Helen Hamilton Gardener (1853–1925)

Alice Chenoweth was born in Virginia and studied at the Cincinnati Normal School in Ohio to become a teacher. In 1875, she married Charles S. Smart and moved with him to New York City. She adopted the pseudonym "Helen Hamilton Gardener" for her lectures, articles, books, and other writing, many of them on feminist ideals. Her work An Unofficial Patriot (1894), a fictionalized biography of her father, was adapted for the stage by James A. Herne in 1899 under the new title Griffith Davenport, Circuit Rider. In 1902, after her first husband's death, she married Selden Allen Day and spent five years travelling the world. In 1907, she settled in Washington, D.C., where she was active in the cause of women's right to vote. In the Wilson Administration, she was appointed her to the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the first woman to occupy such a high federal post.