Jeannette Leonard Gilder (1849-1916)
Newspaper correspondent, editor, and critic, Jeannette Leonard Gilder
was born in Flushing, Long Island. She attended boarding school for one
or two terms in Southern New Jersey but her formal education ended at the
age of 15. After her father's death in 1864 she worked in the office of the
state adjutant general at Trenton, then briefly at an accountant's office
before finding work as an employee of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. Her
correspondence with Alexander G. Cattell regarding this job contains letters
from Gilder asking for Cattell's help in obtaining a new position, and
explaining that her father's death made it necessary for her to work. In
1881, after a brief stint as a copyist at the Newark office of the registrar
of deeds, she and her brother Joseph founded the literary magazine The
Critic, which would be folded into the new version of Putnam's Magazine
in 1906. As co-editor of The Critic, Gilder corresponded with the leading
authors, editors, and critics of the day. She also cared for the children
of E. Cholmeley-Jones after the death of his first wife. Another set of
letters documents Gilder's correspondence with a former employee,
Annie Braeml. The recently dismissed
Braeml, who had been a tutor to one of the
Cholmeley-Jones children, Nathaniel, appealed to Gilder as a fellow
working-woman who knew, as Gilder wrote, "what it is to struggle
and be honest, to live upon small means."
OCP Resources
Gilder, Jeannette L. Why I am opposed to woman suffrage., Boston: Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to Women, 1894?
Gilder, Jeannette L. The Autobiography of a Tomboy, New York: Doubleday, Page, & Co. 1900
The letters of Jeannette Gilder
Cattell, Alexander G. 1816-1894. Correspondence, 1867-1868.
Braeml, Annie. Correspondence, 1889-1890.
The Jeannette Leonard Gilder papers are held in the Schlesinger Library of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.