Jane Grey Swisshelm, who opened the Capitol Hill press gallery to women, crusaded for two major reforms in her long newspaper career--abolitionism and woman's rights. A radical on abolitionism but more conservative on woman's rights, Swisshelm argued her case in a series of newspapers that she started and edited. The papers never achieved large circulations, but her editorials were reprinted in some of the more influential journals of the day, including the New York Tribune and the National Era in Washington, D.C.

Jane Grey Cannon was born in Pittsburgh on 6 December 1815 to Thomas and Mary Scott Cannon, who belonged to the Covenanter branch of the Presbyterian Church. The family moved to the nearby village of Wilkinsburg shortly after Jane was born. Thomas Cannon, a merchant, lost most of his money in the panic of 1819 and died of tuberculosis in 1823. Jane had started school at age three and...