Who are the Greatest Mothers In American History - Top 10+

Rosemary November 07, 2023 | 13:44

Every mother is a formidable foe. Mothers have an immense impact on their children through their words, deeds, and unwavering love. To learn motivational tales about the most amazing mothers in US history, read this article.

The Greatest Mothers In American History. Photo: KnowInsiders.com

Contents
Check More: Top 13 Real-Life Evil Mothers in American History That Horrify You Top 11 Greatest Mothers In American History 1. Abigail Adams 2. Nancy Edison 3. Sojourner Truth 4. Mary Musgrove 5. Michelle Obama Michelle Obama, leader of the fight against fat 6. Eleanor Roosevelt 7. Melinda Gates 8. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis 9. Betty Friedan 10. Grandma Moses 11. Josephine Baker

Being a mother entails so much more than just giving birth. It is her responsibility to help you make the best decisions. Additionally, she will be the first to check that every meal is at least moderately nourishing. (Even if the vegetable of the night is "ketchup" for a couple of days.) A lot of mothers prioritize their kids over themselves. It's a commendable quality, particularly for women who juggle a lot of other responsibilities.

Mother's Day is typically used to honor all of the wonderful and devoted mothers out there. However, there is another type of mothers who don't only enjoy warm milk and freshly baked cookies. These wonderful mothers desired the best for both their children and themselves. To get things done, some people adopted a strict but fair stance, while others were more than happy to put an end to uprisings and kill family members.

Check More: Top 13 Real-Life Evil Mothers in American History That Horrify You

Top 11 Greatest Mothers In American History

1. Abigail Adams

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Abigail Adams (1744–1818), the second First Lady of the United States, was the wife of President John Adams. Her husband was frequently gone from home for work, so she frequently managed their farm by herself. She also wrote letters advocating for women's rights and the abolition of slavery, and she taught their five children who lived to adulthood, one of whom would go on to become president John Quincy Adams. "My mother was an angel upon earth," wrote Quincy Adams. In her area of influence, she served as a minister of blessings to every person. Her heart was the dwelling place of divine purity. She was the true embodiment of feminine virtue, piety, charity, and constant, unrelenting benevolence."

2. Nancy Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was the youngest of Nancy Edison's seven children. While there are probably some overblown tales about his mother's virtues, we do know that after his teacher declared him to be "addled"—that is, mentally ill or incompetent—Nancy Edison chose to homeschool her son rather than give up on his education. "My mother was the making of me," said Edison, who may have simply been dyslexic in an era before that learning disorder was researched or comprehended. I felt like I had someone to live for and that I couldn't let them down because she was so genuine and confident in me.

3. Sojourner Truth

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Sojourner Truth (circa 1797—1883) and her infant daughter escaped slavery in Ulster County, New York, in 1826. Soon after escaping, she learned that her 5-year-old son, Peter, had been sold illegally to a man in Alabama. Truth raised funds for a lawyer, filed a lawsuit, and successfully freed Peter—a landmark case in which a black woman successfully sued a white man in court. Truth later became a Christian preacher in New York City and toured the northeast, speaking on the Bible, abolition, and women's suffrage.

4. Mary Musgrove

In 1700, Mary Musgrove was born to a Native American mother and a trapper father. As a child, she split her time between her parents' two cultures, and after her marriage, she worked as a translator and opened outposts. Mary and her husband were the parents of four children. Her efforts to connect settlers and Native Americans aided in the establishment of colonial life in Georgia.

Mary did not abandon the colonists or the indigenous peoples with whom she had grown up. Mary's life was difficult and complicated—all four of her children and her husband died. She spent her life attempting to bring together disparate groups of people, and she was not always successful. Mary passed away in 1767.

5. Michelle Obama

Photo good morning America

Michelle Obama will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the coolest first ladies, thanks to her laid-back style, signature sense of humour, and penchant for dancing like no one is watching on Ellen. Michelle Obama graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law before becoming the first African-American First Lady in 2009. She later practiced law in Chicago, where she was born and raised. In the years leading up to her presidency, she worked as the vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center while raising her two daughters, Sasha and Malia.

Once in the White House, Michelle promoted her Let's Move! campaign, which aimed to eliminate childhood obesity in America within a generation, as well as several other passion projects aimed at assisting veterans, military families, and young people interested in pursuing higher education.

"Never view your challenges as obstacles," she once told a graduating class at The City College of New York, a tenet she has always tried to follow.

Michelle Obama, leader of the fight against fat

One of the most well-known stories from President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign is that his wife would only allow him to run for president if he gave up smoking. That demand would foreshadow Michelle Obama's interest in health, as well as her first lady's focus on eradicating childhood obesity.

The Obamas are the first White House family to have children since the Clintons, and Michelle Obama is known for shielding her daughters from public scrutiny. Meanwhile, she is focusing on her "Let's Move!" campaign, which includes planting the first vegetable garden at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt's era and enlisting Beyoncé in a music video encouraging kids to get their hearts pumping.

6. Eleanor Roosevelt

Although Eleanor Roosevelt spent her entire life going by her middle name, she was born Anna Eleanor Roosevelt in 1884. She was described as an awkward and bashful young girl who felt deprived of love and affection, particularly after the deaths of both of her parents when she was still a small child.

Photo Getty

Eleanor became engaged to a distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1903, when she was only 19 years old, in a marriage that would prove fateful. Soon after their marriage in 1905, she established herself not only as FDR's wife, but also as his political right hand. Eleanor became a new kind of first lady after her husband was elected president in 1933, holding press conferences, traveling around the world, giving lectures, and even writing op-eds in a syndicated newspaper column titled "My Day."

At the age of 14, she famously stated, "... no matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and loyalty are stamped upon her face, all will be attracted to her... "

7. Melinda Gates

Bill Gates is best known as the creative genius behind Microsoft, who rose to prominence in the 1980s. Few people are familiar with the story of his wife, Melinda Gates.

Melinda was born in Texas in 1964 to a mother who placed a high value on education after being denied the right to attend college herself. Melinda, who was always interested in math and science, went on to study computer science at Duke University and later earned a master's degree in business administration before landing a job at Microsoft, where she worked her way up and oversaw projects like Expedia and Encarta.

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There, she met her new boss and future husband, Bill, and after six years of dating, the couple married in 1994 and founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to address global poverty and health issues. Today, the foundation is her primary focus, and her work there has resulted in a number of incredible accomplishments, such as funding disadvantaged youth studies and improving access to birth control for women in third-world countries.

She created an online community of optimists to create a better world

Melinda doesn't want the conversation around global innovation to end with her.

To get people from all walks of life involved in improving the world, she created the online platform Evoke.

"I like to think of us as a community of possibilists--people who believe the world can get better and are committed to doing our part to improve it," says Melinda on the company's website.

Melinda is No. 6 on Forbes' list of most powerful women

For years, Melinda has appeared on Forbes' list of the World's Most Powerful Women.

She was ranked sixth in 2018, trailing world leaders such as Angela Merkel and Theresa May.

According to Forbes, Melinda has made significant advances in women's health around the world, using her foundation to reduce maternal deaths by 57 percent in Ethiopia over the last 30 years.

8. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Fifty years later, we're still infatuated with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's iconic first lady wardrobe, which she created during her marriage to John F. Kennedy. But in actuality, Jackie O. was much more than just a stylish woman.

The Newport debutante, who was born into New England society in 1929, married JFK in 1953 after beginning her career as a photojournalist. Only a few days after her husband was shot while seated next to her, Jackie heroically walked behind his coffin following his assassination in 1963, inspiring the nation. The 49-year-old also went back to work in 1978, working as a book editor in Manhattan until her death in 1994, even though she had never needed to earn a paycheck. Though Jackie held many titles during her life, none were more significant than being Caroline's and John Jr.'s mother. As a matter of fact, she is credited with saying, "I don't think anything else matters much if you screw up raising your kids."

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis opened a school in the White House.

During her tenure in the White House, Onassis made an effort to protect her two children from the media, despite her own experience as a reporter. When Caroline, her young daughter, found it difficult to travel into the city due to security concerns and media attention, Onassis converted the White House's third-floor solarium into a nursery school and invited other children, some of whom were Kennedy administration staff members, to attend. Later on, the school expanded into a fully functional kindergarten with about ten students, qualified teachers, and even a small pet collection of guinea pigs, rabbits, and other animals.

Not only a great mom, she was also a successful book editor.

From a young age, Onassis aspired to be a writer, and after her father, Aristotle Onassis, passed away in 1975, she relocated to New York to work as a book editor. Before joining Doubleday as a senior editor and remaining there until her death in 1994, the former first lady worked as a consulting editor at Viking Press. She contributed to a number of well-known books during her tenure in publishing, such as the autobiography of Michael Jackson titled "Moonwalk," the translation of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz's "Cairo Trilogy," and Larry Gonick's "The Cartoon History of the Universe."

9. Betty Friedan

What would the women's revolution have been like if Betty Friedan had not been there? It's difficult to comprehend. The writer, feminist, and women's rights activist is best known for her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, which argued that American women were experiencing an identity crisis as a result of the idealized image of domestic "bliss" that mothers were supposed to feel. As a result, the book urged women to seek personal success and growth outside of the confines of their homes.

Much of Friedan's inspiration for the book came from her own life; after the birth of her first child, she returned to work, but was fired after becoming pregnant again. Staying at home made her feel restless and unfulfilled, so she set out to find out if other women felt the same way, interviewing graduates of her alma mater, Smith College. As it turned out, she wasn't alone, and thus The Feminine Mystique was born.

Friedan became a force for change within the women's movement in the years that followed, co-founding the National Organization for Women (NOW), NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the National Women's Political Caucus.

"Men are not the enemy, but fellow victims," she famously declared. "The real enemy is women's denigration of themselves."

10. Grandma Moses

Photo wikiart

Anna Mary Robertson Moses, also known as Grandma Moses, was a well-known and prolific American folk artist. She had ten children, five of whom died when they were infants. Anna had always been interested in art, but it wasn't until she was older that she decided to pursue it seriously. She began painting seriously at the age of 78. Her paintings were extremely popular, and she particularly enjoyed depicting seasons and simple, everyday life.

Despite never attending college, she was awarded two honorary doctorates. Her works were initially sold for less than $5; one of her paintings sold for $1.2 million in 2006. Grandma Moses was born in 1860 and lived to be 101 years old.

She became ''Young Woman of the Year'' at the age of 88

Grandma Moses was named a Mademoiselle magazine's ''Young Woman of the Year'' in 1948. She shared the honor with interior designer Dorothy Q. Noyes and economist Barbara Ward. The award was given to ten women each year, and Grandmas Moses received it for her "flourishing young career and the youth of her spirit."

11. Josephine Baker

Many people remember Josephine Baker as the popular singer and dancer who won the public's heart in the 1920s and 1930s. She did, in fact, rise to prominence in France during the jazz era, becoming one of Europe's most popular female performers at the time. (Believe it or not, her wild popularity resulted in a whopping 1,000 marriage proposals.)

When she returned to the United States, her birthplace, to perform in the famed Ziegfield Follies, she was astounded by the blatant racism she encountered as an African-American entertainer. Baker returned to France soon after, married several times, had children, and by the 1950s, she had begun adopting 12 different children from all over the world as part of her "rainbow tribe."

She devoted the last two decades of her life to civil rights, marching alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in the March on Washington and even appearing as one of the event's notable speakers. Baker was later recognized for her contributions when the NAACP designated May 20 as "Josephine Baker Day."