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"How would i Live without Loulie?" Mary and Louisa Poppenheim, Activist Sisters in Turn-of-the-Century South Carolina

Northeastern Illinois University

This article explores the importance of family support in enabling some southern white women to take on more activist, public roles in the early twentieth century. Mary and Louisa Poppenheim, educated sisters from in Charleston, South Carolina, were well positioned to take the lead in women's clubs and other organizations. Graduates of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, they helped redefine "the new southern woman" to mean an educated woman who was active in public roles while retaining her elite social position. They drew strength to do so from the support of their parents, especially their mother, and from each other. The relationship they had as sisters—Mary and Louisa never married and lived in their family home together their entire lives—was perhaps most crucial to sustaining decades of service as clubwomen and social reformers.

Key Words: southern women • single women • women's clubs

Journal of Family History, Vol. 28, No. 4, 561-577 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/0363199003256926


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