#nancy cook

[yourdailyqueer]

Nancy Cook (deceased)

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: 26 August 1884

RIP: 16 August 1962

Ethnicity: White - American

Occupation: Suffragette, teacher, activist, feminist, entrepreneur 

[fdrlibrary]

This pewter pitcher was designed by Nancy Cook for Val-Kill Industries. Cook (1884-1962) -  suffragist, activist, political reformer, furniture designer - co-owned Val-Kill Industries with Eleanor and Marion Dickerman: https://fdr.artifacts.archives.gov/objects/9741

NPx 81-91(602) - Nancy Cook and Eleanor Roosevelt as they hang their NRA poster on the Val Kill Industry factory, Hyde Park, New York, 1933

To learn more about Nancy Cook: https://www.nps.gov/people/nancycook.htm

[365daysoflesbians]

APRIL 11: Marion Dickerman (1890-1983)

A close friend (and by this we mean most likely a gal pal) of Eleanor Roosevelt, Marion Dickerman was a suffragist and educator in the US.

Born in Westfield, New York, Dickerman studied at Wellesley College and then Syracuse University, where she earned both her BA and a grad degree in education. One of her classmates at Syracuse was Nancy Cook, with whom Marion spent most of her adult life, but they didn’t actually start their relationship until they met “again” while teaching in Fulton, NY.

Marion Dickerman. From the Patterson library, Westfield, NY

Dickerman was also involved with other women throughout her life, most notably, it seems, none other than First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, whom Dickerman and Cook had met while traveling to Hyde Park, NY. You get three wlw together who are all interested in progressive politics and education, and, well, you get the kind of ménage à trois that purchases schools and shares properties.

Trouble had to be brewing in paradise, though: Lorena Hickok (Eleanor’s bae, we’ve already mentioned her on the blog) didn’t like Marion, and boy did she make no mystery of this. Eventually this drove a wedge in the ménage à trois friendship of the three women.

In their later years, Dickerman and Cook moved to Connecticut, where Dickerman served as the Director of Education for the Marine Historical Association, from 1946 until 1962.

-AK

[gayeleanorroosevelt]

My mother-in-law who arrived several weeks ago and who has the cottage next to us up here, came over to supper with us last night, and my neighbors on the other side, Mrs. Prince and her daughter, Mildred, originally from St. Louis joined us also. We sat after supper in the old school room, which Miss Cook and Miss Dickerman have been rearranging for me with Val-Kill furniture, they were making and hanging gay tan and red and green curtains.

My Day column, July 24th, 1936

[gayeleanorroosevelt]

Franklin D. Roosevelt, E.J.Flynn, L.M.Howe, G. Forbush, and Nancy Cook in Hyde Park, New York, 1933

[nationaljournal]

Go here to post your questions. The chat begins at 3:30pm EST. 

[gayeleanorroosevelt]

Eleanor Roosevelt, Nancy Cook, Caroline O'Day, Marian Dickerman in New York

Caroline Love Goodwin was most likely born in 1869, although the exact year of her birth is not known. As the daughter of a socially important family in Georgia, she attended the Lucy Cobb Institute and graduated in 1886. After briefly studying art in New York City, she sailed for Europe and supported herself as a freelance artist for the next eight years. While in Europe she met Daniel O'Day, an oil businessman, and in 1901 the couple returned to New York where they married.

O'Day remained quietly married to her husband for the next fifteen years, but his death in 1916 released an interest in activism that had lain dormant while a wife and mother. She became committed to issues of social welfare and woman suffrage and as a wealthy widow, O'Day was able to use her financial assets to further these causes. She also became active with the New York Consumer's League, the Women's Trade Union League, and the Democratic party. In 1923, she was appointed to the New York State Board of Charities, and later that year she became closely allied with other prominent social activists that included Nancy Cook, Marion Dickerman, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

[gayeleanorroosevelt]

Eleanor Roosevelt and Nancy Cook shoot pistols at Chazy Lake, New York

Nancy Cook was born on August 26, 1884, in Massena, New York. She attended Syracuse University, where she became an avid supporter of woman's suffrage and campaigned for protective labor legislation for women, the abolishment of child labor, and world peace. After graduating in1912, she moved to Fulton, New York, where she taught art and handicrafts to high school students from 1913 to 1918. At Fulton, she became reacquainted with Marion Dickerman, whom Cook first met in a Syracuse boarding house for students. The two women would become lifelong partners, living together almost their entire adult lives, sharing a life dedicated to politics, education, and progressive reform.