Caroline Nichols Churchill (December 23, 1833 – 1926) was a Canadian-born writer and newspaper editor in the United States, best known as the editor of the Queen Bee, a feminist publication prominent during the Colorado Suffrage movement. As a travel writer and editor, Churchill aimed to promote female independence in the post Civil War West, culminating ultimately in the right to vote in the state of Colorado. Her publications Over the Purple Hills, Over the Evergreen Hills, and Little Sheaves detailed the growth of California as well as her experiences in Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Indian Territory and later Colorado. In 1988, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.
Early life
Caroline (nickname, "Kate") Maria Nichols was born in 1833 in Pickering, Ontario, located about 40 miles from Toronto. Not much is known about her immediate family apart from the fact that her parents were Americans. Her father was a prosperous tradesman who was nearly 50 at the time of her birth. Her formal schooling was very limited, amounting to several months to one year at most. She was mainly a self-taught learner who spent the long winters reading or sewing and mending for families in the nearby area.
Move to Minnesota (1857-62) In the early 1850s, she married a man she referred to only as "Mr. Churchill". In 1857, Churchill and her young family moved to Minnesota for what she called the five longest years of her life. Outside St. Cloud, she lived an isolated pioneer life, experiencing Indian raids and warfare. Once while teaching in a rural school, she and others took shelter from an Indian attack. During the long months, she became an avid reader of the editor and Washington Correspondent Jane Grey Swisshelm, whom she later credited in The Queen Bee for opening her eyes to "the wrongs in which women suffer from the absolute power of the ruling class".
Mr. Churchill died in 1862, leaving her in poor health with a young daughter. In her 1909 autobiography, Active Footsteps, she refers to her coughing fits and weak lungs; some commenters on her life have taken this to mean she had tuberculosis, but it may have been another condition such as allergies. She believed, as many physicians did at the time, that "outdoor life was the only means in which even fair health could be obtained," and she and her daughter moved west to California to seek a milder climate. Churchill most certainly used her allergies to leave a traditional and rigid domestic setting in order to lead a life outside of traditional means.
Travel writing (1869-79) In 1869, Churchill left her daughter with her sister and moved to California to seek a profession as a travel writer and a milder climate that might relieve her health problems. Her writings from this period covered travels in Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Indian Territory, and especially California. For Churchill, this profession allowed her to make a cultural contribution to a mainly male-dominated literary world.
Published books
Before her work as an editor, Churchill was known as a travel writer and roving essayist. Her published works, Little Sheeves (1874) and Over the Purple Hills, or Sketches from Travel in California (1883) give illustrations of her experiences travel as an unaccompanied woman in the post-Civil War West.
The publication of Little Sheeves and Over the Purple Hills marked the emergence of Churchill as a public persona and literary figure, an area usually restricted to women. Her works and opinions broadened the public opinion of social ideas of what women of a certain social class could accomplish. As one of the first female travelers, she pioneered and vocalized freedoms for women before her work on legal enfranchisement began.
Her final published book was her autobiography, Active Footsteps, which detailed her life in Minnesota, her travels in the west, and her work in Colorado. Not much is known about her personal life, other than what is divulged in Active Footsteps. '