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Penelope Braithwaite

Penelope Braithwaite (born 1882) was an American women's rights activist and member of the prominent Braithwaite family of Louisiana during the late 19th century.

Biography[]

Penelope Braithwaite was born at Braithwaite Manor in Beauregard Parish, Louisiana in 1882, the niece of family matriarch Catherine Braithwaite. She was raised in a conservative planting family which was engaged in a long-running feud with the Gray family of Caliga Hall, but she fell in love with the young Beau Gray, carrying on a secret correspondence during the 1890s; her family planned to send her to Ohio to marry her wealthy uncle. Around the same time, she rebelled against her family by becoming involved in the women's rights movement, and she took part in Olive Calhoon's protest rallies in Rhodes. She was protected by Beau's associate Arthur Morgan, who had served as a courier between the two, but she was later locked up by her family, who killed Calhoon to disrupt the women's suffrage movement. Morgan helped her escape and brought her to meet Beau at the train station, where he prevented Penelope's cousins from taking her back. Morgan himself drove the train to Riggs Station, from which Beau and Penelope took a stagecoach to Massachusetts and eloped, settling in Boston. There, Braithwaite was able to continue her feminist activism without as much resistance as in the Old South.

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