Victoria Claflin
| Victoria Woodhull | |
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Equal Rights candidate for President of the United States |
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Election date 1872 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
Victoria California Claflin September 23, 1838 Homer, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | June 9, 1927 (aged 88) Bredon's Norton, Worcestershire, England |
| Resting place | Cremated remains scattered at sea from Newhaven, Sussex, England |
| Nationality | American |
| Political party | Equal Rights |
| Spouse(s) | Canning Woodhull (m. 1853; div. 18??) Colonel James Blood (m. 1865; div. 1876) John Biddulph Martin (m. 1883; his death 1901) |
| Children | Byron Woodhull Zula Maude Woodhull |
| Parents | Reuben Buckman Claflin Roxanna Hummel Claflin |
| Relatives |
Tennessee Claflin (sister) See Claflin family |
| Education | No formal education |
| Occupation | Suffragist, politician, feminist, writer. |
| Known for | Politics, women's rights, women's suffrage, feminism, civil rights, anti-slavery, , journalism, free love |
| Signature |  |
| Mrs. President | |
 Get to Know The First Woman Who Ever Ran for President, 7:57, The Takeaway, WNYC
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Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927) was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement.
In 1872, Woodhull ran for President of the United States. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for President of the United States, some have questioned that priority given issues with the legality of her run. They disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because she was younger than the constitutionally mandated age of 35. However, election coverage by contemporary newspapers does not suggest age was a significant issue. The presidential inauguration was in March 1873. Woodhull's 35th birthday was in September 1873.
An activist for women's rights and labor reforms, Woodhull was also an advocate of being able to freely love whom you choose, with the nobility of free love, by which she meant the freedom to marry, divorce, and bear children without government interference.
Woodhull twice went from rags to riches, her first fortune being made on the road as a magnetic healer before she joined the spiritualist movement in the 1870s. While authorship of many of her articles is disputed (many of her speeches on these topics were collaborations between Woodhull, her backers, and her second husband, Colonel James Blood), her role as a representative of these movements was powerful. Together with her sister, Tennessee Claflin, she was the first woman to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street; they were among the first women to found a newspaper in the United States, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, which began publication in 1870.
Woodhull was politically active in the early 1870s, when she was nominated as the first woman candidate for the United States presidency. Woodhull was the candidate in 1872 from the Equal Rights Party, supporting women's suffrage and equal rights; her running mate was abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass. Her arrest on obscenity charges a few days before the election, for publishing an account of the alleged adulterous affair between the prominent minister Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton, added to the sensational coverage of her candidacy.
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Wikipedia