Augusta Lewis Troup Gets Her Due

On Tuesday a woman named Toni Harp will try to make history in New Haven — by becoming the 375-year-old community’s first-ever female mayor.

The next day, on Wednesday, three New Haven women who have already made history will be formally inducted into the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame (CWHF). (Read about the event here.)

Two of the women are still living: U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Yale Vice-President Linda Lorimer. The third woman is receiving her due almost a century after her death. Her name was Augusta Lewis Troup. Her name adorns a public school in the Dwight neighborhood. She will receive her due because of the efforts of a gifted New Haven-raised schoolteacher named Lois Murray, who became interested in Troup’s remarkable life and successfully advocated for her induction into the Hall of Fame. Following is a submitted account of Murray’s quest to recognize Troup:

Lois Murray, who is a member of the CWHF Consulting Scholar Committee, became interested in the life of Augusta Troup when she realized that Troup Junior High School in New Haven, now Troup Science Magnet, had been named in her honor. Ms. Murray’s great-aunt, Margaret Dunn, taught English there for 40 years, and her father Tom Murray attended Troup J.H.S, along with his siblings back in the 1930s. 

When researching Troup’s life, Ms. Murray discovered that the New York native, born Augusta Lewis, had started out as a reporter in the 1860s, but had also trained as a typesetter and started the Women’s Typographical Union, the first female union in America. Her organization was so successful that the all-male typographical union asked for a merger and elected her its first female secretary. 

The man who conducted the negotiations for the merger, Alexander Troup, was so smitten that he asked for her hand in marriage. The two worked together for the rest of their lives on behalf of labor rights. Augusta and Alexander Troup eventually moved to New Haven to run a newspaper called The Union.

While helping with reporting and editing, Augusta Lewis Troup had seven children. A lifelong advocate of female suffrage and a friend of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she continued to fight for the vote in the New Haven area. She also worked on behalf of the black community and newly-arrived Italian immigrants, earning from them the name ​“Little Mother of the Italian Colony.”

Later in life Troup became a teacher, campaigning for improvements in education and training; she is credited with helping to pass the legislation that granted Connecticut teachers retirement pensions. When Augusta Lewis Troup died in September of 1920, just weeks after the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, the city of New Haven mourned, and teachers in the city wore black armbands for a week in her honor. 

Ironically, it was not until after Ms. Murray began her campaign to convince the CWHF Board to approve Troup’s nomination that she learned from an elderly cousin that it had been Augusta Lewis Troup who had inspired and encouraged her young student Margaret Dunn, Ms. Murray’s aunt, to become a teacher. That is what makes inclusion in the Hall of Fame such a gratifying event.