Sarah Grimké
Angelina Grimké
| 1837 | Martin Van Buren becomes President |
| 1839 | Clara Barton begins teaching school in North Oxford and continues teaching for the next 11 years; Mount Holyoke, first college for women, opens |
Clara Barton as a schoolteacher
| 1841 | William Henry Harrison becomes President, dies April 4 and is succeeded by John Tyler |
| 1842 | Use of anesthetics begins in U.S. |
| 1844 | First telegraphic message sent by S.F.B. Morse |
| 1845 | James K. Polk becomes President; Margaret Fuller publishes Woman in the Nineteenth Century; Frederick Douglass publishes Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave |
| 1846 | Mexican War begins, ends in 1848 |
| 1847 | American Medical Association is founded |
| 1848 | First Women’s Rights Convention is held in Seneca Falls, New York |
| 1849 | Zachary Taylor becomes President, dies July 9, 1850, and is succeeded by Millard Fillmore; Elizabeth Blackwell becomes first woman to receive M.D. degree |
| 1850 | Clara Barton plans to enter Clinton Liberal Institute, Clinton, New York; Harriet Tubman begins helping slaves escape via Underground Railway |
Harriet Tubman