Carrie Harrison and Laura Redden Searing

I recently had a meeting with co-director Suzanne Richard and sign master Monique Holt about the script for Visible Language. They suggested I incorporate two new characters into the play,
Laura Redden Searing, a deaf journalist and poet, and Carrie Harrison, the first lady of the United States in 1892. I didn't know who these two women were so I started to dig.

Searing is definitely the more well known of the two. She became famous as a Civil War correspondent and, under the name Howard Glyndon, wrote a very popular volume of poetry about the war called Idyls of Battle and Poems of the Rebellion.

Carrie Harrison is not as well known. Her main claim to fame is she drove the (literal) rats out of the White House and led a restoration effort that turned the mansion from an embarrassing shambles to a show piece. She is also known for her staunch support of women's rights and and education.