Remarkable Ohio

Counties

Below is a complete listing of all Ohio Historical Markers. To find a detailed marker listing including text, photographs, and locations, click on a county below. Our listing is updated by the markers program as new markers are installed and older markers are reported damaged or missing.

6-4 Betsey Mix Cowles (1810-1876)

Side A: Betsey Mix Cowles dedicated her life to fighting slavery and improving the status of women. Her desire for a formal education led her to Oberlin College, where she completed two years of study in 1840. An advocate of immediate abolition, Cowles lectured on the moral depravity of slavery, opened her home, at this site, to fugitive slaves. Opposed to expansion of slavery into the West, Cowles protested the Mexican War. Cowles served as president of Ohio’s first women’s rights convention (in Salem) in 1850, and the following year wrote a treatise on equal pay for working urban women. She served as the first dean of women at Grand River Institute, and later became one of the first women public school superintendents in Ohio.
Side B: Same
Sponsors: The Ohio Bicentennial Commission, The International Paper Company Foundation, and The Ohio Historical Society
Address: 1101 OH 45 S, 
Austinburg, 
OH, 
44010
Location: Cowles House
Latitude: 41.7539100
Longitude: -80.8547910