From aviation to entertainment, Massachusetts women have breached many gender boundaries.
> 1847 — Year Lucy Stone of West Brookfield graduates from Oberlin, the first Massachusetts woman to receive a college degree
> 1848 — Nantucket's Maria Mitchell becomes the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a year after discovering "Miss Mitchell's Comet," which made her famous and helped her become the first professional female astronomer
> 1937 — Jennie Loitman Barron, born and bred in Boston, is named associate justice of the Boston Municipal Court, becoming the first full-time female judge in Massachusetts
> 2003 — Margaret H. Marshall, first female chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, pens the pioneering decision allowing same-sex marriage
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> 39 — Number of works in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) by Phillis Wheatley, a Boston slave and the first published African-American poet
> 60 — Age of Oxford's Clara Barton when she founded the American Red Cross in 1881; she spent 23 years as its president
> $1 — Face value of the Susan B. Anthony coin issued in 1979, making the Adams-born suffragette the first woman featured on a US coin
> 20 hours & 40 minutes — Time it took Medford resident Amelia Earhart (as logkeeper) and two pilots to cross the Atlantic in 1928, making her the first woman to fly across the ocean; her solo crossing came in 1932
> 16 — Number of American finance companies represented on the Financial Services Forum, of which Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson (of Milton) is the first and only female board member
QUOTABLE:
"I can't tell you how much pleasure it brings me when some . . . young woman comes up to me and tells me of her achievements. That's my legacy." — Boston-born Barbara Walters, who in 1976 became the first female co-anchor of a major network news show
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Sources: University of South Carolina; American Red Cross; Financial Services Forum; Biography.com; Today.com; Marie Claire; Susan B. Anthony House; AmeliaEarhart.com; Boston Women's Heritage Trail; National Immigrant Justice Center; Poetry Foundation; American Academy of Arts and Sciences