Ernestine Potovsky Rose

Born in Piotrków, Russian Poland, into a rabbinic family, Ernestine Potovsky Rose was much better educated than most girls of her time. Her discontent with the legal subjugation of women to men motivated her to leave home at age seventeen. Living briefly in Berlin and Paris before going to England, Potovsky joined a circle of enlightened, reform-minded people who included William Rose, whom she married in 1836. The couple immigrated to New York, where she became deeply involved in the movements for women’s rights, suffrage, the abolition of slavery, and temperance.