![\"8-25-14_margaret-fuller\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/longislandwomansuffrage.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/8-25-14_margaret-fuller.jpg?resize=300%2C196&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nMargaret Fuller, \u00a01810 \u2013 1850<\/p>\n
Margaret Fuller was born May 23, 1810 in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts. As a young child\u00a0she\u00a0was taught\u00a0at home by an exacting father, and did not attend school formally until the age of ten. Perhaps for this reason she was a precocious child, educated far beyond her years, schooled in Greek, Latin, German and Italian well before other children of her age.<\/p>\n
In 1836, when her father\u2019s death threatened to decimate the family\u2019s finances, she went to teach in Philadelphia in a school run by\u00a0Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May Alcott). After two years she returned \u00a0to Massachusetts, and\u00a0became friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his\u00a0community of transcendentalists in Concord, Massachusetts. Emerson was later to say that Margaret produced the “best conversation in America.”<\/p>\n
An early and outspoken advocate of women\u2019s rights, in 1840\u00a0she\u00a0began a series of \u201cConversations\u201d in Boston, inviting women intellectuals and activists to come and\u00a0discuss such weighty topics as gender roles, woman suffrage, culture of the day and abolition. Such open discussion was quite radical at the time, but Margaret believed in living life fully alive, both intellectually and spiritually, and these conversations fostered\u00a0that belief. Charging $10 for a\u00a0thirteen-week series enabled her to leave the\u00a0teaching profession and become the first editor of Emerson\u2019s transcendental magazine, the Dial<\/em>.<\/p>\n Margaret was a prolific writer; in 1844 she accepted Horace Greeley\u2019s invitation to write for the New York Tribune<\/em>. The following year Greely published her seminal book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century<\/em>, in which she challenged the then-current social order that dictated women\u2019s well-defined roles in society.\u00a0She was able to lay\u00a0claim to an impressive series of firsts: first editor of the Dial;<\/em>\u00a0first woman to be allowed to conduct research in Harvard; first woman journalist on the New York Tribune;<\/em>\u00a0first woman literary critic. In 1846 she travelled to Europe for Greely, becoming the first female foreign correspondent for an American newspaper.<\/p>\n In Europe she met and married Giovanni Angelo Ossoli. While returning to the United States on the ship Elizabeth in July of 1850 she and her husband and two year old son died\u00a0when the ship floundered and was wrecked\u00a0off the coast of Long Island near Fire Island.<\/p>\n Margaret Fuller enjoyed a short but unconventional life;\u00a0today she would be called a \u201cfree spirit,\u201d one who strove to live life fully dedicated to intellectual and sp A dedication of an historical marker honoring Margaret Fuller will take place on Saturday, May 21. 2016, 11am at the Polhill Park\/City of Beacon, NY Visitor’s Center. for further information log onto the website:\u00a0margaretfuller.wordpress.com<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Margaret_Fuller-300x400](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/longislandwomansuffrage.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Margaret_Fuller-300x400-1.jpg?resize=294%2C220&ssl=1\")
iritual freedom. Yet it was that free spirit that led her to campaign throughout her life for equal rights for women, including the right to vote. She was a complex and fascinating personality.<\/p>\n