By Michelle Allen
Michelle Allen is a community storyteller dedicated to preserving the history and charm of Hesperia. Follow along at www.echoesofthewillow.com for more inspiring local stories.
Some ancestors leave behind recipes and heirlooms. Others leave behind revolutions.
I recently uncovered a remarkable connection to Bertha Duppler Baur (1874–1967)—a pioneering businesswoman, suffragist, philanthropist, and Republican Party powerhouse who helped shape Chicago’s civic and political landscape for nearly seven decades. Through my great-grand aunts, Margaret Josephine Engel Hamilton and Catherine M. Kieslich Stucker Chatt, I may be related to Bertha—making this discovery not just historical, but personal.
Bertha’s life was a series of bold firsts. She was one of the earliest female graduates of Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1908, though she never practiced. Instead, she stepped into leadership at the Liquid Carbonic Company, founded by her husband Jacob Baur, and served on multiple corporate boards—a rarity for women of her time.
She was a national Republican committeewoman for Illinois from 1928 to 1956, hosted the 1952 Republican National Convention, and twice ran in the Republican primary for Congress in the 1930s. Her civic work included selling Liberty Bonds during WWI, raising $1 million for the Chicago Civic Opera, and helping secure Illinois’ ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919. She later co-founded the League of Women Voters and attended the International Woman Suffrage Alliance Conference in Geneva in 1920, where women from 36 countries gathered to advocate for equality and civil rights.
Bertha’s story is one of grit, grace, and unapologetic ambition. She was presented to Queen Mary of England, entertained European royalty, and remained active in politics into her nineties. She even collected elephant-adorned hats—a whimsical nod to her lifelong dedication to the Republican Party.
To think that her blood may run through mine is both humbling and electrifying. Her legacy reminds me that the fight for voice, visibility, and justice is not just history—it’s inheritance.
I’ll be diving deeper into her papers at the Chicago History Museum, tracing the threads that connect her to my family. But for now, I hold this truth close: I come from women who didn’t just witness history—they helped write it.
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