Patricia Cohen-"1850’s Advocates of Radical Marriage Reform Brought Back Through Genealogy"

Patricia Cline Cohen will speak at the Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society’s monthly meeting, Saturday, April 15, at the First Presbyterian Church, 21 E. Constance at State Street, 9:30 am to 12:00 pm.    She will discuss the joint careers of Mary Gove Nichols and Thomas L. Nichols, advocates of radical marriage reform in the 1850s; and show how genealogy can revive radicals who were nearly erased from history.   Patricia Cline Cohen, is writing a biography of this unusual couple, who became prominent in the 1850s for their challenge to traditional patriarchal marriage. They claimed State-regulated lifelong monogamy made spouses into prisoners. Marriage needed to be based on egalitarian principles fostered by mutual love, and if love faded, partners should be free to go and to follow their hearts.

Patricia Cline Cohen was a member of UCSB’s History Department from 1976 to 2014, teaching early American History with emphasis on the history of women. She is the author of three books, including another genealogically-inspired work, The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York (1998). Pat has done research for two episodes of "Who Do You Think You Are?" and she appeared in one of them, in 2014, meeting with celebrity guest  Cynthia Nixon in a ghostly decommissioned state penitentiary in   Missouri.   Special Interest Groups meet at 9:30 am for Beginning Genealogy, Civil War Genealogy, Writers' Support Group, German Ancestry, Italian Genealogy, French Canadian Genealogy, Computer Genealogy, DNA, and Jewish Genealogy.  The Society Monthly meeting starts at 10:30 and the featured speaker starts at 11:00am. Come join us. You do not need to be a member to enjoy this wonderful free presentation. A calendar of genealogical events can be found at the Society web site (http://sbgen.org/eventListings.php?nm=216).   END   Media contact: Glenn Avolio, PR Chair, glennavolio@gmail.com  (805) 886-5438