13 Facts About Ernestine Rose

Ernestine Rose's relationship with Judaism is a debated motivation for her advocacy.

Ernestine Rose was born on 13 January 1810 in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Duchy of Warsaw, as Ernestine Louise Potowska.

At the age of five, Rose began to "question the justice of a God who would exact such hardships" as the frequent fasts that her father performed.

However, Ernestine Rose was a woman from a rich family, and he denied her plea.

Ernestine Rose returned home only to discover that in her absence her father had remarried, to a sixteen-year-old girl.

Ernestine Rose then traveled to Berlin, where she found herself hampered by an anti-Semitic law that required all non-Prussian Jews to have a Prussian sponsor.

Ernestine Rose appealed directly to the king and was granted an exemption from the rule.

Ernestine Rose traveled to Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and finally England.

Ernestine Rose soon began to give lectures on the subjects that most interested her, joining the "Society for Moral Philanthropists" and traveling to different states to espouse her causes: the abolition of slavery, religious tolerance, public education, and equality for women.

When Ernestine Rose heard of this resolution, she drew up a petition and began to solicit names in support of it.

Ernestine Rose attended and spoke at numerous conferences and conventions, including, but not limited to the First National Convention of Infidels, the Hartford Bible Convention, the Women's Rights Convention in the Tabernacle, New York City, the tenth national convention of the National Women's Rights Convention in Cooper Institute, New York City, the State Women's Rights Convention in Albany, New York, and the Equal Rights Association meeting in which there was a schism.

Ernestine Rose was elected president of the National Women's Rights Convention in October, 1854, in spite of objections that she was an atheist.

Ernestine Rose died in Brighton, England, in 1892 and was buried at Highgate Cemetery.