Women Who Made History

Katharine Berry Richardson (ca. 1858-1933) and Alice Berry Graham (1850-1913) were the founders of Children’s Mercy Hospital. The two sisters became doctors at a time when it was rare for women to do so. With encouragement from their father and support from each other, Alice became a dentist while Katharine pursued a doctor of medicine degree. In the mid-1890s, the sisters moved to Kansas City to set up a practice. Their passion for helping the ill and unfortunate inspired them to establish a free children’s hospital in 1897, a time when poor children had very few options for medical treatment. As their reputation for helping people grew, so did their practice. In 1904, they secured funding to build a new hospital named Children’s Mercy. Today, the institution is recognized as one of the best children’s hospitals in the country.

Annie Ridenbaugh Bird (1856-1937) served as president of Emery, Bird, Thayer & Co. from 1920 to 1937. After their marriage in 1880, Annie’s husband, Joseph T. Bird, became an original partner of the downtown Kansas City retailer. Annie was always knowledgeable about her husband’s work and was named president of the company after his death. She was the first woman in Kansas City to assume such a prominent role in a large commercial enterprise, and she successfully navigated this responsibility until her death in 1937. Annie’s contributions to Kansas City extended to philanthropic pursuits, including donating land to what would become Children's Mercy Hospital.

Esther Swirk Brown (1917-1970) was a civil rights activist best known for leading efforts in the desegregation case Webb v. Kansas. A native of Kansas City, Esther attended Paseo High School and later moved to Merriam, Kansas, where she discovered the appalling conditions of the local black school. Despite receiving numerous threats, she continued to fight injustice and was a vocal supporter of the landmark Brown v. Board decision to mandate the desegregation of schools. Esther continued to speak out against discrimination, was involved with local Jewish organizations, and instituted the Panel of American Women.

Sarah Chandler Coates (1829-1897) was a suffragette, abolitionist, and progressive social leader known as the “Queen of Quality Hill.” She moved from Pennsylvania to Kansas City in 1856, where she settled with her husband, Kersey Coates. Together, they worked to develop and enrich the city. Sarah ran charities out of their home, promoted the arts and sciences, and supported anti-slavery organizations amid border warfare. A friend of Susan B. Anthony, Sarah also led the local Women’s Suffrage Club and founded the ’81 Club, a women’s group still in existence today.

Tatiana Dokoudovska (1921-2005) was a professional dancer, teacher, and founder of what would become the Kansas City Ballet. Born and raised in France by Russian parents, Tatiana trained in Paris and danced for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. In 1939, she moved to the United States to join the American Ballet Theatre. After leaving New York for a role at Starlight Theatre, Tatiana was invited to create a dance program at the University of Kansas City’s Conservatory of Music. Her work at the Conservatory and with the Kansas City Ballet, which she founded in 1957, attracted a variety of dancers and cultivated an audience for ballet in Kansas City.

Edna Marie Dunn (1893-1983) was a fashion designer, illustrator and educator who helped shape the garment industry in Kansas City. Perhaps best known for her work as fashion illustrator for The Kansas City Star, Edna also founded her own fashion school in 1937, where she taught everything from sketching to garment construction. Her unique illustrations for The Star attracted fashion fans for decades until her retirement in 1965. Harzfeld’s, Rothschild’s, and Emery, Bird, Thayer & Co. were a few of the popular retailers that used her artwork in their advertisements.

Nelle Nichols Peters (1884–1974) was an architect who designed nearly 1,000 buildings in Kansas City, including apartments, hotels, houses, churches, and factories. When she started her own practice in 1909, she was one of the few female architects in the United States. During the 1920s, Nelle helped to shape the style of Kansas City buildings, prioritizing comfort and function and popularizing the concept of apartment units arranged around a central courtyard. Many of the structures she designed during her 60-year career were nominated for historic designation, including the Ambassador Hotel, the Country Club Plaza Poets District apartments, and the McConahay Building where Walt Disney’s Laugh-O-Gram Films was once located.

Carrie Westlake Whitney (d. 1934) was the founding librarian of the Kansas City Public Library. Appointed head librarian in 1881, she advocated for children’s literacy, abolished user fees, and oversaw the expansion of the Library’s collection from roughly 1,000 to 100,000 volumes. In 1901, she was elected president of the Missouri Library Association. Carrie remained head librarian until 1910. She also penned the three-volume work Kansas City, Missouri: The History and Its People 1808-1908, the most comprehensive history of Kansas City up to that time.

Josephine Silone Yates (ca. 1859-1912) was a renowned teacher, writer, and outspoken advocate for racial equality. A native of New York, she moved to Jefferson City, Missouri, to teach at the Lincoln Institute. Josephine later married and moved to Kansas City, where she became active in the women’s club movement and taught at Lincoln High School. In 1893, she co-founded the Kansas City Women’s League, which eventually merged with the National Association of Colored Women. Josephine used her platform as the NACW’s president to uplift her fellow women, and she published articles on a variety of topics ranging from economics to Russian literature.