Month: March 2023

In preparing to write this blog post, I decided to review what I’d written over the last three and a half years. It seems that most, if not all, of my posts reflected one change or another at the Roberts Library.

And what changes there have been! I am so proud of the staff of the Roberts Library for their flexibility and stamina throughout the last few years.

Following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Arkansas’s women faced new challenges in adapting to the changes in their society as they moved from a largely French influenced society to one that was based in English Common Law. This shift took many rights away from women that they had previously enjoyed, such as independently operating businesses and owning land.

Mary Loughborough was the publisher of the Little Rock, Arkansas–based Southern Ladies’ Journal. When she died at the age of fifty, she was buried alongside her husband in Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock.

She was born in New York on August 25, 1837, and raised in St.

Over the years, Butler Center Books has published a number of ground-breaking books on Arkansas women and their accomplishments. Take a look at the six fascinating reads below, and view the entire catalog here.

Arkansas Women and the Right to Vote: The Little Rock Campaigns: 1868-1920

by Bernadette Cahill

Women from all over Arkansas – left out of the civil rights granted by the post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments – took part in a long struggle to gain the primary civil right of American citizens: voting.