Cynthia Leonard

Who was Cynthia Leonard?

Cynthia Leonard was a suffragist, aid worker and writer, notable for her pioneering efforts toward social reform in the 19th Century. Born Cynthia Hicks Van Name, in Buffalo, New York, she married Charles E. Leonard in 1852. They had eight children, the most famous of whom was the entertainer Helen Louise Leonard.

While a young woman in Buffalo, Leonard became the first woman to stand behind a counter as a salesperson and later became a member of Buffalo's first Woman's Social and Literary Club. Four years after her marriage, in 1856, the couple moved from Detroit, Michigan to Clinton, Iowa, where Charles Leonard founded the Clinton Herald, that community's newspaper, still in existence today. Cynthia was on the executive committee of the Soldiers' Relief Association which established the first soldiers' home in the State of Iowa, attending to the housing needs of Union soldiers recently released from the 18th Regimental Hospital, then quartered in Clinton.

In 1863, Charles Leonard sold the Herald, and the couple moved to Chicago. There Cynthia organized a fair to benefit the Freedman's Aid Society, helped found the Chicago branch of Sorosis and was its editor for a time, and was a member of the Chicago Philosophical Society. In 1869, she led the spiritualist faction of the women's suffrage movement at the Music Hall, one of the first women's suffrage meetings ever held in Chicago. Susan B. Anthony was a frequent visitor in the Leonard home.