Marcia Biederman's Blog

How my relative lost her birthright citizenship by marrying an immigrant. My latest op-ed in the Hartford Courant

Usually I research other people’s families, not my own. However, doodling around one day, I discovered that my great-aunt Libby, born on Manhattan’s Delancey Street in 1898, was later stripped of her birthright citizenship for marrying an immigrant — the guy I called Uncle Fred. Years later, she regained her citizenship by naturalizing. But she would never again be a natural-born citizen in the land of her birth.

Delving further, I discovered that Aunt Libby was hardly alone. The Expatriation Act revoked the birthright citizenship of perhaps hundreds of thousands of US-born American women, insisting that by marrying, they had voluntarily taken on the nationality of their husbands.

A cautionary tale for today? Read my piece here.

As Abortion Bans Lead to Women’s Deaths, Talks & a Podcast Mark the 126th Anniversary of Emma Gill’s Passing

Exactly 126 years after Emma Gills’s remains were found in a Bridgeport, Connecticut, pond — mutilated in an attempt to conceal that she’d died after an illegal abortion — several events took me back to Connecticut to talk about that 1898 discovery.

As a guest speaker at the Hartford Medical Society’s annual meeting, I was honored to share the stage with state Senator Saud Anwar, M.D. I told the 100-plus physicians gathered at the Mark Twain House about Emma Gill’s real-life story, which, sadly, is more relevant than ever now, as abortion bans elsewhere are leading to women’s deaths.

In a moving speech, Senator Anwar spoke of the laws he and other Connecticut legislators have passed to ensure that, if Emma Gill were alive today, she’d get the abortion care she needed. As an author, I was moved to hear him repeatedly invoke Emma’s name. Her name has eroded on the stone above her grave, but it has not been forgotten.

My flyer got a bit wrinkled in all the excitement.

A week after the Hartford event, I presented a slide talk at the Bridgeport Public Library, where I’d done much of my research. The audience was small but appreciative, and I was able to connect with an old high school friend.

The Bridgeport library, where I spent many of the happiest hours of my childhood, also recently released an interview I did a while back for their “Bridgeport Unmasked” podcast. My interviewer, librarian Adam Cleri, has a great radio voice. In another era, he could have been the announcer for an adventure radio series like the Green Hornet. He’d read my book carefully and asked many thought-provoking questions.

You can listen to the podcast (I’m featured on Episode 4) through most podcast platforms or the Bridgeport Public Library website. https://bportlibrary.org/bridgeport-unmasked-podcast/

Talking about Emma Gill on a new international podcast

It was a rare and thought-provoking experience to be interviewed by Gabriella Kelly-Davies for her podcast Biographers in Conversation. Gabriella, an Australian, launched this effort earlier this year to explore the craft of biography and the choices biographers make. She quickly assembled a line-up of guests from around the world. I’m proud to be one of them.

You can listen to the podcast here or on one of many platforms (Apple, Spotify, etc.) that carries Biographers in Conversation.

To describe our wide-ranging conversation, I can’t do better than to post a screenshot of one of the promotional posts for this episode of the podcast:

EMMA GILL reviewed in New York Sun & featured on popular biography podcast

I’m immensely grateful to biographer Carl Rollyson, who reviewed my latest book, The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill: Abortion, Death, and Concealment in Victorian New England, for the New York Sun. Link: https://bit.ly/3ROuvtF

Carl also featured me as his guest on his regular podcast, A Life in Biography, which is carried on Spotify and other popular podcast platforms. You can listen here: https://bit.ly/3W5zb0s

The author of more than 40 books, mainly biographies, and a prolific journalist, Carl Rollyson was one of my first mentors when I joined Biographers International Organization nearly a decade ago. It’s always been my dream to be a guest on his podcast, which has featured some of my favorite writers. To be reviewed by him in the same week was a thrill.

For the full New York Sun review, use the link above. Here’s how the review looks on the site for paid subscribers:

EMMA GILL reviewed in NY Sun & featured on popular biography podcast

I’m immensely grateful to biographer Carl Rollyson, who reviewed my latest book, The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill: Abortion, Death, and Concealment in Victorian New England, for the New York Sun. Link: https://bit.ly/3ROuvtF

Carl also featured me as his guest on his regular podcast, A Life in Biography, which is carried on Spotify and other popular podcast platforms. You can listen here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/carl-rollyson/episodes/Marcia-Biederman-on-her-fascinating-book-about-abortion-in-19th-C–New-England-e2l64ug

The author of more than 40 books, mainly biographies, and a prolific journalist, Carl Rollyson was one of my first mentors when I joined Biographers International Organization nearly a decade ago. It’s always been my dream to be a guest on his podcast, which has featured some of my favorite writers. To be reviewed by him in the same week was a thrill.

For the full New York Sun review, use the link above. Here’s how the review looks on the site for paid subscribers:

A TV spot about EMMA GILL draws crowds to Connecticut book event

A few years ago, who could imagine that a daytime TV show would frankly discuss the subject of abortion? Yet that’s what happened in Hartford, CT, as the wildly popular “Great Day Connecticut” show produced by WFSV-Channel 3 invited me to talk about my latest book, The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill: Abortion, Death, and Concealment in Victorian New England.

You can see the TV segment here.

Scheduled between more typical guests —a psychic and a shopping mall operator — I spoke briefly about my book, stressing that abortion in 1898 Connecticut was widely practiced although strictly illegal. Christina Volpe, curator of the Barnes Museum in Southington, Conn., pointed out that prominent Southington citizens were connected with the disastrous events detailed in my chapters.

Before abortion was safe and legal — as it still is in Connecticut but not in a growing list of states —the “criminal operation,” as it was called, had fatal consequences for one woman in my book and led to severe legal penalties for another. However, as Christina has pointed out, the man who paid for the abortion and his defense attorney went on to bigger and better things, perhaps even benefiting from the widespread publicity surrounding the case.

Two days later, 113 people mobbed my book event in Southington, sponsored by the Barnes Museum, despite nasty weather. There is nothing like the power of TV, especially when supplemented by people at a fine institution like the Barnes and enthusiastic local historians!

Here’s a photo from the book event at Kinsmen Brewing Co. in Milldale, a section of Southington. I was honored to share the stage with local historian and preservationist Liz Campbell Kopec, author of two books about Southington featured in Arcadia Publishing’s “Images of America” series, Southington and Southington: The War Years. Liz included a photo of Emma Gill’s gravestone in one of her books. She also spoke of the abortion case at Barnes Museum cemetery tours, long before I was aware of it. She and her husband, Mark, were my gracious and indefatigable hosts during my time in Southington.

A TV spot on EMMA GILL produces crowds at Connecticut book event

A few years ago, who could imagine that a daytime TV show would frankly discuss the subject of abortion? Yet that’s what happened in Hartford, CT, as the wildly popular “Great Day Connecticut” show produced by WFSV-Channel 3 invited me to talk about my latest book, The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill: Abortion, Death, and Concealment in Victorian New England.

Scheduled between more typical guests —a psychic and a shopping mall operator — I spoke briefly about my book, stressing that abortion in 1898 Connecticut was widely practiced although strictly illegal. Christina Volpe, curator of the Barnes Museum in Southington, Conn., pointed out that prominent Southington citizens were connected with the disastrous events detailed in my chapters.

Before abortion was safe and legal — which, in Connecticut but not many other states, it still is— the “criminal operation,” as it was called, had fatal consequences for one woman in my book and led to severe legal penalties for another. However, as Christina has pointed out, the man who paid for the abortion and his defense attorney went on to bigger and better things, perhaps even benefiting from the widespread publicity surrounding the case.

Two days later, 113 people mobbed my book event in Southington, sponsored by the Barnes Museum, despite nasty weather. There is nothing like the power of TV, especially when supplemented by people at a fine institution like the Barnes and enthusiastic local historians!

Here’s a photo from the book event at Kinsmen Brewing Co. in Milldale, a section of Southington. I was honored to share the stage with local historian and preservationist Liz Campbell Kopec, author of two books about Southington featured in Arcadia Publishing’s “Images of America” series, Southington and Southington: The War Years. Liz included a photo of Emma Gill’s gravestone in one of her books. She also spoke of the abortion case at Barnes Museum cemetery tours, long before I was aware of it. She and her husband, Mark, were my gracious and indefatigable hosts during my time in Southington.

At book talks in Lynn, MA, and New Haven, CT, I retrace abortion history

Smart and inquisitive audience members kept me on my toes as I presented slide talks based on my book, The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill, in two New England cities where illegal abortion flourished in the 1880s and 1890s.

On March 15, I had the pleasure of sitting among the artwork at the Lynn Museum/LynnArts in Massachusetts while showing slides of Lynn in the 1880s, when Henry and Nancy Guilford practiced “the criminal operation,” as the papers called it, at their home and a downtown office.

I particularly loved the audience’s reaction to a slide of residential Lewis Street, where horse-drawn streetcars brought a steady stream of customers to the Guilfords’ home. As historians then and now have written, abortion was criminal in every state, yet it was a social reality, visible in the rapidly declining size of the average American family.

Lewis Street in Lynn, MA, where Henry and Nancy Guilford provided abortions in the 1880s.

Then, on March 20, I spoke at the New Haven Free Public Library in Connecticut.

It was the perfect setting for my slide show, titled “Illegal Abortion in New Haven in the 1890s,” because Nancy Guilford advertised for abortion patients in an edition of the library bulletin printed in 1897:

While avoiding the word “abortion,” Nancy Alice Guilford nonetheless made her meaning clear in this October 1897 ad in the library bulletin. Historians of the era said that even a schoolgirl would have understood the thinly coded language of ads like this.

I couldn’t have asked for more engaged audiences in either New England city. Many thanks to the attendees and to all the staff members who welcomed me. Special thanks to Allison Botelho, reference librarian at the New Haven Free Public Library, and Doneeca Thurston-Chavez, executive director of the Lynn Museum/LynnArts.

My radio interview with Dateline New Haven

I was honored to be interviewed by Paul Bass on New Haven’s WNHH Dateline New Haven show. Decades ago, Paul and I worked together at an alternative news and culture weekly paper called the New Haven Advocate. Knowing his formidable investigative skills, I wasn’t surprised that his questions kept me on my toes.

Before I showed up at the studio, he let me know he’d finished reading The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill and, to my relief, had loved it. As soon as we started talking about the book, the old rapport clicked in. It was a great experience.

The YouTube video is here. You can also skip the visuals (please! — I didn’t know the studio camera was on !) and listen only on various streaming platforms, including Spotify.

A historian and sister author reviews EMMA GILL

I’m proud to have gotten this review from Theresa Kaminski, a historian and sister writer, who I knew only through Zoom until a few weeks ago when we met in NYC. The author of several books, including Dr. Mary Walker’s Civil War and Queen of the West: The Life and Times of Dale Evans, Theresa provided a blurb (endorsement) for my book jacket and has now done this:

A Review of The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill by Marcia Biederman