Mrs. Harriette Lawrence Hemenway-FEATHERS, WOMEN AND THE EVERGLADES

Mass Audobon: One of the seminal events in the history of environmentalism activism in America took place in a parlor in Boston's Back Bay in 1896. Mrs. Harriett Lawrence Hemenway, one of the scions of Boston society, happened to read an article that described in graphic detail the aftereffects of a plume hunter's rampage-dead, skinned birds everywhere on the ground, clouds of flies, stench, starving young still in their nests - all in the service of high fashion, which dictated in those days that women's hats be ornamented with feathers and plumes. Eventually,
Egrets and birds of the Everglades were being decimated until Mrs. Hemenway and her society ladies organized the Massachusetts Audobon Society. Other Audobon groups soon organized, followed by the Lacey Act in Congress