Victoria Woodhull

Victoria Woodhull was a spiritualist, activist, politician and author who was the first woman to run for the presidency of the United States. Victoria Woodhull was born on September 23, 1838, in Homer, Ohio. In 1870, Woodhull created Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly, a radical publication, in which she expressed her ideas on a variety of activist topics. The journal also published the first English translation of Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto. She ran for the U.S. presidency on the Equal Rights Party ticket in 1872. Woodhull later moved to England and wrote more activist works. She died in England in 1927. At the age of 15, Victoria married Canning Woodhull. The couple divorced in 1864, and Woodhull later reportedly wed Colonel James H. Blood, who introduced her to several reform movements. In 1868, Woodhull and her sister, Tennessee, traveled to New York City, where they met Cornelius Vanderbilt. The wealthy Vanderbilt had recently become a widower, and he appreciated the psychological solace that Victoria Woodhull was able to provide him so much that he set the sisters up in business. The sisters started the first woman-run stock brokerage company. Divorcing James H. Blood in 1876, Woodhull went on to marry a wealthy banker from England, John Biddulph Martin, in 1883. In 1877, Woodhull and her sister moved to England, perhaps to make a fresh start. Victoria Claflin Woodhull Martin died on June 10, 1927, in Bredon's Norton, Worcestershire, England.