WIDOWS OF THE U.S. MINT

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V25 2022 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 25, Number 23, June 5, 2022, Article 11

Jerome Nashorn submitted this piece with more background on the early women of the U.S. Mint. Thank you! -Editor

In response to Len Augsberger's thoughts regarding the marriage bar at the Mint during the 19th century, I looked at records for twenty three women who worked at the San Francisco Mint at the start of the 1880s. I got the names from both the Official Register of the U.S. for 1881 and from the 1880 Census, as made available on Heritage Quest. According to the Register, sixty three women worked at the San Francisco Mint in 1881, and thirty seven were listed with the title Mrs. For my sample, I selected fifteen names from the thirty seven making sure to include some names where the Official Register only provided their first and middle initials. If there was bias in my selection procedure, it was a reluctance to include women with very common surnames.

I then developed a second list by going into the 1880 Census using Heritage Quest to run a search for women who lived in San Francisco and adjacent counties in 1880 whose records included the word Mint as a keyword. My query resulted in fifty seven hits. However, when I looked at the transcribed summary records, I found a large number of the women (twenty two) had no connection with the Mint but lived on a street named Mint Avenue. Also, about seventeen of the women who actually worked at the Mint were described as single so they were eliminated as well. Eight of the remaining women drawn from the Census were also in the sample drawn from the Official Register so the final sample consisted of twenty three women. I then checked the twenty three names against early 1880s San Francisco City Directories, particularly Langley's 1882 San Francisco Directory (readily available on the Internet Archive) and I examined the scanned images of their 1880 Census records if I could locate them.

I concluded that twenty of the twenty three women were widowed. These women were described that way in the Census and/or were described as widows in the Directory. In a couple of cases, when I couldn't find a woman in the Census and her directory entry did not describe her as a widow, I concluded a women was widowed if she had a Directory entry describing her simply as Mrs. AND the entry did not include an entry for a male with the same surname living at the same address, other than in one or two cases an adult son.

Three women in the sample appear to have been married when they were initially hired by the Mint:

Eunice Hughes - Hughes was in the Census sample and identified as a Mint employee. She was described as married and her household included her husband Samuel, who was a mine owner. She was listed as an adjuster in the 1879 and 1880 directories, However, the only Samuel Hughes in the Directory was a seaman who lived at a different address. In the 1881 Directory, Eunice was listed as a widow. She had apparently left the Mint by 1883 as she was not listed as an adjuster in the 1883 edition of the Official Register.

Sarah Hoffman - The 1880 Census shows Sarah Hoffman at the Mint while her husband William worked as a shipping clerk. The 1879 Directory shows her at the Mint, while it includes a listing for a William Hoffman living at the same address. The same is true for the 1881 Directory but is no longer the case by 1882. Mrs. Hoffman was among the adjusters let go in the Fall of 1885 when the Mint fired a group of employees soon after the Democrats regained control of Federal patronage with Grover Cleveland's inauguration as President (see Daily Alta California for October 1, 1885)..

Cornelia Bowman - In the 1880 Census, Bowman was married to James Bowman, a clerk with the railroad, but was listed as keeping house, rather than working at the Mint. However, she was listed as a mint adjuster in the 1880 Directory and in the 1881 Directory, there was an entry for a James Bowman at the same address as hers who worked for the railroad. However, she also had an adult son named James. The 1882 Directory did not include an entry for a James Bowman at Mrs. Bowman's address. Like Mrs. Hoffman, Mrs. Bowman was among the employees removed by the Mint's new management in 1885.

Interestingly, all three of these women's husbands were in their 60s when they were hired so perhaps when the wives were hired, their husbands were in poor health and unable to work or no longer able to earn a decent living even if they still were working. Or perhaps, the directory listings were carryovers from earlier editions.

In sum, it is very likely that at least twenty of the twenty three women in the sample were widows when they worked at the Mint. Only three women may have been married when they were hired as adjusters. However, their husbands didn't show up in directories for very long after 1880, Thus, even if there were a few exceptions to the bar on married women, they do not appear to be common. This is consistent with the findings presented by historian Cindy Aron in her study of Federal clerical workers of both genders in the period from about 1865 to 1900 (Ladies and Gentlemen of the Civil Service, Oxford University Press, 1987).

Aron shows how agency leaders felt Federal jobs should generally be reserved for those who really needed them and that did not include women who had a husband to support them. She concludes, "The government did not, however, specifically exclude married women from its work force. Instead, the judgment, or whim, of a particular department head or bureau chief determined whether or not a married woman could be hired." Aron also notes how in many Federal offices married women were the first employees let go when staff reductions were needed and that single woman might face removal if and when they married (see pages 51-52). Thus, it's safe to say there were exceptions to the marriage bar at the San Francisco Mint in the early 1880s, but they were uncommon and it may be that even in those cases, the rationale for the marriage bar my have applied in that the three married women may have needed a job to support themselves.