Historic Women of Ohio

Myra Merrick

Myra Merrick was born in England in 1825, her parents immigrated to Massachusetts in 1826.  She married Charles Merrick in 1848 and  entered Central Medical College in Rochester in 1849.  She opened her practice in Cleveland in 1852.  The first female physician in Ohio, she was a doctor of Homeopathic Medicine.  When the Western College of Homeopathic and the Cleveland Homeopathic Medical College stopped admitting women in the 1860's, she began the Cleveland Homeopathic Hospital College for Women. 

Under her leadership the Women and Children's Free Medical and Surgical Dispensary was founded and continued for twenty years.  She died in Cleveland in 1899. 

Harriet Taylor Upton

Harriet Taylor was born in Ravenna, Ohio in 1853 and at the age of 7 her family moved to Warren.  She graduated from Warren High School in 1873.  In 1880 her father Judge Ezra B. Taylor was elected to Congress.  Harriet accompanied her widowed father to Washington D.C. where she served as his hostess and companion .  She met George Upton there and they were married in 1884.  While living in Washington Harriet worked closely with her mentor, Susan B. Anthony for the suffrage cause.  In 1890 she joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association and in 1894 they elected her Treasurer of the organization, an office she held until 1910.   Upton also served as  president of the Ohio Women's Suffrage Association from 1899 to 1908 and from 1911 to 1920.

In 1898, she was the first woman elected to the Warren Board of Education.  She served on the Republican National Executive Board, and ran unsuccessfully for the US House of Representatives in 1926.

In addition she was instrumental in the passage of the first child labor laws and in the founding of the Daughters of the American Revolution and Red Cross Chapters in Warren.

A prolific author Harriet died in Pasadena, California in 1945 at the age of 90.

Amelia Swilley Bingham

Amelia Swilley was born in Hicksville, Ohio in 1869.  Her father ran a hotel and restaurant. 

In 1890 when Amelia was home on break from her studies at Ohio Wesleyan College and was working in the restaurant, she met Lloyd Bingham, manager of a traveling theater group performing in Hicksville.  He talked her into joining his group and beginning an acting career.  After three years of apprenticeship, she had her debut at the Bijou Theater in New York in 1893. She was an instant hit, and was voted most popular actress, even beating out Lillian Russell. Also in 1893 she married Mr. Bingham.  

By 1900 she had decided she wanted to be a producer so she took over the Bijou, assembled a cast and opened her own production of Clyde Fitch's "The Climbers" and many other plays.  She also made movies with stars like Douglas Fairbanks. 

When she died of pneumonia in 1927, 2,000 mourners attended her funeral and she left an estate worth $200,000 then considered a huge amount for a woman. 

Melissa Terrell

Melissa Terrell was born in Adams County, Ohio in 1834.  She was a member of Southern Ohio Christian Conference where she was listed as a laborer.  Because the church that she belonged to did not allow women to serve as ministers, she resigned but returned later to the conference with full ministerial credentials.  She had married a Rev. Timmons and later a Mr. Terrell.

The Deer Creek Conference met at Shiloh Church in September 1866 to draft the following resolution: 

Resolved : that while we do not approve  of the ordination of women to the eldership of the church, yet Sister Melissa Timmons has been set forth to that position at the request of the church, of which she is a member, therefore, Resolved: that we send her credential letters of an ordained minister of good standing in this conference.  She was ordained March  on March 7, 1867 at the Ebenezer Church in Clark County.

She held pastorates in Ohio, Iowa and Missouri, and was described as a speaker of rare ability and persuasiveness, and her appeals were seldom without response.