Doris Weatherford

Doris Weatherford has been publishing books on women's history for twenty years. Her first was FOREIGN AND FEMALE: IMMIGRANT WOMEN IN AMERICA, 1840-1930. Published in 1986, it was revised and expanded in 1995. KIRKUS REVIEWS said of it, “absorbing chapters full of quotations from original letters and diaries…meticulous research, vibrant reading.”

That book grew out of her questions in a course on immigration at Harvard, and her second book, AMERICAN WOMEN AND WORLD WAR II (1990), grew out of an argument between a WAC and a WAVE at an early NOW meeting in the Boston area. Both were written after Weatherford moved to Florida, where she has lived more than thirty years.

The World War II book also won good reviews, including this comment from LIBRARY JOURNAL: “Fascinating and immensely readable…General readers will enjoy…and will be amazed.” Weatherford has found the most amazing thing about this book to be the fact that it was translated into Japanese.

Later books were AMERICAN WOMEN’S HISTORY: AN A-Z (Prentice Hall, 1994), which has some 700 brief essays on individuals, organizations, issues, and events. MILESTONES: A CHRONOLOGY OF AMERICAN WOMEN’S HISTORY (Facts on File, 1997)places women in the context of the nation's development, beginning in 1492 with the fact that Columbus used maps that he obtained from his mother-in-law.

Weatherford’s more recent works are featured later in this site. In addition to writing, she has managed campaigns for Democrats and chaired the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame. Governor Lawton Chiles appointed her as a trustee of Hillsborough Community College, and she sometimes teaches at the University of South Florida. Also a member of the advisory board of the Center for Florida History at Florida Southern College, she has received grants from the Florida Humanities Council and other organizations.

Her most recent publication is REAL WOMEN, the story of women in Tampa and its environs from prehistory to 2004, when it was published. It begins with the 1528 Ulela, a woman whose experience paralleled that of Pocahontas -- but almost a century earlier. This high-quality book, with more than 450 pages and dozens of illustrations, may be ordered from the University of Tampa; please call 813-253-6266.

Her husband, Roy Weatherford, is a philosopher and academic union leader; the multiplicity of his interests can be seen in his publications, which range from PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF PROBABILITY THEORY to WORLD PEACE AND THE HUMAN FAMILY. Both grew up in Arkansas, although Doris lived the first decade of her life in Minnesota. They love to travel and spend their leisure time gardening. Their daughter, Margaret Weatherford, has a degree in European history from Harvard and is an attorney and law librarian in Washington, DC.