The Life and Legacy of Emma Molloy: A Trailblazer in Journalism and Feminism

Who was Emma Molloy? Journalist. Editor. Suffragette. Reformist. She did not play the role of the traditional woman in the background.

Emma Molloy. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Early Life and Background

Emma Molloy was born on July 17, 1839 as Emily Barrett to Harriet (Newton) and William Lovell Barrett in South Bend, Indiana. Indiana had achieved statehood in 1816, and was still considered a younger state. Only nine years before slavery had been outlawed, but racism, sexism still existed. Her father was a watchmaker. Her mother helped the father in his store as well as “taught the ‘three R’s’ to children of the village on weekdays, as well as teaching moral lessons on the Sabbath.” Molloy was an only child and her mother died when she was very young, before her second birthday. Much of what she would come to learn about her mother would later come from letters saved. Her father traveled for work leaving Molloy to grow up in boarding houses and with neighbors. I can imagine it would be a lonely childhood, without having close family or mother. It was during this time she started developing an interest in writing, which would later develop her career. Ben before her major work in journalism and editing she would write articles for smaller South Bend newspapers.

Her first marriage was a tragic one, although it guided her activism later in life. She would become improved in the temperance movement, the suffrage movement, including becoming a leader in the Temperance and Woman’s Suffrage Movements. She married Louis A. Pradt, from Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He was a printer by trade, but unfortunately an alcoholic. They had two children who did not survive into childhood. Fed up with her husband and unhappy she divorced Pradt and moved back to Indiana. She also became interested as an evangelist.

Second Marriage & Women in Journalism

Her second marriage to Edward Molloy was both more successful, and much more joyful. They married in 1876. He was a business partner, supporting her writing aspirations. Together they would edit the South Bend National Union.

There have been many famous women in the newspaper industry. Some famous ones include Ethel Payne, Ida B. Well, and of course Nellie Bly. Women often worked in journalism as a family job, even working after the deaths of fathers or husbands. The first woman publisher was Elizabeth Timothy, who lived in the early 1700s and ran the South Carolina Gazette in 1739. Emma Molloy would become the first woman editor in Indiana.

In the case of Emma Molloy, together with her husband, they moved to Elkhart, Indiana in 1872 and founded the newspaper Elkhart Observer. Her interest in the equality of women bled into her work as a journalist. “Let a woman educated as a reporter, walk beside the male reporter, and she will see twice as much in a walk down the street as he will.”

Advocacy for Women's Rights and Other Reform

In her articles within Elkhart Observer discusses the rights of women, and why suffrage matters. One article published on April 30, 1873 discusses how some men believed that giving women more rights such as the rights to vote would change the nature of women, and detract from there looks—which we all know is the most important thing for women at that time to worry about. Molloy stated in her article, “Commend us to a man who expresses his admiration for Susan Anthony behind her grim spectacles, marshaling the working women of New York, or Anna Dickinson riding on an engine through an Iowa storm to deliver a lecture, even though they will not bear comparison with the fashionable woman….or a a woman like Mrs. A. T. Stewart, snarling in her marble palace.”

But it wasn’t just women’s suffrage that Molloy focused on. In the late 1800s she focused on the conditions in Indiana prisons, wanting better conditions for the inmates. The livability of half-way houses were also on her reform list.

She would later divorce her second husband, but continue to live her life on the move giving lectures and working on her writing and editing. She moved to Illinois in 1882, then later to Washington, Kansas where she would retire from active writing. She would focus on working with different Methodist churches. The rest of her life would remain a quiet one, marrying for a third time although she is still well-known by her second married name because of all the work she did under it.

Recognitions

A notice of her death ran in the South Bend Tribune on May 15, 1907. It states that “Mrs. Barrett was in good health….and was expecting to the appointed by a conference which will meet in August evangelist for the Nevada mission, and was anticipating the possibility of doing much good work in the cause of temperance and religious progress.” She was remembered in another collection of women as “a faithful and successful temperance worker.”

She would later get caught up in a trial involving George Graham and his step-daugher Cora in 1886. The details of the trial is better read in the book by Larry E. Wood, published by Kent State University Press, Bigamy & Bloodshed: The Scandal of Emma Molloy and the Murder of Sarah Graham.

Reflection

Molloy’s story is important in order to understand the fight that women went through for equality. While Molloy did not get to witness the 19th Amendment she still played a crucial role in its change. While she was not the only female to make a mark in the publishing industry or work for the suffrage movement, she is one that is not as widely recognized. Nellie Bly made her name doing a dangerous undercover expose on the mental institutions of the time.

It’s important to learn the stories of these women who are often lost among the others who broke barriers in a louder, more public way. Molloy made history in Indiana and contributed to the steps forward that women would continue to take in history.

To read more about Emma Molloy, follow one of the links in the article or read Emma Speaks Out. Life and Writings of Emma Molloy (1839-1907) by Martha M. Pickrell, or South Bend: Crossroads of Commerce by John Palmer. The Indiana Historical Society also has a vast collection of papers in the Emma Barrett Molloy Collection that give a biographical sketch of her life.