Meet 5 women with ties to Jacksonville who made a difference in history

The fireworks have dimmed and the grills have been turned off. 

The Fourth of July celebration may be over, but it’s always important to look toward the past to recognize those who have dedicated their lives to improving the country and maintaining its freedom. 

Skirt! looked at the lives of five lesser-known women with ties to Jacksonville to honor their contributions to the community and country, as well as highlight their patriotic spirits. 

They may not be household names, but their work was significant and worth recognizing.

 

'History was always her passion’

Helen Small Merrill was born with historic blood.

She was the great-granddaughter of Jesse Smith, who was a Minuteman in the Revolutionary War and in direct service of George Washington.

Merrill grew up in Jacksonville, and history was always her passion. She wanted people to remember those who fought for the United States, people such as Smith.

She was a charter member of the National Society of the Daughters of 1812, which encouraged the study of American history in classrooms. The society primarily focused on celebrating the formation of the Constitution and the beginnings of the United States, according to Times-Union files.

Merrill died on July 9, 1921, at age 62. In her honor, her son James C. Merrill presided over the distribution of silver loving cups to represent extraordinary performance by students in Duval County history classrooms, according to a Times-Union article on Oct. 30, 1949.

 

She 'made the first Confederate flag for Jacksonville’

The closest thing Jacksonville has to Betsy Ross is Maria Coene Murphy.

Murphy, along with her sister Eliza Coene Hudnall, was an orphan in Mandarin before being taken in by her guardians, Judge John Locke and Maria Doggett.

At the onset of the Civil War, Maria made the first Confederate flag for Jacksonville out of shawls, which she presented to Capt. Lucius A. Hardee, who was in command of the local company, according to the “History of Duval County” by Pleasant Daniel Gold, published in 1928.

After the war, Murphy was one of the organizers of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and was vocal about turning an old burial lot into a final resting place for Confederate veterans, according to her obituary in the Times-Union.

Her sister Eliza, on the other hand, was an avid Union supporter and opened a boarding house at Laura and Forsyth streets for Union soldiers.

Murphy died in 1920 at age 86.

 

'To be the first in some unique way was in her blood’

Louise Pinnell was the first woman in Florida to practice law. Her father was a captain in the Confederate Army and fought against his own father, a captain for the Union Army, during the Civil War.

“Independence of thought and action were passed to Ms. Pinnell through her ancestral line of men who stood firm for religious and political freedom, and for new and unbiased conviction; to be the first in some unique way was in her blood,” wrote Lucy Worthington Blackman in “The Women of Florida,” in 1940.

She bravely entered the law field and took the Bar examination in 1898, years before women had the right to vote. Although she passed, she had to wait months before the Florida Supreme Court approved her admission to the Bar.

But she was determined and granted the right to practice law in October 1898, according to Pinnell biographer Wendy S. Loquasto.

As an attorney, Pinnell worked for the Florida East Coast Railway Co. in St. Augustine. She went on to work there for 25 years.

Pinnell died in 1966 at age 89.

 

She fought for 'belief in a woman’s right to vote’ 

When she lived in Chicago, Grace Trout would park in a town square or on a busy street corner and give speeches from her car — urging passersby to support women’s right to vote.

Her work as a suffragist started small as president of the Women’s Auxiliary of the Ashland Club of Chicago. But her determination and belief in a woman’s right to vote led to her appointment as president of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association in 1912. Her efforts created the path to passage of the Woman Suffrage Bill by the Illinois Legislature, the first state east of the Mississippi River to do so, according to Gold’s book.

“She was given the credit, and it is this effort which some say led to the amendment of the U.S. Constitution in 1919,” said Emily Lisska, executive director of the Jacksonville Historical Society.

When Trout moved to Jacksonville in 1921, she became active in the community. She became the first president of the Jacksonville Planning Advisory Board and became known locally as the “Woman Who Never Fails.”

Trout died in 1955 at age 91.

 

She 'broke gender barriers in … politics’

Margaret Rankin Young broke gender barriers in Jacksonville politics by becoming the first woman elected to public office in Duval County.

Initially appointed by the governor to fill a vacancy on the school board, she was elected twice more before she decided against a third term.

During World War I, Young was chairman of the Speakers’ Bureau for the United War Workers’ Campaign and chairman of the YWCA hostess house at Camp Johnson.

Like Trout, Young was an adamant suffragist and wrote to Judge John E. Raker in 1918 in support of women’s right to vote: “Our energetic, intelligent, loyal women of the South will appreciate such favorable action,” she wrote, according to Gold’s book.

 

Tracy Jones: (904) 359-4272