By Jason Gabak
Editor
Camillus–Where we are raised, our roots, can have a lasting impact on the course of our lives.
That is what author, historian and educator Kimberly A. Hamlin learned during the course of her career.
This influence might not always be obvious, but even on some subconscious level it is there, at least that was what Hamlin found to be true in her experience.
A native of Camillus Hamlin said she spent a lot of time at Maxwell Memorial Library growing up and volunteered there for a time through her academic career in the West Genesee School District.
Living in Central New York, Hamlin said she was aware of the many influential women that lived and worked here and made a lasting impact through efforts like the Suffrage movement, but as she prepared to go to college she didn’t know these women would help direct the course of her career.
“Growing up going to the Tubman house and the Erie Canal and visiting places that were part of the Underground Railroad did influence me,” Hamlin said. “When those are the field trips you are taking, I think it does influence you. I didn’t go to Seneca Falls until later in life, but yes, I would say growing up there and seeing all of that definitely influenced me. Even if I didn’t know it at the time I think that is part of me.”
Hamlin went on to study at Georgetown before pursuing a career helping women running for office in Washington, D.C.
“At the time I wanted and I thought my career was going to be on the Hill,” Hamlin said.
In 2000 Hamlin decided to leave Washington and purse her PhD in American Studies at the University of Texas in Austin.
It was while she was continuing her education, working on her master’s degree, that Hamlin realized where she wanted to go and the direction she felt passionate about pursuing.
“I was pursuing American studies,” Hamlin said. “It was in my second or third year that I realized everything I had done, all the work I had done, all the research papers I had written were about women. I wrote my dissertation and ultimately my did my thesis and decided this was what I wanted to focus on.”
According to her website, kimberlyhamiln.com, her career has given her the opportunity to research and write about a number of amazing women and share their stories. Hamlin has also written on the origins of the Miss America Pageant, the history of the Girl Scouts, bearded ladies, women running for president, Darwin in America, and the Equal Rights Amendment, according to her website.
In addition, she has worked on several public history projects focused on women and contributed to various PBS documentaries, including “Troop 1500.”
She is currently helping to organize national and local efforts to commemorate the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, and she serves as historical consultant to the Bearded Lady Project.
Her most recent book “Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener,” tells the story of the “fallen woman” who reinvented herself and became “the most potent factor” in Congressional passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and the highest-ranking woman in federal government, Helen Hamilton Gardener.
Hamlin said she became interested in Gardener when she learned that Gardener had donated her brain to science and it is still preserved at Cornell.
“At the time people thought men were smarter, that women had smaller brains,” Hamlin said. “She wanted to prove them wrong and show that an educated woman’s brain was the same as a man’s. But I realized that wasn’t even the most interesting thing about her.”
As Hamlin researched Gardener, she learned a great deal about the life she lived and the important role she played in moving women’s rights forward. According to Hamlin, Gardener was born Alice Chenoweth and came from a family that was able to provide her with a good education and she went on to become a school teacher.
“But she was a ‘fallen woman,’” Hamlin said. “Meaning she had sex before marriage and this was discovered and reported in the papers at the time and she left teaching and moved from Ohio and she reinvented herself.”
Alice Chenoweth adopted the pen name Helen Hamilton Gardener, moved to New York City and among other pursuits became a lecturer and writer. Among other topics, Gardener explored neurology and argued a female brain was not inferior to a male brain and also explored the ideas of the double standards of morality at the time as they pertained to the sexes and the issue of premarital sex. In 1907, Gardener returned to Washington, D.C., where she took up the Suffrage cause. In 1913 she was appointed to a position to the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, becoming, six years later, its vice-chairwoman; she was elected as one of NAWSA’s vice-presidents as chief liaison under the Woodrow Wilson administration, in 1917. In 1920, Wilson appointed her to the United States Civil Service Commission, the first woman to occupy such a high federal position.
Rena Brower, library assistant at Maxwell library, said the library is excited to welcome Hamlin home and have her speak and share more information about her work.
“I read a pre-publication review of Free Thinker and knew that the book would be a good addition to our collection,” Brower said. “I was anxious to read it myself because I had not heard of Helen Hamilton Gardener before this. It seemed like a great opportunity to introduce our reading community to an important yet largely forgotten proponent of women’s rights and suffrage. Coincidentally, we learned after the fact that Dr. Hamlin was originally from Camillus. She agreed to hold an online discussion on Gardener for us when I asked if she would do so for Women’s History Month in March.”
While the library is not able to hold in person events, Brower said she sees Zoom as a great opportunity to welcome Hamlin, who lives and teaches in Ohio, to the library and also allows more people to attend who might not be able to physically be at the library for this kind of presentation.
“Although the library is still unable to hold in-person meetings, the positive side of using Zoom is that we can accommodate many more participants virtually than we could on site,” Brower said. “I would love to see local social studies teachers promote the program to their older students, and hope that many other men and women join us to learn what was involved with attaining personal and political rights that so many today take for granted.”
While Gardener helped accomplish a great deal, Hamlin said there is a lot to learn from her era.
Hamlin pointed to the fact that even in the Suffrage movement there was racism and white women in the north were willing to let Black women be overlooked, what Hamlin calls a “devil’s bargain,” in order to see the amendment passed.
And along with the double standards that existed at the time between what was acceptable for men versus women, Hamlin also hopes that hearing more about Gardener’s story will inspire people to look deeper into history.
“I hope it will make people curious and wonder about who else they might not have learned much about or never even heard of,” Hamlin said.
Hamlin said she is always happy to share and discuss her work and this virtual homecoming is something she looks forward to.
“I hope to see some familiar faces,” Hamlin said. “After I graduated my parents moved and I don’t get back there as often as I’d like, so I am looking forward to seeing everyone in Camillus.”
Hamlin will be presenting on March 3 from 7 to 8 p.m. To learn more and to register visit maxwellmemoriallibrary.org.
