NEWS RELEASE                                                          U.. department of the interior

national park service

For Immediate Release

Contact: Barbara Irvine
215-569-8343
Local Contact: Vivien Rose
315-568-0007

NATIONAL COLLABORATIVE FOR WOMEN'S HISTORY SITES
LAUNCHED IN PHILADELPHIA

Representatives from more than 20 historical sites linked to American women and some 20 others from organizations devoted to preserving women's history met at Philadelphia's historic New Century Guild to launch the National Collaborative for Women's History Sites. Josie Fernandez, Superintendent of Women's Rights National Historical Park, said "The collaborative presents us with an unprecedented opportunity to take Women's Rights National Historical Park's story national and bring visitors to the Seneca Falls and Waterloo community."

The non-profit group is the result of more than two years of meetings and monthly conference calls which have included historians, preservationists, site epresentatives from both the public sector and the National Park Service, as well as interested citizens. It pledges in its mission statement to support and advocate "the preservation and interpretation of sites and locales that bear witness to women's participation in American life (and to make) women's contributions to history visible so that all women's experience and potential are fully valued."

Beth Newburger, director of communications for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and former executive director of the bi-partisan Congressional Women's Progress Commemorative Commission, applauded the new collaborative's mid-October launch. "In the post September 11 funding environment the collaborative can pull together to share resources, experiences and technical information to further common goals. And they can do so without competing for the little grant money available for historical initiatives."

Barbara Irvine, who founded the Alice Paul Centennial Foundation in 1985 and spent more than a dozen years working to save Paulsdale, the Mt. Laurel, N.J., home of the suffragist author of the Equal Rights Amendment, recognized the urgency of creating the collaborative. "From the earliest meetings, we realized that a collaborative was the only logical way that those of us already involved in rescuing women's sites could help identify and preserve the places associated with American women's history, as well as support and sustain the sometimes beleaguered local groups trying to rescue endangered sites."

Many of the sites represented at the three-day conference have
been on the endangered list. Among them are:

Philadelphia's 1843 Fair Hill Burial Ground, the resting place of many prominent Quaker abolitionists and suffragists, including Lucretia Mott, was so overgrown with weeds and littered with car parts and trash that few of its inner city neighbors knew it was a cemetery.

The Star-Spangled Banner House in Baltimore, home of Revolutionary War flagmaker Mary Pickersgill, had deteriorated from a bank to steamship office to shoe repair shop in a blighted part of that city's inner harbor.

The Frontier Nursing Service, which brought modern midwifery to the poor of Kentucky hills in the early 1900s,saved its original Craftsman-style building - and still partially supports its medical services in rural areas - by becoming a bed and breakfast.

Women's Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, N.Y., a cluster of early suffragists' homes and the Wesleyan Chapel where they met in 1848 to proclaim women's rights in the "Declaration of Sentiments."

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The list of sites and organizations joining in the launch of the NCWHS follows:

Alice Paul Centennial Foundation, Mt. Laurel, N.J.
Arizona Women's Hall of Fame, Phoenix, Ariz.
Clara Barton National Historic Site, Glen Echo, Md.
Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame, Hartford, Conn.
Fair Hill Burial Ground, Philadelphia, Penn.
Friends of Graeme Park, Horsham, Penn.
Frontier Nursing Service, Lexington, Ken.
Heritage Investment Program, Philadelphia, Penn.
Jane Addams Hull House Museum, Chicago, Ill.
Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site, Richmond, Virg.
Marian Anderson Historical Society, Inc., Philadelphia, Penn.
Mary Bake Eddy Library, Boston, Mass.
National Women's Party/Sewall-Belmont House, Washington, D.C.
National Women's Hall of Fame, Seneca Falls, N.Y.
Preservation Partners, Crosswicks, N.J.
Salem Academy and College, Winston-Salem, N.C.
Southwark Civil War District Committee, Philadelphia, Penn.
Susan B. Anthony House, Boston, Mass.
Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, Arlington, Virg.
Women's Rights National Historical Park, Seneca Falls, N.Y.

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