From TheStreet, February 5, 2021:
Victoria California Claflin, later Victoria Woodhull, hailed from the rural frontier town of Homer, Ohio. She came from a physically abusive home and married, divorced, and remarried young.
By 1868, she and her family had moved to New York City, where Victoria and her sister, Tennie, became spiritual advisors for railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Backed by Vanderbilt, Victoria and Tenny opened Woodhull, Claflin & Company in 1870 on 44 Broad Street.
Newspapers such as the New York Herald hailed Woodhull and Claflin as "the Queens of Finance" and "the Bewitching Brokers."
Yet, Woodhull made a fortune on the New York Stock Exchange by advising clients like Vanderbilt and Jay Cooke.
Woodhull supported legalized prostitution and the idea that women should have the choice to leave unbearable marriages.
Woodhull and Claflin used profits to start a newspaper called, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly.
It advocated controversial opinions on sex education, free love, women's suffrage, short skirts, spiritualism, and vegetarianism....
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For a deeper dive, Vanessa at Messy Nessy Chic has on offer:
But Where are the Women of Wall Street?
January 29, 2021:
When women took over the New York Stock Exchange in 1944
If you logged onto the internet this week, you probably heard about the GameStop saga involving a group of amateur investors that took on Wall Street by pushing the stock of a few underdog companies (like GameStop) to become the most highly traded assets in the United States. And if like me, your grasp on the stock exchange is perhaps limited to films like The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short, you’ve probably had a few questions. But as I watched the horde of ‘boys club’ day traders lined up by news networks to weigh in on the democratisation of financial trading, I had another question: Where are the women?! Do we still have to ask where we are with gender equity on Wall Street? Let’s take stock…
Decades before they had the vote, when women were still shut out of stockbroking on venues like the New York Stock Exchange (among many other things), they took it upon themselves to launch their own Stock Exchange. In 1870, 32 year-old Victoria Woodhull from Ohio became the first female stockbroker along with her younger sister, Tennessee Claflin, when they opened a brokerage firm on Wall Street. Born into an impoverished family, she had already risen from rags to riches by joining the Spiritualist movement to become a sought-after medium; her apparent skills most notably admired by Cornelius Vanderbilt. But Victoria made an even greater fortune on the New York Stock Exchange by advising the business magnate financially, and on one occasion, he followed her advice to sell his shares short for 150 cents per stock, earning him millions on the deal.
The first women to launch their own Stock Exchange, [sic] Woodhull, Claflin & Company
To the shock of Wall Street brokers, the young sisters had made their way into the artery of America’s growing place on the international financial stage, a feat which the New York Sun described at the time as “Petticoats Among the Bovine and Ursine Animals.”....
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