Jane Cunningham Croly ("Jennie June") was the first woman in America to write daily for a newspaper and the first person to write and syndicate features for women. A staunch advocate of "everything for the betterment of women," she was the forerunner of today's advice, etiquette, fashion, and consumer columnists.

Cunningham was born 19 December 1829 in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, England, the fourth child of the Rev. Joseph H. and Jane Cunningham. The family moved to the United States in 1841 after being persecuted for her father's efforts to hold classes for working people. They settled first in Poughkeepsie and later near Wappingers Falls,

New York. Jane Cunningham began writing at age seventeen and developed her journalistic skills as a young woman in Worcester County, Massachusetts, where she worked as a housekeeper for her brother, a Unitarian pastor. She and a coworker wrote a "semi-monthly newspaper" and read its contents to...