Women's History Footenotes

Re: Most Willing to Give the Girls a Chance, Queen Margaret of Scotland
"In 1288, Queen Margaret took this honor when, by unverifiable tradition, she decreed that any man must marry the woman who proposed to him during leap year unless he could prove he was already betrothed. If he didn't and couldn't, he was fined 100 pounds--asum which must have guaranteed lots of marriages. France and several Italian cities followed the Queen's lead and enacted similar laws.

NB: The truth must be told: the generous Queen Margaret was only five years old when the decree was made. Although she was already betrothed to the future Edward II of England, it seems unlikely that she personally was concerned about marriage proposals. Perhaps one of her regents had an unmarried daughter of a certain age."

Maya Angelou
Greatness Through Literature

Internationally respected poet, writer and educator, Maya Angelou has given us such best-selling titles as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin' and Swingin' and The Heart of a Woman. Multi-talented, she produced and starred in the great play Cabaret for Freedom and starred in The Blacks. She wrote the original screenplay and musical score for the film Georgia, Georgia and was both author and executive producer of a five-part television miniseries, Three Way Choice.
Miss Angelou's accomplishments have earned her the La Home Journal Woman of the Year award in communication an Matrix Award in the field of books from Women in Communication She received the Golden Eagle Award for her documentary, Americans in the Arts, produced by PBS. She is one of the women admitted into the Director's Guild. In 1974, she was appointed by Gerald Ford to the Bi-Centennial Commission and later by Jimmie Carter to the Commission for International Woman of the Year.
Her personal outreach to improve conditions for women in Third World, primarily in Africa, has helped change the live thousands less privileged. Here is where she gives with all her heart and soul.

Re: Grubbiest Way to Encourage One's Husband in an Enterprise, Isabella, the Infanta
"When her husband, Archduke Albert, was having trouble with Ostnd, which had been taken over by heretics, pious Isabella, the daughter of Phillip II of Spain confidently vowed not to change her clothes until the city was retaken by the forces of the right. She gave no explanation for the relationship she saw between clean linen and lifting a siege. As it turned out, her enthusiasm was misguided. Three years passed before the city was taken, during which time her clothing took on a peculiar beige huge, perhaps similar to ancient wallpaper, a hue which the local folk called Isabella color. Perhaps in the fury of battle her husband never noticed, but, of course, he might not have smelled so great himself."

Re: Women Most Likely to Regret Their Bargain, 147 'Maids for Wives' Taken to Jamestown in 1620 and 1621

"Sir Edwin Sandys suggested that a number of 'maids young and uncorrupt' be sent to Virginia to become wives for tenant farmers. The Virginia Company would pay transport and, when the men married, the company would be repaid with the currency of the times, best leaf tobacco (the going rate some years later was 120 pounds of tobacco for one wife). In a letter from the company to the council at Jamestown, it was noted:

'there hath been especial care hd in the choice of them; for there hath not been any one of them receaved but upon good Commendation...though we are desirous that the mariadge be free according to the law of nature, yett would we not have those maids deceived and married to survants, but only to such freemen or tenants as have means to maintain them...we would have their condition so much bettered as multitudes may be allured thereby to come unto you...'

So much for the betterment: The population rolls of 1625 listed only a few of the 147 maids had yet succumbed to disease or [attacks by Native Americans]'