Very traditional, she was an advocate for women’s education, their right to travel and property ownership and even hired women writers and editors, yet she opposed suffrage believing that voting would detract women from their influence in the family. Outside of a few Pennsyvania Germans, most mid-19th-century Americans found Christmas trees an oddity and many considered it a ‘pagan’ symbol until Hale published an 1846 etching of the young monarch decorating a small tree with her husband. Sarah Josepha Hale wasn’t the only female powerhouse in women’s magazines, Louisa Knapp Curtis helped usher in the next generation of female publishers.