Petticoats and Pinstripes: Women and Finance in Victorian America

The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum will present a talk by independent historian Sheri Caplan titled, Petticoats and Pinstripes: Women and Finance in Victorian America. Light refreshments will be offered following the presentation.

Lecture Committee Chair Kathy Olsen, CPA said: “This will be an exciting talk on the world of early finance and women who were able to break the ‘glass ceiling’ in 19th- century America, paving the way for those who followed on Wall Street, and elsewhere in the United States.”

The lecture will take note of the relationship between women and money leading up to and including the Gilded Age and highlight the achievements of several groundbreaking women who forged unique paths in finance during this era. Ms. Caplan is also an expert advisor for women in finance for the exhibition

Image: "There is not in my Cabinet one man to whom it is not a financial disadvantage to stay in the Cabinet." President Roosevelt at Asbury Park. Illus. in: Puck, v. 57, no. 1482 (1905 July 26), centerfold. Copyright 1905 by Keppler & Schwarzmann. Library of Congress. Figures around the table: J.P. Morgan as "Sec'y Navy", Thomas W. Lawson as "Sec'y War", Thomas F. Ryan as "Att'y Gen'l", James J. Hill as "Sec'y Int.", James H. Hyde as "Sec'y Com. and Lab.", Russell Sage as "Sec'y Agric", Henrietta "Hetty" Green as "Post Mistress Gen'l", Andrew Carnegie as "Sec'y State", and John D. Rockefeller as "Sec'y Treas"

Sheri J. Caplan is the author of Petticoats and Pinstripes: Portraits of Women in Wall Street’s History (2013), the first book that traces the contributions of women in American finance from colonial days to modern times. The book was featured on C-SPAN and won the 2014 Axiom Business Book Bronze Medal in the Women and Minorities division. In 2020, she published Old Enough: How 18-Year-Olds Won the Vote & Why it Matters, a young adult title that was a bestseller in its category and recounts events and circumstances leading to the Twenty-Sixth Amendment and describes the youth vote since its passage. From 2021-24, she published the Remember the Ladies Newsletter, an annotated daily almanac of U.S. women’s history. Her articles, commentaries, analyses, and book reviews have been published or commissioned by American Banker, Forbes.com, the National Women’s History Museum, The Motley Fool, the German Historical Institute, American National Biography, Kirkus Media, and BlueInk Reviews. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and serves as an arbitrator for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Prior to her editorial career, she served as Assistant General Counsel and Vice President of Goldman Sachs and holds degrees from Yale (B.A., History) and the University of Virginia School of Law (J.D.).

LMMM’s Lecture Series is sponsored in part by The DiNardo-Aiello Family Fund and Designer/Artist/Author Gail Ingis.

The exhibition Bulls of Wall Street is generously sponsored by CT Humanities for both the research and the implementation phases of the project, and with generous support from Tim & Sheila Pettee, Kathy Olsen, and Dr. Michele & Attorney Miklos Koleszar.

LMMM’s 2025 programs are made possible in part by LMMM’s Founding Patrons: The Estate of Mrs. Cynthia Clark Brown; LMMM’s Leadership Patrons: Dr. Michele and Attorney Miklos Koleszar and The Sealark Foundation; and LMMM’s 2025 Season Distinguished Benefactors: The City of Norwalk, The Maurice Goodman Foundation, Inc., and Lockwood-Mathews Foundation, Inc.

Host or Publisher Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum