Mary B. Thistlethwaite Birdsall (1828–1894) was born in Pennsylvania to English immigrants. She grew up on a farm near Richmond, Indiana, where she married Thomas Birdsall in 1848. They had three sons together. She was a journalist, a suffragist, and a temperance worker. She began her journalism career as the woman's editor at the Indiana Farmer newspaper. For about five years she owned The Lily, a newspaper for women, which she purchased from suffragist Amelia Bloomer in 1854. She helped organize the second women's rights convention in Indiana. At that Indiana convention in 1852, she was elected as secretary for the newly-formed Indiana Woman's Rights Association (renamed the Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association (IWSA) in 1869, and eventually became president of the organization. Birdsall was a vice-president at the fourth National Women's Rights Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1853. She was among the first three women to address the Indiana legislature in 1859 to present a women's rights petition, speaking for a half-hour in support of women's suffrage. Birdsall died in Philadelphia in 1894 and interred at Earlham Cemetery in Richmond. Her Richmond home, a model of progressive architecture as espoused by Catherine Beecher, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Childhood and family background Mary B. Thistlethwaite was born in 1828 in Chester, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. She was the sixth of eight children (two girls and six boys). Her father, William Thistlethwaite, a farmer, was born in Aysgarth, Wensleydale, Yorkshire. He married Elizabeth Wetherald about 1814 and they lived in Boynton Parish. The Thistlethwaites emigrated to America in 1817 with their first two children. The family lived a short time in Delaware, before settling in Chester. They stayed briefly in Cincinnati after Mary's birth, where William Thistlethwaite worked as a butcher. The family finally moved to Richmond, Indiana, in 1829, settling on a farm just west of town in 1830. William Thistlethwaite bought and sold several large farms and ran them successfully. Mary's older sister, Eleanor, never married nor had children. Their brother, Timothy, owned various mills in Wayne County, and their brother, William, Jr., purchased the Democratic Herald, a Richmond newspaper, in 1871. Some of the family's ancestors were active in the Society of Friends (Quakers). William Thistlethwaite was a member of the North A Street Meeting in Richmond. Marriage and children On October 26, 1848, at age 19, Birdsall married a farmer and fellow