Dorothy Hamilton Brush

Dorothy Hamilton Brush (1894–1968) was a birth control advocate, women's rights advocate, and author. She worked with Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement and co-wrote (using her maiden name Dorothy Adams Hamilton) with Walter S. Hayward, The American People: A Popular History of the United States, 1865-1941 (1943) and Your Land and My Land: The American People from Lincoln to Roosevelt (1943). Brush also wrote travel articles for the magazine World Traveller and a few children's plays for the Samuel French Company, which were published in the late 1920s.

Dorothy Hamilton Brush was born on March 14, 1894 to Walter James Hamilton, a lawyer, and Mary Jane Adams. She had two sisters, Gladys and Margaret, the latter of whom went on to become an actress most famous for portraying the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz movie. They grew up in Cleveland and Brush went to school at the Hathaway Brown School. She attended Smith College where she was very active, serving as a delegate to the YWCA Silver Bay Camp in New York, as a house president, and as a Student Adviser. She also participated in a number of clubs and societies, including the Alpha Society, Il Tricolore, Blue Pencil, and the Debating Union. She wrote short stories and other works and served on the editing staff for a variety of college publications such as the Monthly Board, the Weekly Board, and the Class Book Board. During her junior year Brush was the class historian. She wrote the "History of Junior Year" for her class in the 1917 yearbook, as well as the words for the Ivy Song and for "Alma Mater." She graduated from Smith College in 1917.

In 1917 Brush married her first husband, Charles Francis Brush, Jr., son of Charles Brush, the creator of a new arc lamp and lighting system and founder of Brush Electric, which later merged with two other companies to become General Electric. While Charles Brush, Jr. was serving in the Ordinance Officers' Reserve Corp of the Army as a first lieutenant from 1917 to 1919, Dorothy worked for various charities in Washington, D.C., and then in Sheffield, Alabama. In 1919 Charles and Dorothy embarked on a round-the-world trip that included a stop in Honolulu, Hawaii, and then returned to the United States to settle in the Cleveland, Ohio area where Charles established the Brush Research Laboratory. Their first child, Jane, was born in 1920 and their second child, Charles III, was born in 1923. Beginning in 1922 Brush volunteered for the Junior League in the Cleveland area. Her work in a prenatal clinic led to her increased awareness, and advocacy, of women's health issues and birth control. Along with several friends and supporters, Brush played a large part in the establishment of the Maternal Health Association in 1928, the precursor to Planned Parenthood of Cleveland established in 1966.

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