Victoria Claflin Woodhull was radical for her time. In 1872, the Ohio-born activist, author and politician became the first woman to run for president of the United States. But before she entered the political realm, Woodhull was more invested in the spiritual world. During the Spiritualist movement of the 1800s, Woodhull was first known as a popular medium.
At age 15, she married Canning Woodhull, the first of her three husbands. The couple divorced about 10 years later, and soon after, Woodhull traveled to New York City with her sister, Tennessee, where they met Cornelius Vanderbilt. When the shipping and railroad magnate gave the sisters the money to launch a business, they opened the first woman-run stock brokerage in New York City.
Using the money they earned from Wall Street, they began publishing Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly in 1870. They used the newspaper as a platform to share their ideas on social reforms, including women’s suffrage, birth control and free love.
In 1872, Woodhull earned the nomination of the Equal Rights Party to run for president, but she received zero votes in the Electoral College in part because her female supporters did not have the right to vote.
Woodhull’s beliefs and lifestyle would make her the target of ridicule in the U.S., and she eventually headed to England for a fresh start. She died there in 1927, having lived just long enough for the 19th Amendment to give U.S. women the right to vote.
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