1. Katharine Dexter McCormick was a US suffragist, philanthropist and, after her husband's death, heir to a substantial part of the McCormick family fortune.
25 Facts About Katharine McCormick
1. 2.
Katharine McCormick funded most of the research necessary to develop the first birth control pill.
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Katharine McCormick grew up in Chicago where her father, Wirt Dexter, was a prominent lawyer and philanthropic leader.
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Katharine McCormick planned to attend medical school, but instead married Stanley Robert McCormick, the youngest son of Cyrus McCormick and heir to the International Harvester fortune, on September 15,1904.
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Katharine McCormick had been showing signs of progressively worsening mental illness.
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Katharine McCormick argued that it was a fire hazard for feathered hats to be worn in laboratories.
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In 1909 Katharine McCormick spoke at the first outdoor rally for woman suffrage in Massachusetts.
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Katharine McCormick became vice president and treasurer of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and funded the association's publication the Woman's Journal.
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Katharine McCormick organized much of Carrie Chapman Catt's efforts to gain ratification for the Nineteenth Amendment.
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Katharine McCormick met Sanger in 1917, and later that year joined the Committee of 100, a group of women promoting the legalization of birth control.
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In 1920, after the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, Katharine McCormick became the vice president of the League of Women Voters.
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Katharine McCormick smuggled more than 1,000 diaphragms from Europe to New York City to Sanger's Clinical Research Bureau.
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Katharine McCormick scheduled meetings with major European diaphragm manufacturers in cities such as Rome and Paris, and used her language skills and biology background to pose as a French or German scientist and place large orders for the devices.
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Katharine McCormick smuggled them past US customs agents in New York, having successfully disguised them as the spoils of extravagant European shopping sprees for high-end fashions.
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Katharine McCormick made these trips every summer from 1922 to 1925, retiring only after the 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake forced her to redirect her attention to rebuilding her husband's estate and devote her energy to helping direct his care.
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In 1927, Katharine McCormick hosted a reception of delegates attending the 1927 World Population Conference at her home in Geneva.
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In that year Katharine McCormick turned to the science of endocrinology to aid her husband, believing that a defective adrenal gland caused his schizophrenia.
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Katharine McCormick created a research center for the care of the mentally ill at Worcester State Hospital.
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In 1953 Katharine McCormick met Gregory Goodwin Pincus through Margaret Sanger.
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In sum, Katharine McCormick had provided $2 million of her own money for the development of the oral contraceptive pill.
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Katharine McCormick was an avid supporter of the arts, particularly to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art where she was one of the Museum's founding members, vice president and donor of the Stanley Katharine McCormick Gallery in 1942.
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Katharine McCormick died on December 28,1967, in Boston, Massachusetts, aged 92.
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Katharine McCormick's will provided $5 million to the Stanford University School of Medicine to support female physicians, $5 million to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which funded the Katharine Dexter McCormick Library in Manhattan, New York City, and $1 million to the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology.
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Katharine McCormick was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1998.
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Katharine McCormick was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 2000.