front cover of The Founding Mothers of Mackinac Island
The Founding Mothers of Mackinac Island
The Agatha Biddle Band of 1870
Theresa L. Weller
Michigan State University Press, 2021
Drawing on a wide array of historical sources, Theresa L. Weller provides a comprehensive history of the lineage of the seventy-four members of the Agatha Biddle band in 1870. A highly unusual Native and Métis community, the band included just eight men but sixty-six women. Agatha Biddle was a member of the band from its first enumeration in 1837 and became its chief in the early 1860s. Also, unlike most other bands, which were typically made up of family members, this one began as a small handful of unrelated Indian women joined by the fact that the US government owed them payments in the form of annuities in exchange for land given up in the 1836 Treaty of Washington, DC. In this volume, the author unveils the genealogies for all the families who belonged to the band under Agatha Biddle’s leadership, and in doing so, offers the reader fascinating insights into Mackinac Island life in the nineteenth century.
[more]

front cover of Founding Mothers of the Society for Ethnomusicology
Founding Mothers of the Society for Ethnomusicology
Charlotte J. Frisbie
University of Illinois Press, 2026
Women played an essential role in the creation and incorporation of the Society for Ethnomusicology. Charlotte J. Frisbie uses participant observation, multiple voices and lenses, and a wide range of interviews to chronicle the women of the era, their contributions to the emerging discipline, and the reasons for their involvement in the Society. Candid and revealing, the women offer their personal and professional stories and provide observations of the Society over time. They also describe experiences with discrimination and unequal access to opportunities while discussing the slights, cruel jokes, and other insensitive behaviors of some of the men in the Society’s leadership.

An enlightening eyewitness account, Founding Mothers of the Society for Ethnomusicology is an invaluable window into the work and contributions of women scholars and the obstacles they faced.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter