was Prohibition, which we could now, looking back, say was a failed experiment. Nevertheless these were the times they lived in.
Elizabeth Mansfield married John Irving in Hillsdale and moved to Toledo, Ohio, not far from Hillsdale. They had two children, I believe, but she, now Elizabeth Mansfield Irving, became most famous for taking over her husband's insurance agency after he moved on to other pursuits. As an insurance agent and leader of one of the biggest agencies in the area, she had some fame and a considerable reputation as one of Toledo's first and most prominent businesswomen. It seems that at that time, it was uncommon for women to be in charge of any businesses, so she was even then breaking new ground.
But her greatest fame came from her oratorical skills. It seems that whenever she spoke, people listened carefully and her words had great impact. She was quoted in many journals and spoke on a variety of topics.
In one noteworthy speech, easily found on Google, she argued that it was pointless for women to try to become as much like men as possible in their pursuit of various high positions in business, because that just made everyone look bad. Rather, she said, they should maintain the traits of womenhood that were most desirable and succeed anyway. Because she delivered her speech in exquisite oratory, it made a splash in the world and was transcribed and widely circulated.
At one point someone in Toledo or nearby noticed that she was an expert in articulation and the processes necessary to make correct sounds, so perhaps she could be recommended as being able to help people who were having great trouble with this process. She agreed to try to help one child who was a rather severe case, and slowly and patiently, she taught him how to speak. In severe cases helping people like him is often a matter of unclenching certain muscles that have been fixed in a clenched position for the patients' survival or comfort in the face of other injuries they have sustained. She knew she was over her head in the medical details of the case, but soon she was treating several people, as there weren't too many specialists in articulation in the upper Midwest and people soon found her.
Her daughter, my grandmother, grew up in a household where women were told they could do whatever they set their minds to. She of course was guided into theater activities, and soon found herself in the middle of a lively Toledo social scene where theater performances actually did very well and were well received. By now we are moving into the roaring twenties, when the first major pandemic was over and everyone wanted to get out and have a good time.
Elizabeth Mansfield Irving's granddaughter, my mother, married Julia Reynolds Leverett's grandson, who had grown up in his early years in Council Bluffs. One of the things they had in common was that their grandmothers were prominent in the suffrage and women's rights movements of their time.
